CANMORE – A request for the Town of Canmore to take over a plot of land in the lower Silvertip wildlife corridor was turned down by council for the third time since 2017.
Extra costs, a lack of jurisdiction, and limited ability and lack of resources for enforcement were highlighted as the main reasons against moving ahead with the transfer of land from the Alberta Conservation Association (ACA).
“The Town does not have direct influence or responsibility in management of wildlife corridors, so there’s been a hesitancy to take responsibility of land that we do not have the authority to manage,” said Whitney Smithers, the Town’s general manager of municipal infrastructure. “The other is the cost since there would be some work in addressing the unsanctioned trails, signage and education.”
Smithers said the province of Alberta has shown an interest in the eastern parcel of the wildlife corridor, while the ACA aimed to transfer the western parcel to the Town.
She said the Town has limited ability to enforce the area and any change in jurisdictional scope would have to come from the province.
“Our scope of authority comes from the Municipal Government Act, so at the most base level, that’s where we’d need to change to give us authority," Smithers said. "In the absence of that authority and the resources and tools to implement it, it would effectively constitute another downloading of provincial responsibility if the Town tried to take the responsibility for enforcement for unsanctioned use or unsanctioned trails.”
The lower Silvertip wildlife corridor – from the Harvie Heights habitat patch to near the Cougar Creek area – was first mentioned in 1992 with Banff National Park’s study, The Preservation of Wildlife Populations in the Bow Valley, Alberta. The upper Silvertip wildlife corridor also begins at the Harvie Heights habitat patch, but stretches to the Indian Flats habitat patch in the east.
The ACA took ownership of 30.2 hectares between Silvertip and Eagle Terrace subdivisions in 1998 from a donation. There is also a conservation easement owned by the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC), which is meant to protect in perpetuity sections of the corridor.
The 1996 Eagle Terrace area structure plan (ASP) states the conservation easements “are required to protect three environmentally significant areas and both a local (lower) and a regional (upper) wildlife movement corridor through the northern portion of the lands.” But that easement will allow for “wildlife movement corridors (to) be retained.”
The ASP emphasizes the upper part should be to “protect from direct impacts of human disturbance”, but that “local community growth will result in an increase of recreational trail use. This would increase the level of impact on wildlife and landscape features.”
The 2007 approved Silvertip ASP also echoed the importance of respecting the corridors, stating that “building or structural development with the wildlife corridors that would disrupt wildlife movement within the corridors shall be prohibited.”
The Town has previously worked with the ACA in 2016 to improve signage in the area to help limit human-wildlife interactions.
“These efforts have had limited success and have highlighted how housing development and subsequent human use can diminish the viability of the wildlife corridor and the conservation potential for the site, and throughout the whole of the corridor,” according to a staff report.
The ACC and NCC met with the Town and province in 2017 since they believed the land was no longer able to be managed by them or had “conservation value.” The transfer of lands to the province and Town didn’t take place and a subsequent attempt in 2018 also didn’t work.
The report stated ACA reached out to the province earlier this year to transfer both its parcels in the corridor, but the province aimed to have the Town take over one in the west and the province the other in the east.
The staff report added managing parts of the corridor is problematic because of intense human use in the area and unauthorized trails in the area that have led the ACA to believe there’s no conservation value.
The lower Silvertip wildlife corridor has several parcels of land as well as multiple owners such as the Town, the province, Stone Creek Resorts and Canmore Community Housing.
In September, the previous Canmore council approved a working group of area landowners for a path moving forward in managing the lower corridor.
Coun. Jeff Mah noted the land is in a state of “purgatory” without a clear end in sight.
