Editorial

Have a say on Alberta’s land use policy

Alberta’s land use priorities and management policies are currently under review. Last week, the government set up for seven hours in a local hotel, handing out questionnaires, answering questions and urging comments on everything to do with the land and how we use it.
Apparently, there are issues. Here’s one, as related by one of the provincial staffers at the open house. In one relatively small area of public land west of Calgary, 60,000 campers show up on an average summer weekend, pitching their tents wherever they please. That’s what’s called a land-use issue.
It’s not like that around Slave Lake, obviously, but there are certainly potential conflicts. There’s one between industrial and recreational users of the bush. Even between recreational users there is percolating discontent between people who use motorized vehicles recreationally in the bush and those who can’t stand them.
How about the encroachment of many other uses on productive forest land? That’s a big concern of forest products companies, which annually lose land – especially to oil and gas development. Coal bed methane? You bet. The effect of that – and anything else for that matter – on watershed, is part of the land use package that the government is reviewing. Grazing fits in that category, and probably other things.
Yes, there are competing demands for land and only so much of it. Government estimates have the population of our fair province growing by a quarter of a million people in the next few years. More than five million people in 25 years, says Sustainable Resource Development Minister Ted Morton in the introduction to the booklet ‘Understanding Land Use in Alberta.’
Urban sprawl is guaranteed, as are all other types of pressure on the land and its resources. The province is going to rewrite the rulebook. Be sure of it. But before they do it, they want to put their finger ‘on the pulse,’ so to speak, and find out ‘the lay of the land.’
Public opinion, in other words.
What can we do to contribute? There’s a questionnaire that takes about 15 minutes to fill out. It asks a lot of questions designed to help you express what your land use priorities are. For example, the question posed as follows:
‘At present, the balance between developing and using our land versus conservation of our land is….(and it gives three choices): ‘too focused on conservation and environmental protection; is about right and should be maintained; is too focused on economic development and growth.’ If only gung-ho development types respond, you can imagine the impression the government would get. Likewise if the environmental lobby stuffs the ballot box, so to speak.
So, it would be good if Mr. Morton and crew heard from a broad representation of the population. Submissions must be received by June 15. Fill out the questionnaire online at landuse.gov.ab.ca, or the local Forestry office probably has hard copies.
Don’t let the government make big decisions in a vacuum.