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How green was my valley?

In the fight to establish a new park in B.C., tourism operators say they can compete with resource firms when it comes to filling government coffers
Alison Appelbe - National Post, September 4, 2004

Sitting on the spine of Eldorado Ridge, seven hours by horseback from the nearest ranch, you would think ranch owner Sylvia Waterer would be pointing out the glories of this ironred mountain range - its shale soil, dry climate, accessible peaks, lush meadows, not to mention alpine wildflowers, grizzly bears, mountain goats and bighorn sheep.

But no, Waterer is talking about a 10-year-planning process that resulted last July in a provincial announcement

that - with First Nations approval - most of the Spruce Lake Protected Area in southwestern B.C. will become the South Chilcotin Mountains Park.

"It was a business case, period," says the long-time activist for the park's creation. "We and other tourism operators showed that, with high per-diem rates and good revenues, we can compete with the traditional resource industries." In the mid-1990s, Waterer and her partner, Kevan Bracewell, had stepped up the lobbying for a park in face of strong opposition from logging and mining interests in the nearby towns of Lillooet and Lytton. Then in 2001, at Waterer's instigation, a group of wilderness tourism interests came up with credible financial figures supporting its view that it can deliver its fair share of the regional income and taxes that the government covets.
From there, the B.C. Wilderness Tourism Association (WTA) and Council of Tourism Associations of B.C. (COTA) struck a deal with mining interests that led to the park's creation.

It was a tortuous process, and environmentalists remain outraged that in the end the B.C. Liberal government lopped off almost 15,000 hectares from what will become a 56,500-hectare Class A
provincial park, to satisfy the gold mining community.

But neither are the communities of Lillooet and Lytton - both spectacularly sited on ledges above the Fraser River, and with populations around 2,500 - satisfied. Some of their politicians feel they got shafted.
George Abbott, the B.C. Minister of Sustainable Resources Management, who is responsible for the park deal, argues the Liberals inherited a "mess" of a planning process from the former NDP government (which had recommended a park of 71,400 hectares - 20% larger) in 2001. His government, he says, has revived the confidence of the B.C. mining industry and new possibilities for wilderness tourism province-wide, with more intense land-use planning and public consultation processes.

Yet the creation of the 107,000-hectare Stein Valley (Nlaka'pamux) provincial park between Lytton and Lillooet in 1996, after a decade of fierce environmental lobbying, has not delivered the tourism and jobs those communities seek.

Chris O'Connor, the Mayor of Lytton - like Waterer a 10-year veteran of what is formally called the Lillooet Resource Management Plan (LRMP) - says it comes down to a lack of appreciation for rural, or at least traditional resource-industry-based lifestyles. O'Connor argues tourism's potential has been over-estimated at the expense of logging and mining. "We're looking for some respect and understanding."

The saga goes back to 1937, when the Vancouver Natural History Society and a guide-outfitter from the nearby Bridge River gold mining region proposed a major park for the South Chilcotin. Since then, there has been a series of plans, processes, designations and study areas ad infinitum.

In the 1980s, public pressure for the establishment of wilderness parks in B.C. led the NDP government to propose a number of "protected areas." In 1995, the Lillooet Resource Management Plan (LRMP) got underway in earnest.

Waterer, with a degree in tourism and resource management, and Bracewell, a third-generation outfitter from a pioneer ranch family, bought the Chilcotin Holidays Ranch west of Lillooet in the early '90s. They have developed it into a major operation with horse-pack trips, hiking, fishing and hunting, grizzly viewing, back-country skiing and guide training.

As Brian Gunn, the president of the Wilderness Tourism Association, admits, "Sylvia and Kevan have a lot at stake." This stake includes a region of 5,000 square kilometres in which they are licensed to operate a number of remote "camps," a corral full of surefooted Cayuse horses and 35 fulltime, mostly permanent staff.

During the first two years of the LRMP process, tourism was ignored. But Waterer, and usually Bracewell too, attended every meeting, driving two or more hours east to Lillooet or Lytton, and sitting at the back of the room. In 1997, their presence was acknowledged when they were granted a "chair" in the LRMP, that is, a figurative seat at the table (shared by the two of them) to represent the wilderness tourism interest.

After the Liberals rejected the NDP park plan in 2001, Waterer stepped up a letter-writing campaign that would do Amnesty International proud.

"If the government wishes to retain a quality wilderness tourism industry in the South Chilcotin, then a secure management regime (i.e. park legislation) for the natural resources is fundamental," she wrote to ministers, MLAs and others in a typical missive.

"Some of the resources include old-growth lumber, high mineral potential (in the Eldorado basin), unique geology and vast grass and range lands. Of particular significance to back-country tourism is the easily accessed sandy shale mountains for hiking and horse riding, lush alpine meadows, a sunny and dry climate, high ratings for biodiversity, prime grizzly habitat, abundant wildlife and native fish stocks," another letter said.
Fed up, perhaps, with tourism's rising profile, mining dropped out of the talks.

Then Waterer notched things up by delivering a professionally audited analysis, which concluded South Chilcotin tourism was growing by as much as 10% annually and the tourists, most of them non-Canadian, were spending more than $10-million in the region.

The report by Jim Johnson, a former B.C. government statistician now with Pacific Analytics, went on to argue the resulting government revenues topped $1-million.

And perhaps most contentiously, he reported that wilderness tourism's contribution to the gross domestic product slightly exceeded that of logging and mining.

O'Connor, a forester as well as Mayor, calls the figures incredible. His argument runs that the mills in Lytton or Lillooet pay a minimum of $120,000 for a hectare of harvested wood, and given that roughly 250 hectares are harvested each year (1% of the timber supply area), that adds up to $30-million - "and that's not even value-added."

Nor does he trust tourism statistics. "In Lillooet, every hotel is full in winter with logging trucks and loggers - tourism revenue depends on logging. Same with mining. When I travel on business, and eat at a restaurant, does that get registered as tourism revenue?"

Everyone agrees that with different land-base approaches and revenue streams the industries are hard to compare. But O'Connor, who has adopted a conciliatory approach to tourism in recent
months, says forestry and mining still bring home the big bucks.

"We send our money down to the provincial government in buckets and buckets - and then they say, 'By the way, you can't have access to the forest and you can't have access to the mines.' All that the people of Lytton and Lillooet want is a place to raise a family and live a nice simple life. And for that, they need access to the larger wilderness [for logging or mining]. If we don't have it, what's left for this community? Are we all going to live in [the Vancouver suburb of] Maple Ridge and be miserable?"

Bolstering his concerns is the fact the South Chilcotin Mountains Park will be contiguous with the existing Big Creek provincial park to the north, bringing the entire park area to 122,500 hectares (within a wilderness region of one million hectares).

As tourism's star continued to rise, the regional timber industry stepped away from the LRMP process (just as the mining industry - with its eye on the potentially lucrative Eldorado goldbearing region in particular - came back in.)

John Courchesne, a Lillooet town councillor who is also a forester and LRMP participant, believes the logging industry - sensitive to the battering it took in the 1990s when high-profile environmental protests and arrests led to the creation of the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve on Vancouver Island - was terrified of a repeat performance. He also believes the B.C.-Yukon Chamber of Mines capitulated by accepting the exclusion from the park of areas that are mostly unpromising for mining, while in his view much of the best mining potential is still included in the park, especially part of the Eldorado Basin (though this basin's Bonanza Finger, with known gold deposits, was excluded).

When tourism interests were discussed, he says, they were not concerned about such communities as Lillooet, but about such established operators as Chilcotin Holidays Ranch and Tyax Lodge Heli-Skiing, which is said to be the biggest tourism beneficiary of them all.

"The local community got outmanoeuvred," says Courchesne, adding Lillooet doesn't have the money or clout to fight "green bureaucrats" or urban environmentalists.

(A government employee, who insisted on anonymity, said there are rivalries within the wilderness tourism sector, too. Businesses hosting hikers, heli-skiers, horse riders, mountain bikers (some of whom fly in by helicopter), fishers and hunters, and users of all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) all covet the dry, durable South Chilcotin terrain.)

Some, like Bracewell and Waterer, concern themselves with the eco-system and wildlife population. Bracewell has overseen a 14-year grizzly study in which hair, embedded in trees along migration paths, was collected for DNA testing. Others watch out for the well-being of a herd of 80 mountain goats in Eldorado.

Ultimately, says Waterer, the park must be intensely managed - especially as tourism interests in Whistler, 100 kilometres to the south, and Vancouver, eye the region. "We'd like to put a lid on it - and we think you can have use, or even heavy use, without going backwards in terms of protecting the natural resources."

The Pacific Analytics report reveals that per-diem tourism rates in the South Chilcotin - an area of particular appeal to affluent Europeans in search of a pristine wilderness experience - are more than $300 per day, far above the provincial average.

"We need the scenery," says Mary Mahon-Jones, CEO of the Council of Tourism Associations. "We need to be able to sell the wilderness. And if mines introduce lots of roads and wire [for infrastructure], that has an impact."
Near the end of the LRMP process, the government told the tourism (WTA and COTA) and mining sectors to come up with a private agreement on sharing the region. Conflict resolution techniques apparently succeeded. Tourism will now use the same techniques to sort out conflicting resource uses elsewhere, Mahon-Jones says.

The CEO of the B.C.-Yukon Chamber of Mines, Dan Jepsen, says only that his organization "can live with" the final park boundaries. As for the portion of the Eldorado Basin to which
prospectors now have access, he says, "We hope it leads to the discovery of a viable deposit."

"The mining industry wants certainty. So does tourism," WTA president Brian Gunn says. "Land-use planning has worked well for British Columbia, and for wilderness tourism, because everyone knows much better where they stand."

Gunn also says residents of Lillooet and Lytton are unrealistic in believing there will ever be many $80,000-a-year mining jobs. There have been no major mineral finds or new mines recently. Sooner or later, he says, they may be happy to accept tourism positions that pay $30,000, better than the stereotypical $20,000-ayear hotel bellhop.
Only the major environmentalists groups - routinely characterized in rural communities as a hopeless, radical fringe - refuse to accept the park's new borders. Joe Foy, a spokesman for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, said in July that "it's now ground zero in the land-use war." He also claimed the redrawn park boundaries were influenced by the donations to Teck Cominco, a mining giant, to the Liberal party.

More moderately, the B.C. Green Party leader, Adrienne Carr, says wilderness tourism remains the "highest and best value," and that by reducing the size of the park the Liberal government has not acted in the public interest.
Of Lytton and Lillooet, she says: "We're talking about communities in transition, in which it's hard to accept change. But the Green Party believes change is inevitable, and that the strength of these communities will come by following a different pattern - by shifting from volume to value."

As for Waterer, she will keep her eye on those excluded areas, and particularly the gorgeous Eldorado Basin, as the South Chilcotin Mountains Park finally comes into being.
Says Gunn, with only a hint of irony, of the promise of a fight over any threat to wilderness tourism in the South Chilcotin: "I'm sure Sylvia will be up to the challenge."