Huge Park Planned In British Columbia

A wilderness area in the Canadian Rockies that is bigger than Switzerland will be protected from most development, British Columbia’s government has decided.

A plan for the rugged and remote Muskwa Kechika area will be introduced in the next session of the provincial Legislature, Premier Glen Clark said last week.

The plan covers nearly 17,000 square miles, more than one-quarter off-limits to all development and the rest open to resource development under tight regulation, in an area widely compared to such unique regions as the Serengetti plains of Africa.

The estimated wildlife population of the area includes 27,000 moose, 15,000 elk, 9,000 Stone’s sheep, 5,000 mountain goats, 3,500 caribou, 1,000 wolves, 500 grizzly bears and 500 black bears.

The action would boost the amount of protected areas and parklands from 9.4 percent of the province to 10.6 percent. The United Nations standard is 12 percent.

While open to the public, the reserve will be managed for conservation rather than for public recreation, a provincial official said.

Officials said the plan would cost about $2.2 million a year to administer for the next few years.

Amoco Canada Petroleum Co. Ltd. and Talisman Energy Inc. have written off oil leases in the area.

Resources that will go untapped as a result “certainly would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars at a minimum,” said David Manning, president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

“It is a sacrifice, but we’re willing to make it because it’s for a good cause,” Amoco chairman Bob Erickson said.

Dave Porter, a spokesman for the Kaska Dene First Nation, whose territory includes the new wilderness area, said Clark had made “a courageous decision.”

George Smith, national conservation director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, called the move “an environmental victory, which will resound around the planet.”