Alberta planning to count day-use numbers in provincial parks
CBC
The Alberta government is planning to pilot a project to accurately track the number of people and vehicles accessing day areas and trails in provincial parks and recreation areas.
Environment and Parks is seeking an outside contractor to install trackers in three areas: Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park, Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park in St. Albert and Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Provincial Recreation Area, east of Edmonton.
The initiative aims to address a huge gap in statistics collected by Alberta Parks.
While camping reservations provide data, the department lacks accurate numbers for first-come, first-served campsites, day-use areas and trails.
The request for proposal document states that day visits make up 75 per cent of visits to provincial parks.
"Day-use visitation is tracked using an insufficient number of traffic and trail counters, most of which are outdated," the document states. "Additionally, automatic counters are absent from many parks and protected areas."
A ministry spokesperson said better collection of data will help the province make better decisions on where to allocate staff and capital spending.
Marlin Schmidt, the NDP Opposition critic for Environment and Parks, said the move sends up red flags for him.
Two years ago, Environment and Parks released an "optimization" plan, which removed 164 areas from the Alberta parks system and fully or partially closed 20 more.
The government claimed the sites were underused. Critics argued the province had no way of knowing since it didn't collect the data.
After months of public backlash and government denials, Environment and Parks walked back the plan in December 2020.
Schmidt is worried the government wants to try again. He said Albertans no longer trust the government on parks issues.
"My suspicion is that now they're collecting the data to make the argument that they wanted to make all along, that these parks should be closed down or sold off," he said.
"It makes me concerned that they're going to take another run at the parks that were on the hit list in 2020."
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