Masked crowds walk through Banff's town centre on July 26, 2021.
With the park’s visitation rates jumping 30 per cent in the last decade, the question some conservationists are asking now is whether that stream of visitors is sustainable.Peter Duck has lived in the town of Banff for more than four decades, a period during which he says there's been plenty of change.The summers were still a busy time then, said Duck, who's a naturalist by training. But they were nowhere near today's standards.
As the president of Bow Valley Naturalists, a group advocating for ecological protection throughout the park, Duck is partial to the negative impacts he believes human activity and new infrastructure has had on the park and its ecosystems. A fire that started as a prescribed burn near the Town of Banff in late 2023 led to evacuations, prompting an independent review.
With the limited land base Banff National Park has devoted to tourism, Duck says what he's seeing more recently is just a plain old space issue. Cascade Pond, a stop on the way up to Lake Minnewanka, will be part of a new area management plan currently being developed by Parks Canada. Two Jack Lake, and Johnson Lake, are also included in that plan.
As for Lake Louise's management plan, Dwight Bourden, acting visitor experience manager for Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay, said it's just wrapped up its public engagement phase, and that details about what measures the plan could entail are still being decided upon.
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