Maple Leaf Rage : Urbanization of Banff Is Raising Ire of Naturalists

The road to Banff leads to the forested floor of the Bow River Valley, with cloud-piercing pinnacles of the Canadian Rockies and turquoise lakes fed by glacial residue its dramatic backdrop.

It is Canada’s oldest and most popular national park, so central to the nation’s self-image that from 1969 until 1986 an engraving of Banff’s Moraine Lake appeared on the back of every Canadian $20 bill.

But exit the Trans-Canada Highway at the Banff off-ramp and one confronts quite a different reality. Once past the row of motels twinkling with “No Vacancy” signs, the drive slows to a traffic-clogged crawl along a street lined with upscale shopping malls, fast-food outlets, taverns, souvenir stores and bustling pedestrians weighed down with shopping bags.

To be sure, Banff is still home to awe-inspiring vistas, dramatic waterfalls and a range of animal life unmatched in most U.S. parks. But it also is the only national park in North America with its own Benetton and Ralph Lauren Polo outlets, where it is possible to buy a Big Mac or a $450 leather handbag, catch “Apollo 13” at the local multiplex or take a course in writing for television.

While several national parks in Canada and the United States face urban encroachment from neighboring communities, here it is exploding from within the park boundaries--largely in the town of Banff, a community of 7,000 that has coexisted with the park since 1885, when the park was founded. A 1994 report by the Brookings Institution in Washington that surveyed parks in both countries concluded that Banff is “unique in its excess.”

Banff’s business leaders are busy transforming what was once a mountain hamlet into a year-round resort to rival Vail, Colo., or Sun Valley, Ida.--all with the implicit consent of Parks Canada, the federal agency that administers the national park and has ultimate veto power over its development.

“You have to be realistic. We are a tourist town, and the whole world is competing for tourist dollars,” says O. M. Treutler, a local businessman and member of the Banff town council. “But we’re going ahead, and just wait--in 10 years this town is going to be a jewel box.”

Conservationists, however, question whether such commerce is appropriate for a national park. And biologists warn that development in Banff and nearby communities threatens to drive to extinction the bears, wolves and other wildlife that have roamed these mountains for eons.

And so the battle of Banff has become a struggle between competing visions for the future of Canada’s wild places--one that resonates beyond the borders of this country.

Led by a tenacious Calgary lawyer named Harvey Locke, the president of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, environmentalists have sparked a growing national debate over the future of Banff and the rest of the Canadian parks system. In response, Parks Canada has launched a comprehensive study of the Bow River Valley and has declared a partial moratorium on additional development inside the park.

“Our view is: Enough is enough,” says Locke, whose parents grew up in the park. “The tragedy of Banff is that it’s been degraded for greed.”

But mention Locke’s name to Treutler and his jaw clenches, the color rising in his neck. Locke is “deliberately misleading” people about what is happening in Banff, Treutler says. He calls Locke an outsider seeking to impose his values on the town--which, Treutler adds, has not expanded its boundaries since incorporating in 1990 and “lives by the rules of the park.”

“I’m the last one to want to destroy the scenery. That’s what brings people here,” fumes Treutler, who has lived in Banff for 30 years. “But I’d say 90% of the people who come here spend more time in the town than in the park.”

Certainly the urban buildup in Banff--what Treutler calls its “revival”--is visible from one end of town to the other. At the upper end of Banff Avenue, across the road from the tony Cascade Plaza shopping mall, a sign in a second-floor window touts the future home of the Hard Rock Cafe. T-shirts already are on sale downstairs.

On the other side of the Bow River, the landmark Banff Springs Hotel is about to unveil a luxury health spa where guests can gaze at the mountains through floor-to-ceiling windows while striding on state-of-the-art treadmills. The 828-room hotel now courts business conventions with a recently opened conference center that can accommodate 1,600 delegates.

Altogether the park has 5,400 hotel rooms, compared to 2,200 in Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., and 1,912 in Yosemite.

Meanwhile, on the edge of town, developers are clearing forest land for construction of 350 new homes approved in June by Parks Canada to ease the housing shortage caused by the boom. Expansion of the Trans-Canada Highway through the park from two to four lanes is planned.

While biologists admit that measuring the impact of all this development on the park’s natural attractions is difficult, there is mounting evidence that it is cutting into Banff’s rich wildlife.

Tourist facilities occupy less than 1% of the park’s acreage, but they are concentrated in the valley bottom on terrain that is the favored winter habitat for many of the park’s animals. Despite efforts to mitigate development with wilderness corridors and other measures, researchers say human occupation appears to be driving wildlife to less hospitable territory.

Paul Paquet, a biologist from the University of Calgary, says 33% of the prime wolf habitat in the park is now covered by buildings. And grizzly bears apparently are being forced to higher elevations and out of established ranges, according to Mike Gibeau, a conservation biologist studying the grizzly population here.

The displacement of wolves and bears has a ripple effect on elk that is evident on a late afternoon in town. Sensing their security from predators, elk can be found grazing in front yards, wandering along the roadside and nibbling on the rough at the Banff Springs Hotel golf course.

This seems a boon to camera-carrying tourists, but it has emboldened the animals in their encounters with people. Amateur photographers may find themselves looking through the lens at a charging bull elk. With complaints of elk attacks on the rise, park officials periodically erect fencing to separate man from beast.

While conservationists cite the elk to support their scenario of a park out of balance, defenders of the status quo, including former park officials now in private business here, point to the growing elk population as proof that the wildlife is thriving.

Ted Kissane, regional vice president for Canadian Pacific Hotels and Resorts, which owns the Banff Springs Hotel, suggests that “extreme environmentalists” exaggerate the impact of development to advance a hidden agenda of limiting visitors to the park, which attracts more than 4 million people a year.

Kissane notes that no project goes forward without an environmental impact assessment, and he points to an encyclopedia-sized report on Canadian Pacific’s latest proposals to underline his point.

“Development does not in and of itself make for adverse conditions in the park,” he says, adding, “. . . We built a conference center because that’s what people [who patronize the hotel] want.”

But with yet more development planned, James R. Butler, a professor of conservation biology at the University of Alberta, asks:

“Where does the environment come first? If it is not in a national park, then, by God, I don’t know where it is.”

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Banff National Park

Established: 1885; Canada’s first national park

Size: 2,564 sq. miles

Number of entries per year: 4,600,000; 17% from U.S.

Population of Banff: Estimated 40,000 with visitors during summer

Designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with adjacent Rocky Mountain Parks