Five years later: Waterton Lakes National Park plan considers fire recovery
Like the land itself, a new management plan for Waterton Lakes National Park is marked by a powerful wildfire that tore through the southern Alberta park five years ago.
The 2022 plan, tabled in Parliament this summer, sets the park's direction for the next decade. It includes dealing with climate change and invasive species and considers ways to strengthen Indigenous relationships and connect with Canadians.
The Kenow Wildfire, however, led to a major change from the previous plan. The fire burned more than 19,000 hectares — approximately 39 per cent — of the mountainous park in September 2017 and damaged many popular picnic areas, campgrounds and hiking trails.
"We've been pretty fortunate," Parks Canada's Locke Marshall, who's the superintendent in Waterton, said in a recent interview. "We've had a lot of support from the federal government."
Marshall said some of the damaged infrastructure was already being replaced before the fire, but other areas required a complete rebuild.
"There's been a lot of work that has been done," he said. "Initially, when the fire went through, our parkways were not available, so we had to work on them to get them ready to go.
"We lost our visitor centre, but we were already in plans to build a new one. Many of our picnic areas got damaged. We've done a lot of work on our trails."
Some areas, such as roads and bridges around Red Rock Canyon, are still being rebuilt and the Crandell Mountain campground is still under construction, he said.
Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in B.C. and Canada Wildfire's scientific director, said the fire also affected a lot of the park's natural landscape.
"It burned a good chunk of the park with high-intensity severity," he said. "The effect on the vegetation and the soil was severe because it was hot and dry."
Flannigan said he's interested to learn more about how the ecosystem has recovered in the park in the five years since the fire.
"I'm hoping Waterton uses this as an educational opportunity to inform the public about fires and regeneration and biodiversity and wildlife," he said, noting there can be positive changes.
Marshall said Parks Canada has learned a lot and will continue to learn from the wildfire through various research projects.
"This has probably been an opportunity that we really haven't seen in the past — and that's just to see what the effects of a widespread fire, a fairly intense fire, has on a landscape and how the landscape itself recovers from it," he said. "And also how that recovery may be affected by changes to the climate that we've seen in the last several decades.
"So, it's a really good opportunity for science."
The research, he said, could take decades to complete. He noted there's already some visible changes in the forests.
"There has been a bit of a transformation," he said. "A lot of the forests were predominantly conifers — pine, spruce, Douglas fir. In some places … we're seeing more aspen trees, shrubs and in some places ... because of a drier, warmer climate, we may see areas that were once forested will be open meadows now.
"There's definitely a change in the landscape."
The plan notes the fire also revealed more than 70 new archeological sites and expanded 170 known sites in the area that burned.
"It was a really good opportunity for some of that archeological work to be done," Marshall said.
"We've been able to involve our nearby Indigenous communities, in particular members of the Blackfoot Confederacy — the Kainai and Piikani — in looking at that landscape and seeing it in the context of their traditional knowledge of the use of the place."
Marshall said they continue to work with the communities to document the sites, which the plan suggests will be complete by 2025.
Overall, he said, the new management plan shows the agency's ongoing commitment to protecting the park.
"It deals with the fire," said Marshall, "but it also deals with our day-to-day operations related to visitation and how we manage the ecological and cultural integrity of the place."
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Spectacular aurora light show to be seen across Canada Friday night
A rare and severe solar storm is expected to bring spectacular displays of the northern lights, also known as aurora borealis, across much of Canada and parts of the United States on Friday night.
'Tactical evacuations' underway near Fort Nelson, B.C., as wildfires encroach
The BC Wildfire Service says 'tactical evacuations' began Friday near Fort Nelson, B.C., due to an out-of-control wildfire that has grown rapidly since it was discovered earlier in the afternoon.
Snowbirds in Vancouver for puck-drop flyby as Canucks face Oilers
The Canadian Forces Snowbirds will be performing a flyover across downtown Vancouver at the start of tonight's Stanley Cup playoff game between the Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers.
McGill University seeks emergency injunction to dismantle pro-Palestinian encampment
McGill University has filed a request for an injunction to have the pro-Palestinian encampment removed from its campus.
Which Canadian cities have the highest and lowest grocery prices?
Where you live plays a big factor in what you pay at the grocery store. And while it's no secret the same item may have a different price depending on the store, city or province, we wanted to see just how big the differences are, and why.
Swarm of 20,000 bees gather around woman’s car west of Toronto
A swarm of roughly 20,000 bees gathered around a woman’s car in the parking lot of Burlington Centre.
Video shows naked raccoon catching B.C. family by surprise
When Marvin Henschel spotted a strange and hairless creature wandering through a front lawn in B.C.'s Lower Mainland, he could barely believe his eyes.
Barron Trump declines to serve as an RNC delegate
Former U.S. President Donald Trump's youngest son, Barron Trump, has declined to serve as a delegate at this summer’s Republican National Convention, according to a senior Trump campaign adviser and a statement from Melania Trump's office.
Out-of-control wildfire prompts evacuation alert for Fort McMurray, Saprae Creek Estates Friday night
An evacuation alert was issued for two Wood Buffalo communities Friday night, as crews battled an out-of-control wildfire near Fort McMurray.