Suggested Answer: Answer as is appropriate

Suggested Answer: Answer as is appropriate

In order to designate the area as an All-season Resort Area, the boundary of the Wildland Provincial Park would need to be adjusted, and the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan (SSRP) would need to be amended to allow for this change.

Suggested Answer: Unsupportive.

Suggested Answer: It would not change my level of support.

Suggested Answer: As there is a 500-character limit, consider choosing from the following factors we believe should be considered, and/or add your own.

• The Silvertip Gondola in no way fits what the All-Season Resorts Act is intended to do. It does not promote sustainable tourism, given the extensive potential impacts on the Wildland Provincial Park, wildlife habitat, and the wildlife high-value corridor within the area. Further, the gondola doesn’t diversify where tourism is happening in Alberta, which is an explicit intent of ASRA. Visitation figures in Canmore and the Bow Valley are already extraordinarily high. The priority for implementing ASRA should be in expanding and diversifying tourism across the province to ecologically appropriate areas that don’t already receive significant economic benefits from visitation.
• Canmore and the Bow Valley have only become busier over the years, with cumulative effects from human use, activity, commercial development, and tourism impacting both residents and wildlife, as well as the natural environment.
• This development must be considered in the context of additional cumulative effects from the land-use designation and the infrastructure requirements, including the construction of 15 gondola towers with concrete bases within the Bow Valley Wildland Provincial Park.
• The project would likely lead to further habitat fragmentation and degradation, reducing the ability for wildlife—including grizzly bears, wolves, and elk—to move through the Valley. Bighorn sheep also have their lambs on Mount Lady Macdonald each year.
• Studies on carnivore movements and connectivity around Canmore and Banff found that human presence and development reduced grizzly bear movement connectivity by 23% compared to natural conditions, and increased human development is projected to reduce connectivity by an additional 5–6%.
• The proposal does not align with the Bow Valley Wildland Park Management Plan and will require amendments to the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan, potentially subverting the Provincial Parks Act.
• This land is part of the East Slopes Prime Protection Zone, where Zone 1 Prime Protection aims to preserve environmentally sensitive terrain and valuable ecological and aesthetic resources.
• Placing a large gondola on one of the most beloved vistas within the Town of Canmore—and arguably the Bow Valley—will have detrimental consequences for the community and visitor value.

Suggested Answer: Wildland Provincial Parks are established to preserve natural heritage and provide opportunities for backcountry recreation, like hiking and cross-country skiing. They do not allow for large infrastructure development like gondolas. The area is within the Upper Silvertip Wildlife Corridor, a major wildlife movement corridor linking Banff National Park to Kananaskis Country, and facilitating movement through the Valley. This is not an appropriate place to re-designate as an ASR.

Suggested Answer: Private development proposals must be evaluated within the broader land-use context and planning framework. The Bow Valley is a sensitive and unique landscape, and the priority here must be the protection and conservation of the natural environment and habitat requirements for wildlife.

It is in no way acceptable for the ASRA to subvert these priorities, or the Provincial Parks, when the mandate of protection and conservation is inconvenient to the financial goals of private developers.