Unintended Consequences
August 24, 1998
Three workers from the Canadian Pacific Railroad were hunting for gold on their day off. They found no gold, but they found a hot springs that they reckoned would make them rich. Hot baths would be a valuable commodity to visitors in this land of icy cold glacier waters. They applied for a deed for the land around the springs, but the area had not yet been surveyed, so no deed could be given. Apparently some powerful folks in government and with the Canadian Pacific Railroad decided that because of the scenic beauty of the spot they would “steal” the springs for about $800 and make it into a park. Without a deed, the workers felt they had no option but to sell. The Canadian national economy was in shambles due largely to the costs of building the Canadian Pacific Railroad across the country and needed some way to recoup some of its investments. William van Horne, general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, made the now famous statement in 1885: “Since we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists.”
The first prime minister of Canada, Sir John MacDonald claimed that, “It has all the qualifications necessary to make it a great place of resort ... and if carefully managed it will ... recuperate the patrons and recoup the treasury.”
The chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, Sir Sanford Fleming, claimed in 1883 that, “The numbers of strangers who would visit would be a source of general profit.”
The Canadian Pacific Railroad had fundamentally been given the mission to provide a means for commercial and political interaction between the provinces. More than just nationalistic pride was achieved by linking the southern provinces of the young country of Canada by railroad. Canada wished to show some sort of consolidation and unification of the provinces to discourage the imperialistic tendencies of the United States from the south. No roads had yet been built into the Banff area, so the railroad had a monopoly on importing tourists. To attract wealthy tourists from around the world, grand hotels were built in Banff and Lake Louise and the basis for a first class tourist attraction was established. From the humble start of these three railroad workers, Banff became part of a system of parks that is now the largest contiguous park system in the world.
Establishing these parks was initially a joint governmental and business venture. Their first priority was to promote scenic wonders and make lots of money. But as with most of these type of large ventures, there were some unintended consequences. One of the main attractions of the park was its wildlife and the scenic beauty of the Canadian Rockies. But over-hunting caused wildlife to became more and more difficult to find. Wolves, elk and bison were soon eradicated. Over-fishing caused a scarcity of fish in the rivers, lakes and streams. Park managers began to see that if they were to continue to attract tourists, it would be necessary to provide some animals. A bison paddock (pasture) near Banff was provisioned with a herd of bison. A zoo was built and furnished in what is now downtown Banff. Then, it slowly began to dawn on the park managers that protecting the forest and the wildlife would be necessary in order to protect the financial interests. Thus, what started as an entrepreneurial venture slowly began to evolve into a park system with different goals. Conservation and preservation of wildlife became a goal of greater and greater importance -- but still for economic reasons. Elk were imported from Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Hunting was terminated – except by park wardens (rangers) for some rogue bear or a bull elk that had just mangled a tourist. The zoo was not profitable, so it was discontinued and the bison were released from the paddock. Folks wanted to see wild animals in their natural habitat when they visited a national park – not in a zoo. Calgary and other cities had very nice zoos, so why would folks travel up into the Canadian Rockies to see a zoo?
It quickly became apparent that a small park would not support wild animals, such a bears, within its borders. Banff was expanded and Jasper, Yoho, and Kootenay National Parks were added. Adjacent to these National Parks the Willmore Wilderness, Mt. Robson, Assiniboine, Peter Lougheed Provincial Parks and Kananaskis Country was established. Now the animals had considerable space. But there are other unintended consequences of park management decisions. Imported elk have dramatically increased their numbers. The elk have found that if they live close to humans who, by law, cannot hunt them, they are virtually safe from their natural predators such as wolves and bears. Humans are more willing to tolerate elk than bears or wolves wandering around on city playgrounds. Wolves and bears seem to have a more natural fear of humans than the elk. Without effective natural control, the elk numbers increased dramatically and consume young quaking aspen trees, preventing them from maturing. In the winter, elk feed on the bark of aspen trees, introducing diseases and causing injury to the trees. The elk can tolerate liver flukes that moose cannot tolerate. Moose become infected with the elk flukes which became more numerous because of the abundance of their hosts. Consequently, moose have become hard to find, but elk are very abundant, especially in and around the towns. Elk also eat the willows on which beaver depend for food, so there are fewer beaver. Bull elk are dangerous to humans during rutting season and the cows are dangerous during calving season. Now there are plans to capture and move many of the elk to other areas of Canada.
But commercialism was not eradicated from the parks. The towns of Banff and Jasper are located inside the parks. In addition to the grand hotels of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, many other businesses can be found. There are privately owned banks, restaurants, cable cars, ski slopes, souvenir shops, drug stores, grocery stores, motels, apartments, gas stations, and Internet cafes so that tourists are provided with almost all their needs and wants. The one major exception are the campgrounds which are a park monopoly. We found no private campgrounds within the national parks. With no major competition, park administrators set their rates very high, service is mediocre, and competition for sites is intense. However, in the Kananaskis Country there is a fairly new semi-private campground with excellent facilities that is also expensive, and filled to capacity throughout most of the summer.
It is fairly easy to be critical of the park management decisions that were made in the past. When these parks were first established, no one had any experience in park management. Park managers were required to learn while managing. Management decisions are seldom based exclusively on the best scientific evidence. When local citizens are suddenly denied the right to hunt where their fathers hunted before them, they become outraged. When bear and wolves from the parks kill farm animals outside the park, there is outrage. When miners and loggers are denied their traditional rights, they too are outraged. Politicians feel this fury and respond accordingly. But the goal of resource and wildlife conservation is now well established, so that some concessions to commercial interests may not be as harmful to the overall system of parks as they could be. Maybe this is because the scope of commercial activities is now limited within the parks.
But one thing is for certain. Park managers will find that future decisions will also have unintended consequences. There is still insufficient information about the complex links between the plant, animal, economic, and entertainment parts of the whole park, so that the consequences of management decisions can be accurately forecasted. Mistakes will be made! But researchers, park managers, environmentalists, naturalists, wardens and others are hard at work trying to understand these linkages so as to minimize the harmful consequences of the management decisions. However, what was won by political actions over a century ago can also be lost by political actions today. If the majority of Canadians suddenly decide to end the park systems, these beautiful mountains might quickly become mines, pastures, and stumps -- largely devoid of wildlife. But if the citizens of Canada agree that wildlife and forest protection is a desirable goal of parks, then they must be fairly happy with the management trends in the Canadian National Park systems. These parks serve as an example that unintended consequences are not always harmful. It seems ironic that these parks, which were established for the most crass and commercial reasons, are now part of the largest, and best, wildlife, mountain, alpine and forest park system in the world.
If the success of a park can be measured by the number of tourists that visit every year, then this park system is a resounding success. Since most tourists limit their activities to areas near the towns and along highways, there are large areas of these parks that seldom see a human. And, in spite of some negative unintended consequence of park management decisions, it is one of the few places where it is possible to see a complex of large native mammals and other wildlife in their natural environment. It serves as a living history of what the North American continent was like before the westward expansion of the white man.
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