Reviewing Movies

Watching this series I am struck by how little has changed with regard to the protection of environmentally sensitive and significant lands in the century since the first parks were established. Every gain in protected status for parkland must run the gauntlet of economic and political self-interest. Almost no new park gets established without a hard-fought struggle on the part of environmental stakeholders. It makes no difference which side of the border we are talking, ever there seems to be some group or other that feels they should be compensated for the supposed economic loss they feel they will incur. Even native groups are prone to desire short-term jobs over the protection of virgin tracts. It seems to matter little to short-sighted individuals that once clear-cut that forest will yield no benefit to the local community for at least the next 60-100 years but that the tourism associated with a park will generate jobs and support industries in perpetuity. Nor do communities stop to think that the tailings pond a mine leaves behind will pollute heir drinking water long after the company that created it has extracted their profits and ceased to exist. For example, the Giant Gold Mine in Yellowknife contains sufficient arsenic to kill off every human on earth.

In most of Northern Ontario each new provincial park is looked at by most as another sop to rich, over-paid, self-indulgent Southern  city-slickers who want another opportunity to get away from it all. Parks are perceived as yet another tract of land where hunting will be banned, timber and mining will be excluded; and snowmobiling and off-roading will be restricted. The establishment of any new park entails a political battle that involves lobbying against commercial interests that have deeper pockets than the environmentalists. In fact it is often the case that the 'experts' hired to make the case for not protecting a certain area are the very consultants who initially wrote the reports that set out the properties' ecological values.

To date no legislation exists that sets out parameters that say that areas should be protected because of their intrinsic value. In fact vigilance is required to ensure even that protected parks stay protected. The criminal example set by Hech Hetchy stands as a stark reminder of this fact. Water hungry cities still look with avarice at pristine rivers as a source of drinking water and cheap hydro power generation. Mining interests complain at the loss of resources parks represent and lumber interests look with avarice at virgin timber tracts. There has been talk in recent years of oil exploration in arkland that represents the traditional calving grounds of reindeer herds. Migrating animals know no boundaries. Pipelines and highways present obstacles to migration and roads built with taxpayer money make wilderness accessible to yahoos with ATV's, snowmobiles, and off-road vehicles long after the resources they made available are gone. Every logging road extended into a wilderness area serves to bring litter and pollution to another formerly undisturbed habitat.

The concept that parks established for the protection of wildlife habitat are at their best if large tracts of land remain inaccessible to human interference is slow to take hold. Having invested in the procurement of this land it is felt that it should be made available for the public's enjoyment. In fact many of our most popular parks are getting loved to death. That park rangers in entrance kiosks need protection from the exhaust from cars waiting in line to enter parks

just seems wrong. Leasing out the management of parks to private enterprise to save money can be problematic. I bring to mind one such Ontario park where campsites were packed in so tightly I could stand in front of my tent and spit on at least three others beside my own. The fossils the park was established to protect were represented only by

samples on a shelf in the park store.

The fact that those entrusted with managing parks can be their worst enemies cannot be overstated. In an effort to prove through attendance figures that parks are worthwhile these human values can come to overshadow intrinsic values and the needs of wildlife for protection and habitat. Every time a road or trail is extended into an area a block of habitat is broken up. To preserve the safety of users every tree that might become a windfall hazard must be cut. I would cite the example of the elms of Ontario. Some years after Dutch Elm's Disease wiped out the local populations of these trees the Ontario Government and other jurisdictions created a program that paid landowners so much a tree to drop standing snags before they could become a hazard to hunters. Trees at the margins of forests were most accessible and no one verified species. As a result trees of interest to woodpeckers disappeared and with them the nesting possibilities of Eastern Bluebirds which rapidly became nearly extirpated. It was only a concerted effort to put up nest boxes along fence rows that brought them back from the brink.

Large carnivores such as timberwolves and grizzly bears require 100's of square miles of undisturbed wilderness to thrive especially if they are to survive without negative interactions with man and agricultural herds. That kind of pristine wilderness is in short supply anywhere on Earth. Anyone driving in Northern Ontario who stops and walks back among the trees beside the road will quickly discover the forest they thought they saw is a strip of trees left beside the highway for esthetics' sake.

All these issues and more are confronted in this series. Having to watch and rewatch the sponsor announcements can become tedious but what this series does best is put on show what magnificent grandeur would be lost

if we don't protect the National Parks we have and preserve Wilderness for posterity.