CALGARY – The Special Places 2000 project could collapse if people fail to approve huge tracts of publicly owned grasslands for environmental protection.
Chris Mills is a cattle industry representative on the stakeholders committee which oversees selection of Special Places, an Alberta program to set aside public lands for protection.
Mills gave a detailed explanation of the status of the program at the recent Alberta Cattle Commission meeting in Calgary.
If the process falls apart, Mills warned the government may introduce a new concept with a different set of rules after the next provincial election.
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“Those rules would obviously not be as good as the ones we had,” he said.
He said Alberta needs to avoid the American program of protected areas because it becomes too arbitrary and ranchers holding leases have been evicted without compensation.
The original proposal for Special Places was debated vigorously by farmers and ranchers who were concerned how much land would receive protected status and if it might affect their livelihood.
Special Places stems from an international proposal signed by the federal government via a United Nations agreement to set aside 12 percent of a country’s natural areas for preservation and protection. Alberta agreed to this promise although the province has not specifically agreed to 12 percent of its natural lands.
“We persuaded the government to significantly change the process that they were going to use to set aside these lands under protected designation,” Mills said.
Alberta was persuaded to protect all existing dispositions. That is, if an area is already used for livestock grazing or logging, those activities should be allowed to continue.
The committee also asked the government to give affected communities a say in whether land should be protected and a local committee must establish a management plan.
Moderates in the conservation community are beginning to realize ranchland is often the best managed of the natural areas.
“We are custodians they can work with,” he said.
The committee asked environment minister Ty Lund for a new designation for rangelands which are already well managed.
Mills said it could be called Heritage Ranchland which is used primarily for grazing. If this is achieved it would provide long term land tenure protection. No ministerial commitment has been received.
Areas up for protection may be nominated by any member of the public and go through a selection process that starts with the stakeholders committee.
The province is divided into six areas with subregions. The main areas include the shield, boreal forest, mountains, foothills, grasslands and parklands. The last three affect the agricultural community most.
Forest, mountain and shield areas have already fallen in line by naming protected areas. In the mountain region, four sites have already been approved for protection. These include the Castle Mountain region, Whaleback region, Bow River corridor and the Big Horn region, all located in southwestern Alberta.
In the foothills, six areas have been nominated. Four of the nominees involved cattle grazing areas as well as oil and gas potential.
In the parklands and grasslands, nominations are just coming in and Mills fears the requests may be impossible to grant because of the number of people affected.
“Even if we approve all of the nominations we would not meet the government’s target,” said Mills.
