The Ministry of Environment is considering five formal applications for boundary amendments to nine B.C. parks and protected areas, largely to make it easier for industrial developments to proceed.

“It took 100 years to get 14 per cent of the land base protected,” Gwen Barlee of the Wilderness Committee said in an interview Tuesday. “This just rolls back that certainty. It rolls back the assurance that we won’t have logging roads and transmission lines and pipelines through our parks.”

Information posted on the B.C. Parks website shows the following applications to date under consideration, as well as the affected protected areas:

• Prince Rupert Gas Transmission Project; natural gas line running from Summit Lake to Prince Rupert; Nisga’a memorial lava bed park.

• Kinder Morgan Canada; Trans Mountain pipeline expansion; Finn Creek park, North Thompson River park, Lac du Bois Grasslands Protected Area, Coquihalla Summit Recreation Area, and Bridal Veil Falls park.

• Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure; remove a 30-metre right-of-way to enable widening and upgrade of an existing road and possible construction of an electrical transmission line to an adjacent subdivision; Kalamalka Lake park.

• Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure; land transfer as part of negotiated agreement with Boston Bar First Nation; Nahatlatch park and protected area.

• Seabird Island band; use of existing and deactivated roads for timber hauling; Sasquatch park. (Tamihi Logging is also involved).

Barlee added there are “myriad problems with this process” and no criteria on how project proponents should run public consultation meetings, adding not all of the project applications listed on the website have email links to allow residents from across the province to submit their comments.

Harrison Hot Springs residents are furious over the proposed boundary amendment to 1,217-hectare Sasquatch park, according to Debbie Hansen, who is helping organize a protest rally for July 19 (Parks Day).

Sasquatch Provincial Park is popular for fishing, boating, paddling, hiking and camping at areas such as Hicks and Deer lakes. In 2013, it logged 281,061 day-use visitors and 48,895 campers.

Hansen said the park is viewed as the most “economically viable” way to access logging in the Moss Lake area above the park. And while the proponent has said logging trucks will only haul during the shoulder seasons and not on weekends, she argued that more than 100,000 park visitors would still be inconvenienced by the industrial traffic. Clearcuts in the surrounding areas already denude the park experience, she added.

No one at Seabird Island or Tamihi could be reached for comment Tuesday.

Hansen emphasized that the proposed changes to Sasquatch fall under the provincial protected area boundary adjustment policy and not the Park Amendment Act, which passed last March. That legislation allows for investigative-use permits to be issued for studies, including for vegetation sampling, fish surveys and low-impact geotechnical studies. Based on the results, companies can apply for boundary adjustments if they want to proceed with a project through a park.

For more information, visit env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/PBAProcess.

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This article also appeared in the Times Colonist. 

Photo: Deer Lake, Sasquatch Provincial Park (Gwen Barlee)