The laws that protect Alberta's parks and public lands are being changed

Now is the time to raise our voices to make sure our parks stay protected. Parks and protected areas make Alberta resilient. They provide us with places to escape the everyday, connect with nature, and feel refreshed and peaceful. On top of the individual mental and physical health benefits of parks, they also provide us with clean drinking water, store carbon in their trees, soils and grasses, and provide homes for the wildlife that many of us admire and depend on for food.

Our laws should make sure that these important values are enshrined and protected – for us, and for all future generations.

Celebrating Your Victories

With the Alberta Parks announcement in February 2020 to delist a total of 175 parks and provincial recreation areas, it became clear with the tens of thousands of Albertans who fought against this decision that Albertans value our natural and wild spaces. Over 24,000 letters were sent and together we were able to reverse this decision.

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Albertans who took action to Defend Alberta Parks

Our laws should help protect nature

In November 2020, the Government of Alberta released its new Crown Land Vision. The document clearly states that big changes will be made to our parks and protected area legislation this year to “modernize it for the 21st century.”

Our team believes that modernizing parks and protected area legislation means strengthening our laws to face modern challenges. Parks and protected areas have a crucial role to play in addressing the climate and biodiversity crises facing our planet, and our legislation should be strong enough to enable this.

Changes to our parks and protected area legislation should serve to strengthen, not weaken, environmental protections.

Parks should be managed for the public good

In February 2020, the Government of Alberta announced their intention to remove 175 parks from the Alberta parks system. This decision has since been reversed, but only because of pushback from tens of thousands of Albertans.

In December, along with the announcement that parks would no longer be closed or delisted, the Alberta government released a list of new partnerships for 105 parks. Albertans were left to struggle to understand the details: how will these partnerships be managed? Who are the partnering groups?

Ultimately, we believe that parks are a public good, and as such, they should be publicly funded. Partnerships should add value to a given area, and not solely function to offload responsibility and costs to partner organizations. Albertans need more information to trust that partners will be held accountable and uphold the core values of our parks system: sustainable outdoor recreation and conservation of the environment.

Parks should be accessible to everyone

In January 2021, the Government of Alberta held a public consultation on sustainable outdoor recreation. The consultation included a survey that asked numerous questions about what kind of usage fees Albertans would be willing to pay to access their parks.

CPAWS feels strongly that strong policies and legislation are critical to ensure long-term protection of these places and recreational activities. Creation of land policies or changes to them must be carefully considered so that our parks and public lands are managed to prioritize nature, while still providing places and opportunities for sustainable recreation and other uses. Sustainable management for recreation, industry and conservation on public land will only be possible in conjunction with a fully functioning and effective public parks system and strong parks legislation.

Read CPAWS’ Comments and Ideas on Sustainable Outdoor Recreation