Has Banff National Park reached a tourism tipping point?
CBC
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.
"Well, when I came to Banff I kind of thought it was a small, quiet town, a very small community."
The summers were still a busy time then, said Duck, who's a naturalist by training. But they were nowhere near today's standards.
Now, traffic is so bad that Duck says he won't go into downtown Banff unless he has to, and he can count more than one wetland that's been snuffed out by a parking lot.
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But these shifts aren't just isolated to the townsite, says Duck.
After all, underpinning the town's identity is Banff National Park itself, and it's into this larger ecosystem that the town of Banff's increasing visitors — and the wider tourism industry built to support them — are overflowing into.
With the park's visitation rates jumping 30 per cent in the last decade, the question some conservationists, like Duck, are asking is whether that stream of visitors has led to a tourism tipping point.
From Duck's perspective, it's a question fraught with the inherent friction caused by Banff National Park's dual mandate: ensuring an enjoyable visitor experience, and that the park remain accessible to the public, while at the same time restoring and maintaining ecological integrity.
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.
For one thing, he says wildlife continue to struggle to move up and down the valley the way they might have 200 years ago.
The Town of Banff may not see the same level of sprawl as other growing communities — a holding of the line Duck credits park managers with — but he says its boundaries have been pushed to the limits, altering water drainage systems and creating noise impacts.
"Now of course, these days, protecting our communities from the impacts of fire … is a high priority in our society," says Duck.