AWA Wilderness & Wildlife Defenders: Protect the Castle
August 11, 2015
Dear Wilderness Defender,
Alberta’s new government will be acting soon on an election promise to protect the Castle – they need to hear from Albertans today!
Please take a few minutes to write to the Alberta Minister of Environment and Parks to support the legislated protection of the entire 1,020 km2 Castle Special Management Area as a Wildland Provincial Park. This designation will be an important (and long overdue!!) conservation achievement for Alberta and will demonstrate the seriousness of our new government’s commitment to environmental leadership.
Thank you for making your voice heard!
-Brittany Verbeek, AWA Conservation Specialist
The Castle Wilderness is a region of outstanding wilderness values. With numerous overlapping ecosystems in one relatively small area, the Castle Wilderness contains high animal and plant species diversity. It is also an essential piece of an ecological puzzle; the Castle connects Canadian and US National Parks to the south and the Flathead Basin to the west with those habitats and populations in the mountains and foothills to the north.
Despite 50 years of demands for protection of the Castle Wilderness, the pace of ecological degradation continues and no meaningful protection has been legislated.
Recently, through Alberta’s land use planning process, 54,588 ha of the Castle was designated as a Wildland Provincial Park. Unfortunately, the majority of critical wildlife zones and areas of rich biodiversity and high watershed value remain outside those designated park boundaries. (see map to the right) This means that industrial logging and poorly managed motorized recreation use continues.
During the last election campaign, the party that now forms Alberta’s government promised to better protect the Castle. How this promise will be upheld and what it will look like has yet to be determined.
Help make our government’s Castle decision meaningful and swift by writing to:
Honourable Shannon Phillips
Minister of Environment and Parks
AEP.Minister@gov.ab.ca
And please copy:
When you write to Minister Phillips, consider including several of the ‘reasons to protect’ (listed above) that mean most to you, and please ask her to:
For more information, please visit our website’s Castle page.
To read a letter written by Castle Crown Wilderness Coalition and endorsed by AWA, CPAWS, and CCCI to Minister Phillips on June 1, 2015 regarding protecting the Castle, click here.
To read the Castle Special Place Conceptual Proposal for Legislated Protected Areas, submitted by Castle Special Place Citizens’ Initiative to Alberta Minister for Tourism Parks and Recreation, October 2009, click here.
20150811_aa_wwd_protect_castle.pdf