Southern land-use plan falls short of public expectations on Castle protection

Lethbridge — South Saskatchewan Regional Advisory Council (RAC) recommendations to continue development on land also identified as conservation management areas doesn’t go far enough to protect the Castle Special Place, says a spokesman for the group that submitted a 2009 proposal to the Alberta government.  The Castle Special Place Working Group recommended increasing the Castle’s protection to the level of Alberta’s other “Special Place” protected areas.

 “While it’s helpful that RAC describes the Castle as an iconic, nature-based recreation and tourism destination, it then recommends against a park or any other such protected area to legally ensure Nature’s protection ,” says Richard Burke, one of the Castle Special Place Working Group’s Lethbridge participants.

“The advice that it be open for new resource development, even if it were under stricter guidelines as RAC suggests, fails to offer the protection a Wildland Park would for this natural water-tower and outdoor respite for southern Alberta,” he says.

Legislated protected areas, including Wildland Parks, exclude commercial logging, mining, and the sale of public land and new oil and gas leases.

Mel Knight, the minister responsible for the regional planning that RAC gave its advice to, last April approved clear-cut logging to start this June in the popular Beaver Mines Lake, Castle Falls and Lynx Creek areas of the Castle.

Brian Hamilton, one of the Castle working group’s rural participants, says, “Our proposal went to RAC early on and both the Tourism and SRD Ministers encouraged us to meet with them. Despite our requests, we never did get a meeting with RAC.”

Burke also notes that RAC’s advice to the provincial cabinet is in sharp contrast to public input, a recent opinion survey, and a response to the Wildland Park proposal from Tourism, Parks and Recreation Minister Cindy Ady, who wrote that it is a “strong fit” with the government’s intended outcomes for the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan.

 A recent survey conducted by the Lethbridge College Citizen Society Research Lab of the largest user-group of the Castle – Lethbridge and Coaldale residents – found 87 per cent support a Wildland Park that would exclude commercial logging, mining, and the sale of public land and new oil and gas leases.

The province designated the Castle as one of 81 Special Places in Alberta and added it to the province’s network of protected areas in 1998, but it has yet to legislate protection for it.

For the Land Use Framework that guides regional planning, the government asked Albertans about “protected areas” and trade-offs. More than two-thirds placed protected areas ahead of resource and commercial development.

In the first round of input for the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan, Albertans rated tourism and recreation as more important than energy production and the forestry industry for sustaining future economic growth.  They were not asked about protected areas or parks; only about the much broader conservation area concept, which leaves ecologically sensitive areas legally open to all forms of development. 

The volunteer Castle Special Place Working Group, in response to the Tourism, Parks and Recreation Minister's encouragement of citizen-led initiatives, spent 18 months developing the proposal.

They found the decade of “special management” in place since 1998 hadn’t been enough to protect the Special Place and went on to reviewed all types of protected areas provided for by Alberta’s laws; settling on a Wildland Park as the best fit.  That process included meetings with five provincial departments, municipal governments and three ministers.

The working group followed a volunteer, consensus-based process that was open to any local user-group, business, adjacent landholder, holder of resource interests there and community group active in the Castle.

The working group involves 34 different groups, businesses and adjacent landholders.

For interviews or information contact:

  • Richard Burke – (403) 320-2925 (Lethbridge)
  • Brian Hamilton – (403) 626-4494; cell 403 795-4684 (Hill Spring)

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