Nisku, Alta. – After more than 1,000 mailed-in workbooks, nine
workshops, a handful of public meetings and a day-long public forum,
Alberta MLAs charged with developing legislation for recreation trails
in the province are months away from a draft plan that will likely
satisfy no one.
Trying to get a room full of hikers, farmers, trappers, cyclists,
skiers, hunters, snowmobilers, horseback riders, foresters and ranchers
to agree on how the province’s 15,000 kilometres of trails should be
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managed, or if they’re even needed, is like trying to push the positive
and negative sides of a magnet together. They can be pushed together,
but they won’t stick.
“I like the initiative of the legislative review, but I’m concerned
there are so many divergent issues,” said Eric Harvey of the Bow Valley
Mountain Bike Alliance during a public forum in the Edmonton-area town.
“I don’t know if it will go anywhere.”
Harvey’s biggest concern while cycling on the mountain trails around
Banff is running into a grizzly bear.
For Ted Burger of Arrowwood, past-president of the Alberta Association
of Landowners for the Protection of Agricultural Land, the concern is
more about hikers trespassing on his land, careless smoking near his
farm and having access to farmland across the trail.
“Most of us don’t even want these trails,” said Burger, pointing to a
newly published book as evidence the trails would cause nothing but
trouble.
“There are just so many problems.”
In her book Hiking the Dream, a family’s four month trek along the
TransCanada Trail, Kathy Didkowsky published photos of old farm
buildings the family explored, and the van’s tire tracks where the
family drove through a prairie grain crop.
“She’s really brought out the fact people aren’t going to stay on the
trails and it’s the farmers who are going to have to deal with that.”
Ray Danyluk, chair of the MLA review committee, acknowledged that
opinions are varied.
“They are not like concerns,” Danyluk said. “There are associations in
the room who don’t even believe in trails in Alberta.”
The committee was formed earlier this year to create more uniform
legislation and rules for the trails, which are established on old
railway rights-of-way, undeveloped road allowances and backcountry
trails.
Most of the trails have few rules. The committee is hoping the
legislation would standardize trail location, fees, signs and liability.
Committee member Jon Lord said 30 pieces of legislation refer to trails.
“If it’s just the legislation consolidation alone, it will be a
benefit,” said Lord, who hopes to replace the existing legislation with
a single law.
The committee must also come up with recommendations to deal with
concerns about liability for farms along the trails, trail policing and
increased motorized traffic.
