Evidence of meeting #37 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was land.
NDP
François Pilon NDP Laval—Les Îles, QC
A few times, you said it had to be voluntary. Do you think there are any areas where it should be mandatory, where immediate action must be taken even if everyone isn't in full agreement? Are there areas where intervention should be mandatory?
Provincial Riparian Specialist, Alberta Riparian Habitat Management Society - Cows and Fish
I think we need good rules of the game. I think we need strong legislation and strong policy. I believe, and this is based on almost 30 years of engaging with rural landowners, that until you provide them the awareness, the basis for understanding what the legislation is supposed to do, you will not get acceptance and uptake. Yes, there are situations that are so egregious that they have to be handled in an enforcement way. But in the vast majority of cases, I believe that the responsible action is to have education and awareness leading to an acceptance of that legislation and policy. In so doing, you create a much stronger bond for landscape health. You also create a situation of longevity, where people keep at it over the longer span of time.
NDP
François Pilon NDP Laval—Les Îles, QC
Mr. Veasey, you said you reintroduce species into nature. Do you have any figures on roughly how many species you reintroduce a year?
Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Research, Calgary Zoo
It varies on an annual basis. We also do more than simply put animals back into the wild. We are active in whooping crane and the Vancouver Island marmot at the moment. We're due to be sending Przewalski's wild horses back to Asia, as well, outside of Canada.
We have a conservation research department that provides a lot of the science behind the ongoing monitoring and development of those programs. It's not as simple as saying that all we do is provide animals. We actually provide a scientific foundation for a successful reintroduction program. It's a very holistic, long-term approach.
Conservative
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you to our witnesses appearing this morning. It is greatly appreciated that you have taken time out of your schedules to come here to meet with us.
I wanted to start with Mr. Sears. In your presentation, you made a comment regarding livestock grazing and its role in maintaining, and in fact conditioning, habitat for other wildlife species. I'm just wondering if you could expand on that a little bit and explain how that process works, bearing in mind that several of us around the table are urban residents. If you can just give us a bit of education on that, it would be very helpful.
Chairman, Alberta Grazing Leaseholders Association
Certainly. Many of these species, including the burrowing owl, the Richardson's ground squirrel, or the common pest we call a gopher, prefer grazed-off land so they can see predators coming—issues like that. They certainly don't survive in ungrazed conditions where the grass is tall; they don't feel comfortable there. When you look at elk and deer, for instance, they prefer conditioned ranges that have been grazed and will have lush, green grass this time of year, and have a nice carry-over for the wintertime that isn't old and decadent—four or five years' worth of old grass that isn't nutritious and useful to them. They prefer our winter and spring pastures, and get along quite well in hayfields as well. Ungulates are smart and very adaptive animals. As far and elk and deer go, they go to where the best available and most succulent grazing is. They will follow the cattle around. That's where they are going to be.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Thank you for that. I think it's an aspect that is important for us to understand and see. I can actually attest to that. Although I'm urban resident, I do live right at the edge of the city and I have fields behind me where deer are all the time. Exactly as you say, they tend to want to pick out the fields where they have the most ability to move rapidly from danger. It's a pretty easy observation even for me to make, as a non-cattle rancher in any way, shape, or form. I appreciate that insight.
I wanted to quickly ask Mr. Veasey something regarding the zoos. You talked about the education of youth, especially urban youth, which is one of my key issues as we go forward on this, and you even had a phrase for it here. You called them “environmentally illiterate”, and I think you spoke about the “nature deficit disorder” amongst our urban youth. You have been working with Parks Canada in order to educate them and, to my understanding, moving them away from just a visit to the zoo—which is great in and of itself—but out to our national parks and even to our other wonderful landscapes outside of the park setting. There are some great areas within Canada. You don't necessarily have to go to a national park to see some wonderful nature. We need to conserve that.
Can you elaborate on some of the programs you have done and the effectiveness of them, and how we can learn from them and implement them with maybe more of a nationwide strategy?
Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Research, Calgary Zoo
If you don't mind, I'm going to defer to Kevin Strange, who is responsible for that.
Kevin Strange Senior Advisor, Conservation Outreach, Calgary Zoo
Maybe I could describe the Parks Canada partnership. We have national park interpreters resident at the zoo in July and August. They have been doing so for the last couple of years. The theory is that by flicking on a microphone at the zoo, they could be talking instantly to 200 or 300 people at a time, and doing that all day long. They would really have to hustle to find an audience that size in the national park. What they are trying to do, in part, is to teach Calgarians in this case that they have these resources not very far down the road from their homes, and that these things should be valued. Parks Canada is at the zoo trying to generate customers and people who could be stewards of those parks later on. It's working very well; the visitor numbers are huge. We're going to keep going with that program this year.
We also work with the Palisades Stewardship Education Centre, a residential program in Jasper, where students from the Edmonton and Yellowhead area mainly are going to Jasper to the old warden training facility for a longer period of time. They are immersing themselves in the park. We help them develop the curriculum for that and pilot some of their programs.
We've been introducing students to some of the research that Dr. Veasey talked about. We then put them on buses, eventually getting them up to Jasper to carry on with that program. So that's another way.
I have partnered with some of the parks people at conferences in the U.S., to talk to park managers there about how to engage an urban audience in national parks' issues. We have Banff's airport in Calgary. A lot of visitors are just landing in Calgary and then heading out to the park. They become management issues for the park. If we can intercept them at the zoo, they will be much better, more informed users of the park when they get there.
The same thing goes for all the natural areas around Calgary. Over the years we've had partnerships with a Nature Conservancy project just south of Calgary. We partner with a great many organizations throughout the province, doing environmental education initiatives.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
When you say your visitation rates are way up, is that at the park or within the structure you're working within at the zoo?
Senior Advisor, Conservation Outreach, Calgary Zoo
It's within the zoo. We have national parks interpreters in national parks uniforms, looking like parks employee in every way, and they're standing in front of the grizzly bear enclosure at the zoo, talking about all the same kinds of things they would talk about at the park related to grizzly bears.
Conservative
Lawrence Toet Conservative Elmwood—Transcona, MB
Has Parks Canada been able to quantify whether they've also seen an increase in visits to the parks? Is there any follow-up or any way of their tracking that?
Senior Advisor, Conservation Outreach, Calgary Zoo
I'm not aware of that yet, but I believe they are trying to track it. They're quite diligent about counting heads and rear ends in the seats at the zoo, for sure.
The pilot project happened two years ago, and they're thrilled to keep going with it. It's been working well for them. They're now under a mandate to try to increase the number of youth, new Canadians, and urban Canadians. These are the people at our zoo.
Director of Animal Care, Conservation and Research, Calgary Zoo
If I might add, we are in long-term discussions with Parks Canada about developing this program further. In the zoo's master plan a zone is due to be developed that will tell the story of parks conservation in Canada. Obviously, we want to work with Parks Canada to bring that forward.
Conservative
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Thank you kindly, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank the witnesses for being with us today.
Some earlier witnesses advocated more of a framework than a plan. I want to make it clear that they were the only witnesses, of all the people we have met with, who talked about a framework. I hope our report will not endorse a framework, but instead a plan. It would be pretty outrageous if that were the case, since it was just a single group of witnesses who recommended such an approach. All our other witnesses spoke to the importance of a conservation plan. I just wanted to set the record straight on that.
Yesterday, we visited a ranch, and it was quite impressive. They were fine examples. I am not sure whether you support a partnership with a nature conservation group that would enable a rancher to do their work in harmony with nature.
Should a national conservation plan call for such partnerships? One of the three witnesses can answer that.
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
Is that something you support? Where do you stand on that? We visited a ranch. I can't remember the exact name.
NDP
François Choquette NDP Drummond, QC
There is indeed some easement, but it enables the rancher to carry out all their activities without any problems. What are your thoughts on that kind of easement?
As an Individual
I'm sure Larry will respond, but I'll give you my sense of it.
This landscape to the south of Calgary called the east slope, where Larry lives, is an absolutely spectacular place. It's been maintained so that it's basically the same as it was when I was a kid. There are no subdivisions, but it's because of the culture of the people who live there. Ranchers like Larry, in my sense of things, are caught between those people who want to subdivide that beautiful landscape and conservation interests who want to develop conservation easements—like NCC, the Nature Conservancy of Canada—but who are also perceived as trying to control how they manage the land. So it's a real dilemma for people anywhere when we're doing this.
The Nature Conservancy in the States has made some pretty serious mistakes in how they've handled ranches down there, and those stories have come north and created a lot of problems on our side of the border.
So it's certainly a very powerful tool, but it has to be applied with the agreement and support not just of the specific landowner but also of the community.
Chairman, Alberta Grazing Leaseholders Association
Conservation easements can work in certain situations and may be the right tool for some people who are in need of a cash infusion to maintain their operation.
The difficulty some of us have with conservation easements, in particular, the Nature Conservancy, is that these conservation easements are in perpetuity, forever. That's a pretty big step for, say, someone like me to make for my children and their children. I'm not sure that everything will always be the same and that the best use of that land will always be represented by Nature Conservancy.
The other issue we have with Nature Conservancy, as Bob mentioned, is the ability or inability of the operator to manage and control as he formerly did. It depends on the skill of the negotiator and how badly Nature Conservancy wants a piece of this particular property.
The other aspect about it that bothers some of us is that recently Nature Conservancy has had the use of, I believe, $760 million of taxpayers' money to go out into the marketplace and compete with individual landowners who may be wanting to purchase that property as well. If it were private dollars raised by Nature Conservancy from people who thought conservation in this particular area was appropriate, most of us would have no trouble with that at all. But to have to compete with taxpayers' dollars if you want to buy a neighbouring ranch that Nature Conservancy wants is patently unfair and we don't believe it should happen.
Thank you.
