It’s true that parks have a perception problem. But the issue is bigger than you might realize.

How so?

Well to understand how different people perceive parks differently, it’s helpful to ask what the original stewards think.

“Yeah, that’s probably a whole day-long discussion”

Chloe Dragon-Smith is an adviser to the federal government and a champion of Indigenous land-use decision-making. And as she explains, parks aren’t simple.

“Parks were created separating land from us.”

Okay, this does sound complicated and to help us better understand the issue, cultural anthropologist Sierra Dakin-Kuiper suggests a bit of history is in order.

“In 1877, that is when Treaty 7 was signed, which then put several First Nations communities on reserves. That freed up a lot of land. Settlers came. Then the railroads were constructed. And when that railroad is finished and that last spike is driven in, we know that around the same time Banff National Park is established.”

Or put more simply, Sierra says “in displacing Indigenous peoples from their homelands, that actually freed up the room to create these national parks.”

Sierra adds that “national parks are very much an extension of colonialism. And we can kind of see played out today in terms of park management.”

Louis-René Sénéchal hears the point.

“Everything that’s governmental has colonial roots. Moving, evolving past these colonial roots takes time and effort and willingness from the very highest levels of the government all the way to every employee in those government organizations.”

Louis-René is a manager with Parks Canada and he understands the darker chapters of our national park system’s history.

“Parks Canada recognizes that over centuries there have been a lot of bad decisions and a lot of injuries and destruction. And fixing this will take generations.”

That legacy has complicated questions of stewardship because it’s complicated who does – and who should – be making decisions in parks. And even if it is complicated, Chloe Dragon-Smith believes, “reimagining our relationship with parks and protected areas is essential.”

Reimagine how? Chloe says it starts with this:

“Indigenous-led conservation is about nations having self-determination and being able to govern and manage their own lands.”

And Indigenous-led conservation is an idea that’s gaining traction – including at COP15, the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (try saying that five times fast…or even remembering it once), where Canada pledged it will meet our biodiversity goals using this model. But forget the future: Louis-René Sénéchal says he can point to examples of Indigenous-led conservation in existing national parks.

“Parks Canada has reached out to Indigenous communities and Indigenous communities (were) open to this opportunity to bringing back (their traditional ways in Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island), despite the hardship and the horror of the story. There’s been an openness on both sides and they’ve worked together. And with a little bit of help and luck – and a lot of good will – the traditional ways of clam gardening will come back, for real (in Pacific Rim National Park).”

Louis-René knows this is just one story and that there’s a long way to go before true reconciliation is achieved. But he tells us that “it truly shows that if both sides come with an open mind and the willingness to reach a common goal, it can happen. It has to happen. It will happen.”

Louis René adds, “more and more, every time there’s a decision made or a new protected area being discussed, Indigenous communities around or within protected areas – or the areas that we want to protect – are involved from the very beginning.”

And cultural anthropologist Sierra Dakin-Kuiper agrees that Parks Canada is “starting to change, to make reconciliation a priority.”

And that holds true of provincial parks as well, explains Elliott Ingles.

“We’ve come a long way. We’re kind of at the starting point though, where we’re starting to acknowledge it in everything we do.”

Elliott, Mount Robson’s Area Supervisor, knows wrongs were committed and he, along with BC Parks, is committed to fostering a better relationship.

“We’re at the beginning of the trail to a long road to reconciliation. But I think we’re doing everything we can to get the conversations going and I hope that it will be enough eventually. (I hope) that these partnerships will blossom and that we will work together and that this park will have traditional names.”

For some – like the Indigenous-led, US-founded Land Back movement – nothing short of returning land – and full decision-making authority over that land, including in parks – will be enough to achieve reconciliation. And given that perspective, it might be helpful to better understand why land is so central to this debate.

“(Indigenous connection to place) stems from the historical length of time that (Indigenous peoples) have lived on this land.

Larry Casper is a member of the St’át’imc nation and has been an advocate for his people and his land – our people and our land – for much of his life. Indeed, caring for this land matters deeply to his people – to Indigenous people – because of their history on this land.

“It seems only natural that a relative newcomer population would not share this same connection to the land, as they have not been here long enough to establish this deep relationship”, Larry tells us.

Which is an important insight. So too is this:

“The St’át’imc world view of ownership of land or territory still varies from the modern practice of fee simple or site-specific ownership of land and/or properties…We are more like “caretakers” of the land for the benefit of our future generations.”

And yet site-specific ownership of land is very much how western society works. And the disputes over ownership is at the heart of what frustrates Larry Casper and so many Indigenous communities.

“Mainstream society would benefit from learning about the European based doctrine of consent, or terra nullius, which characterizes that the land is empty, as the racist basis for European/Canadian governments to claim ownership of our Indigenous territories.”

The rejection of terra nullius is actually one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action and since that particular call to action hasn’t been acted upon, it’s one reason why Larry feels “the federal/provincial governments still have a long way to go in recognizing us as a full partner in the land we all live in.”

You see, truth and reconciliation isn’t a lowered flag or a land acknowledgement at the start of the hockey game. Not close.

Truth and reconciliation is about honest history and respect, absolutely, but it’s also about land – and cultural rights and determination of that land.

Indigenous land-use advocate Chloe Dragon Smith says if or when parkland is returned to Indigenous nations, parks will look different than they do today.

“That often looks very, very different than the conventional conservation that we think about. That often means people being much more engaged in lands – definitely harvesting, hunting.”

Hunting in provincial protected areas is common, but it’s banned in national parks. No matter if you think one park system has the better model, Sierra Dakin-Kuiper argues that “if we’re thinking about the environment through a social justice framework, then it’s really about stepping down and not thinking what’s best about a place.”

Global biodiversity expert and advocate Harvey Locke says science – not just social justice – must still have a role in conservation.

“This silly idea that it’s a racist idea to talk about protecting life on earth: That’s a truly, extraordinarily, weird comment.”

And, interestingly, Indigenous leader Larry Casper mostly agrees with Harvey Locke.

 “My perception of parks is generally favourable as it is a means protecting our environment, as well as key wildlife species and ecosystems that may benefit from this.”

And all of that might leave you confused. Don’t be. Confusion only exists if we make assumptions that everyone must think the same way. Of course, a diversity of people will always have a diversity of perspectives. That’s why Joe Urie argues “just coming together as one unified body and everybody sitting around the same table and having these conversations and listening” is what’s required to find a path forward.

Joe is the founder of the Jasper Tour Company and helps oversee Indigenous Tourism Alberta. Even after the devastating fire of 2024, his  is company is succeeding because of the platform provided by what the Rocky Mountain parks have protected. And when it comes to parks, Joe says “there’s no doubt about it, they are a force for good.”

But Joe understands that parks mean different things to different people – and he’s okay with that, as long as we’re honest about history and work together to author a better future.

“For lack of a better term, let’s call it the spirit of treaty.”

And it’s through the spirit of treaty that Joe believes we can meaningfully advance truth and reconciliation in parks by combining the power of story with the power of experience.

Joe says he’s “reintroducing them to this place, not just from that colonial perspective, but the way that they were meant to be introduced to it in the first place.”

How do tourists react to Joe’s message?

“They step back at first, and there’s this moment of discomfort, because I think that the guilt of colonialism hangs over their head. You can’t avoid that sort of thing, but it’s something – an emotion – that everyone has to feel in order to push on. It’s what comes next that is more important.”

And what should come next?

“That some of the things they feel and experience when they come from a place like this (the Rocky Mountain parks), back to where it is where they come from, that they take some of it with them. And perhaps (that helps them) reinterpret where they live, in the manner that was meant for it to be interpreted in the first place.”

For Joe, it’s why parks matter – and why tourism matters.

Wait, tourism can help advance reconciliation and drive conservation?

“100% it can.”

One problem, Joe tells us.

“There’s a ton of destination marketing, but not a lot of destination management. And, so, you’ve got all these people suddenly flooding in – of course the economy needs to roll – but they’re not coming equipped with the tools.”

And, according to Joe, the consequence of tourists visiting parks without an understanding of nature?

“Suddenly they (tourists) step out here and the best that they see or know is these beautiful images on social media. And why can’t I just step over there right next to that animal?”

Kendra Neef, like Joe, prior to the 2024 fire, was a guide in Jasper National Park. And Kendra says that tourism is, quote, “the lifeblood for many communities, including mine.”

Kendra believes that “everyone from Parks Canada to tourism operators to individuals – promote these areas because we want people to see it. I just think we’ve just gone a little too far with that.”

Parks Canada’s Louis-René Sénéchal understands the concern.

“I mean, I’m not gonna shy away from it. There are some places that are overflowing with people. There are wildlife and human conflicts. The key for me is education.”

But Joe Urie counters “there’s no education.”

Louis-René says Parks Canada’s working to improve education, but adds “often what we see as being an overflowing park (is in reality) an overflowing small portion of the park.”

And yet, as biologist Nancy Newhouse points out, the places we like – the front country of parks, say – is also the landscape animals love.

“Animals are looking for clean water, clean soil – the really the productive sites. What are people looking for? Exactly those same spaces. So, you have an inherent overlap of (human settlement) on top of the best quality wildlife habitat.”

That means even if there is considerable wilderness in the backcountry of places like Banff and Jasper and Mount Robson, most animals want the biodiversity-rich valley bottoms that we’ve developed in the front country.

The result? Human-wildlife conflict.

“Do we have the balance right now? Do we have the perfect setting? Probably not”, acknowledges Louis-René Sénéchal.

How to strike the better balance? Canadian Federation of Outfitters Associations Dominic Dugré says better stewardship of parks starts with hunting.

“There needs to be a way for National Parks to handle their wildlife. For example, the elk populations in Jasper have exploded beyond what the region can accommodate, resulting in habitat destruction and dangerous encounters for humans.”

Others, like wildlife photographer and conservation champion, John Marriott, believe better stewardship begins with prioritizing wildlife needs and de-prioritizing commerce in parks.

“I’ve seen some great models of balance in areas like (BC Parks’) Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary in the Great Bear Rainforest, where only a set number of photographers/wildlife enthusiasts are allowed to go into the protected area each day and for just a limited amount of time. I would like to see this model employed elsewhere throughout BC and beyond.”

Parks Canada’s Louis-René Sénéchal – both a hunter and a photographer – says decisions are hard, but believes increased visitation actually will help improve the balance.

“One of the positive aspects of having a lot of people who want to do this (visit parks) is that you can have the support to bring in the resources to make it happen properly.”

Though Jasper National Park declined our repeated requests for an interview prior to the tragic fire in the summer of 2024, across several media stories, it’s clear frontline managers have a different outlook. They believe the only way to strike a better balance to limit wildlife viewing.

But Joe Urie says that if tourists “can’t stop and look at the animals – if they’re not permitted to experience this place in the manner it’s supposed to be experienced – I don’t know how you’re going to educate or learn to properly respect (nature).”

Wildlife photography, unquestionably, is impacting wildlife, but its existence is because of the infrastructure that’s been created for tourism in the park, argues Joe.

“It’s not always been the brightest idea to put a town and a highway and a railway line inside (a park). We sort of sometimes take two steps forward and one step back. And I think we’re at a one step back moment with the amount of people who are coming here without some knowledge, first of all, of just basic rules on how to behave in a place like this. And (tourists should be forgiven) to a degree because they just don’t know.”

Here’s what Joe means: Tourism agencies licensed and supported by Parks Canada encourage tourists to visit and photograph animals. Free park passes are distributed or prescribed to Canadians, without any education on etiquette provided.

When tourists arrive, they encounter a different reality: No-stopping zones, wildlife being hazed from the roadside without explanation to confused onlookers and tickets being handed out inconsistently to those who watch wildlife.

Joe Urie says “the method by which they (enforce rules and educate the public) has to change.”

And Joe has a few ideas on what change could look like.

“I always cite what I call the Denali model.”

Denali is a popular national park in Alaska that requires every visitor take a bus into the park and view wildlife with a trained guide.

Joe believes it’s a model that could work in Jasper, but adds “there are components that have to change at probably a government level in order to make those sorts of things happen.”

And that’s challenging because as much as frontline staff don’t want the headaches that go hand-in-hand with tourism, Parks Canada needs the visitors explains Louis-René Sénéchal.

“If you’re just fencing all these places and they disappear from your view and my view, then the support will fade. There will no longer be public support – government will not have a reason to protect them – and the small protection that we have will vanish.”

You see, parks like Banff are how Parks Canada funds the totality of the national parks system.

The money made by Banff and Jasper gets re-distributed across the system, financially helping parks that have a significantly lower visitation rate – creating jobs that are needed to keep local communities on-side with the parks.

In other words, no matter how much money Banff and Jasper make, that money doesn’t stay in the park to fund additional staff for, say, public education. And unless the majority of the public starts advocating for parks to be created and funded for nature, not recreation, the only solution is to encourage people to visit parks away from the Rocky Mountains, something Louis-René says Parks Canada is doing.

“We’re doubling our efforts and continuing to make sure that more and more we share with our visitors (the importance of visiting) the hidden gems of the Parks Canada network. Let’s go to Grasslands National Park! There’s one that very few people know about.”

And, certainly, Grasslands and other parks are beautiful and worth visiting in their own right. But is this the right decision? Should we be encouraging people to visit other parks?

Think about it. If parks are our biodiversity reservoirs and are under stress from human activity, is it better to spread out the problem? Or, instead, should we concentrate the issue in just a few parks, helping protect other areas from being loved to death?

The idea of ‘trashing’ one park to save a slate of others is an idea that was raised to us by several park managers, who spoke to us on the condition of anonymity, for fear of reprisal.

In many ways, it’s just a new take on the what’s known as the Trolley Problem – a philosophical ethics question that’s asks: Do you divert a trolley to kill one person and save five others who would otherwise be killed?

When it comes to balancing people and nature in parks, the stakes are a bit different, but the essence of the question is the same.

Of course, with both versions of the Trolley Problem, at issue is what – or who – is being sacrificed.  

So, is it worth sacrificing a Mount Robson or a Banff to help keep other parks from being overrun? Travel author and tourism expert Rick Antonson says: “Do you sacrifice one member of the family so the others can get on with more beneficial things? And I think not.”

Rick argues that Mount Robson and Banff are too important to nature – to biodiversity – to sacrifice. And, in part, it’s for this reason that Dawn Carr, the former executive director of the Canadian Parks Council, is horrified by the idea.

“I would challenge that park employee by saying that we should never go out to trash our places. I would say that there’s always a way to manage our most beautiful and protected places in a way that can achieve both. It’s not an either/or. We have to figure out these things together.”

But EXPOSED founder John Marriott counters that “the Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage Site is already saturated, so at this point, I think turning it into a living classroom would be a brilliant idea. Turn it from a shopping experience in Banff to a true nature experience, albeit in a crowded classroom.”

After all, John says, encouraging people to see less visited parks “just transfers the effect of saturation and makes it even more broad. I’d rather see 50 photographers surrounding a bear in Jasper than 45 there and another 5 on a wilder bear somewhere else.”

Sam Sullivan, the former mayor of Vancouver and former BC cabinet minister says “we can get people to be a part of wilderness areas and still not destroy it.”

And, sure, Sam’s right – we shouldn’t have to ‘trash’ a park to save a slate of others.

But trashing is in the eye of the beholder. If finding a better balance between nature and people in the mountain parks means limiting tourism, potentially impacting jobs in key rural electoral ridings, is the answer still the same?

What about if a better balance requires more funds from the federal or provincial budget – money no longer offset by tourism revenue, but taken away from high profile items like health care or road maintenance?

Sam Sullivan says “it depends.”

Of course it does.

The answer always depends on your perspective and your threshold for risk. It depends on culture and history; it depends on how different cultures and histories intersect and clash. It depends on our priorities and changing priorities in a divisive culture war. It depends on the health of biodiversity and the role we need parks to play in safeguarding it.

Within this reality, is it actually possible to achieve the big, audacious, scientifically-rigorous goals we need to accomplish for biodiversity and balance people in nature in every protected area while ensuring all parks are all things to all people?

In other words, is it actually possible to have our cake and eat it to?

The knee-jerk reaction is: Of course. But that’s only if we generalize – only if we refuse to be honest that the sum of the parts is different than the parts that make the whole.

A solution should be mostly possible. But will it always be possible? And what happens if it’s not possible? Or not possible in every region? What culture should bear the burden of conservation? What community must wear the economic consequences? What park – what ecosystem – can we afford to sacrifice?

Ethicist Dr. Kerry Bowman says “it’s very tough. It’s very tough indeed.”

And to understand how complex the choices – the decisions – might become, Kerry shares this story:

“One of the things I’ve seen in Africa is, you know, people have said: ‘You cut down all your forest to make progress. Look at Europe; look at Britain. Britain used to be forested! Scotland was forested! Now you have nothing. And you’re telling us we can’t do this? That we’re not allowed? That this is wrong for us to (develop our natural resources)? You did it so that you can move forward. So, how can you say we can’t do it? Why can you do that (develop resources and have economic progress) and why should we do this (protect our landscape) when I’m living in a state of poverty?’ And I don’t have a good answer for that. I don’t. I’m struggling with these things.”

And that’s why, if we’re not prepared for these questions, we won’t know what to do when we’re forced to make hard – even impossible – decisions. About the future of stewardship of parks, sure, but also about issues much larger.

This is why we need to know what we don’t know and what we don’t want to know. This is why we need to ask the better questions, always and relentlessly.

And, look, no matter where you stand on this issue – no matter how you feel about the opinions of those voiced in this story – we must remember that everyone is entitled to their perspective, their grievances and their fears. Minority views need to be heard. Majority views aren’t irrelevant. Rural views matter, just as urban views do too. We don’t have to agree with those we disagree with, but we must learn to live with those who have differing opinions from our own.

And though it’s tempting to go with the solution that solves the most problems at once, former Alberta cabinet minister Donna Kennedy-Glans reminds us:

“If you’re going to come up with solutions about how to make your parks better, it means you have to really understand the detail and the complexity and the options. If you take one option off the table, what does that mean for something else?”

As an example, ethicist Kerry Bowman says, “the risk with community involvement is that the voices of non-human life are not there either. So, we always have to be very careful because communities could say, well, do this or do that. You’re still not factoring in this multitude of species and biodiversity and the whole web of life.”

Also understand this, say Northern Development’s CEO Joel McKay: “The policy, frameworks and structures we use to order our country are not conducive to rural (communities). In order to bridge that challenge, we must have a hard look at how we structure everything.”

And then there’s this, says journalist Salimah Ebrahim: “Our political leadership, First Nations political leadership? It is very complicated and they sometimes represent us and they sometimes don’t represent us.”

Donna Kennedy-Glans tells us it’s for this reason she believes “the issue of whose decision is this to make, I think, is one of the most profound conversations we still need to have.”

You see, sometimes when we wish and hope for something to be true, we gloss over hard truths. And when we do that? Win-wins suddenly become lose-lose scenarios. Sometimes people don’t get heard. Sometimes resentment builds or species disappear and then?

“Every action has a reaction”, pollster Shachi Kurl concludes.

So, yes, sometimes we need to have the brutal conversation out loud – even if unpleasant, even if it’s messy. Only when we truly understand how everyone feels – what everyone thinks – will we find the better answers we’ve all overlooked.