As If We Didn't Know...

[ÜberFly]

http://www.ffwdweekly.com/news--views/news/inconsiderate-camping/

 

People have been setting up random camps in Alberta since day 1. With a natural landscape like ours, the appeal of discovering an unsupervised campsite is a matter of course. Yet with the provincial population recently breaching four million, the impact of all that humanity cutting loose on the backcountry has never been a bigger problem.

Camping, be it in a bare-bones pup tent or million-dollar RV, is tightly controlled in parks and protected recreation areas in Alberta. A basic campsite in one of the provincial parks generally costs around $23 per night, not including the $12 reservation fee or additional amenities such as firewood or an electrical hookup. Fees exceed $100 for “comfort camping” sites at campgrounds like Pigeon Lake, Writing-On-Stone and Dinosaur Provincial Park, which come complete with canvas cabins on wooden platforms, beds and electricity.

But this isn’t about that kind of camping.

“Random” camping is any kind of camping located on public land outside of designated campgrounds. Even compared to backcountry tent pads, random camping is free and as rugged as it gets in terms of on-site amenities. It has always been a popular alternative to formal campgrounds, but as they get busier and book up faster, the trend has exploded with population growth, more access provided by industry roads cut into the wilderness, and increased off-highway vehicle (OHV) use. This in turn takes a heavy toll on the land.

Jamie Hanlon of Alberta’s ministry of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development says there are several negative issues associated with random camping that are becoming more problematic. He says these include campsite garbage, which is both unsightly and attracts potentially dangerous wildlife, abandoned campfires and long-term campers who stay beyond the loosely enforced 14-day limit set for Crown land and essentially become squatters, preventing others from using a site and not allowing the site to revegetate.

“Abandoned trailers are being left on the landscape as garbage at an increasing rate,” Hanlon adds. “These trailers initially have to be investigated by RCMP to determine if they have been stolen or are part of a crime scene investigation. [After that], they are deemed garbage and there is an associated cost of removal that becomes the burden of the taxpayer.”

The problem is provincewide. Officials in Yellowhead County, stretching from an hour west of Edmonton to Jasper Park, say more and more people camping on Crown land in the county are leaving it in a sorry state.

“Anything you could imagine — anything from diapers, to boxes, to foodstuffs, to anything, just garbage — [and] it is falling on local residents, but there’s still a lot that isn’t cleaned up,” says Yellowhead County Councillor Sandra Cherniawsky.

“Random camping stems from the fact that a lot of people want to use their ATVs. Now as you know, provincial campgrounds do not allow that. And also, too, you have an element that likes to have a bit of a good time as well, and as you know, provincial campgrounds don’t allow that,” Cherniawsky explains.

“There are a lot of very responsible random campers that actually clean up after themselves, they don’t do any damage to the forests or the waterways,” she says. “The problem stems from the very few that leave a mess behind. You know, they’re not great stewards of the environment.”

Litter is not the only problem. In 2005 the provincial government was approached by Kananaskis residents and stakeholders who worried recreational vehicle use in the area might be affecting water quality. Alberta Environment conducted tests on the Waiparous Creek, Fallentimber Creek and Ghost River basins, all of which were and remain very popular with random campers and OHV users.

The 2006 study concluded the amount of silt, trace metals, phosphates and nitrates in these waterways was above what could be expected merely through natural erosion, and could be attributed to bank and riverbed damage by OHVs, and not by industrial activity in the area such as logging.

The Alberta Wilderness Association is also pushing for more government action on random camping issues, but AWA conservation specialist Sean Nichols says that’s been very slow. He says the proliferation of industry access roads through Crown land has allowed the public relatively easy access to areas it could never reach before. For example, since the 1950s over 700 kilometres of industry access roads have been built in the Castle Wilderness, located in the southwest corner of the province.

Unfortunately, “the laws were written 30, 40 years ago [when] there was not anywhere near as much of this kind of activity going on. OHVs just weren’t a major factor on the landscape.”

While the laws were written for a simpler time, random campers, especially those who camp on Crown land in order to ride OHVs uninhibited, have been busy creating what Nichols calls “ad hoc trails” via access roads that weren’t intended for them.

“This is something we’ve heard from talking to resource companies — oil companies or pipeline companies [or] forestry companies — who need access roads. The resource companies say ‘we don’t like the OHV people using it either, because then it becomes a liability on our shoulders, because that road was never built for OHVs,” says Nichols.

“Random camping in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when you have a lot of people going out into the backcountry to do that sort of thing without regulations keeping pace, there’s just more people out there than the landscape can really support,” he says.

Hanlon says there are “a limited number of ESRD staff” patrolling popular random camping areas to monitor activities and teach users how to camp appropriately. However, enforcement resources for the province’s millions of acres of public land are relatively meager.

Random camping and OHV use was a “top concern” during the consultation phase of the recently released South Saskatchewan Regional Plan (SSRP), according to Hanlon. The government attempted to write the land-use framework with the interests of proponents and opponents of random camping in mind, though Nichols contends actual regulatory changes were avoided because the government “punted that issue into the future” by giving geographic divisions within the SSRP an unspecified timeline to figure out their own solutions.

Environmental policy analyst Lisa Fox of Sustainability Resources Ltd. sat on the SSRP’s advisory council. She says retaining the public’s right to use its common land while ensuring stewardship was a difficult balancing act for the council.

“Our advice to cabinet included a ban on off-highway vehicles in wetlands and those upland watersheds that are defined as environmentally significant,” says Fox.

“I am glad that the conversation happened and that the dialogue included the OHV groups, however, lobbying and pressures of industry and special interest groups often get the most air time in these types of policy processes. We shouldn’t need to have lobby groups for the environment, this is the responsibility of government…. This [responsibility] includes some strict guidelines, roles and controls around how people interact with some of our most valuable landscapes,” she says.

Although representatives of the Calgary ATV Riders Association and the Alberta Off Highway Vehicle Association declined to comment for the story, people who did submit comments to the SSRP consultations had suggestions for controlling problems without banning random camping.

These include imposing access fees for random camping that in turn could pay for monitoring — though how those fees would be collected is up for discussion — and engaging OHV clubs in land restoration projects and preventing ad hoc trail-blazing by creating designated OHV trails, something AWA supports.

Yellowhead County officials are hoping a regional education campaign will teach users in their area to be more responsible.

“It’s sort of like the drunk driving, how they’ve been working on it for the last 20 years and pretty much… the norm in society now is: don’t drink and drive,” says Yellowhead County Mayor Gerald Soroka. “If you do drink and drive you know you’re kind of shunned for it. And that’s what we’re going to start looking at this winter is an ad campaign about respecting the environment…. You wouldn’t dump garbage on your front lawn, why are you doing it out here?”

He says the campaign is still in its infancy, but is hoping the provincial government may be open to helping the county formulate a plan.

by Suzy Thompson

August 28, 2014

 

[relk19]

I have had my first couple of experiences random camping this year, and I have to say, I was impressed. The sites I stayed at were clean, free of garbage, and those that camped nearby were very respectful. I hope they do not put too many restrictions on it, as it is something I hope to do for years to come. As for the OHV, I have not run into many of those while out, although me and a friend were disheartened when we wanted to fish fallentimber one day, and there was a big motorbike event happening, so we went out to panther instead. Its not just OHV messing up the rivers though. In August, I was staying near the Panther river, and there was a guy who drove his truck across the river to access what looked like a trail. Needless to say, the people horseback riding laid into us fisherman as we were walking by it mistaking the truck for ours, but glad to see people out there looking out for the rivers. Hopefully this regulation goes smoothly and doesn't hinder those who respect the environment too much.

[treeplanter]

What annoys me is when random campers move in for the whole summer, Look at the setup just up from the westcastle ski resort.

I was talking to some locals down there (the Castle) and apparently a new park is being created that will prohibit random camping.

The park won't affect the ski resort or any of Shells operations, and it will prohibit random tent camping; so it's not perfect.

All I know about it is hearsay though, maybe someone knows more about this park.

[jgib01]

http://cpaws-southernalberta.org/campaigns/castle