You're absolutely right. Even Parks Canada is not in the “leave it alone” camp. I think establishing national parks of an appropriate size is a key factor. It factors in the climate change aspect. It factors in ranges of species that are required to protect viable populations. By the same token, there is an enormous amount of effort that is undertaken to maintain and restore protected areas so that they provide those ecosystem services and so that they maintain ecological integrity, which is their key purpose. In fact, we do undertake a large degree of effort in prescribed fire restoration work and so on in order to do that. Simply creating the parks and leaving them alone is not how we operate.
On March 26th, 2013. See this statement in context.