Ranger Rob blows the whistle
When one thinks of Parks Canada officials, one thinks of those goofy Kokanee beer commercials.
September 30th, 2015
Backcountry patrol cabins like this one are now falling into disrepair in Jasper National Park.
Veteran ranger Rob Kaye has become a bestselling author with Born to the Wild.
One wonders how a book by a Dudley Do-Right park warden can be included in BC Bestsellers List since August.
But as soon as one opens Rob Kaye’s Born to the Wild: Journals of a National Park Warden in the Canadian Rockies (Grey Wolf / Sandhill $21.95), malady it becomes apparent that park wardens are now akin to another endangered species, lighthouse keepers.
We, the naively wise general public, know we want responsible humans to overlook our coastlines and our forests—to protect, to conserve, to honour nature—as cost-cutting bureaucrats in Ottawa eviscerate them from budgets.
As a tyke who was born in the Rockies and grew up in Jasper, Rob Kaye knew he had to be park ranger when a senior park horseman wooing his wife-to-be, Rob’s older sister, hitched his horse to a tree in the yard.
“I wanted a horse,” he says, “just like his.”
Rob Kaye
After his 33 years as a park ranger, mainly in Jasper National Park, specializing in backcountry management and resource conservation, Kaye retired in 2010 and now lives in Qualicum.
After telling his requisite grizzly stories, elk stories, bighorn sheep stories, mountain goat stories, avalanche stories, beaver stories, glacier stories, wolf stories and lots ‘n’ lots of horse stories for Born to be Wild, he tells it like it is.
In the late 1960s, eight of the 13 districts of Jasper National Parks were phased “as a result of centralization.” Wardens were no longer assigned to a specific district but instead were required to work throughout the park. As of 2013, wardens were no longer assigned to backcountry postings.
“Very few now have the skill set and training to manage the park’s expansive backcountry postings,” Kaye writes. “Many warden cabins in Jasper and other Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks are now in a state of disrepair and slowly fading into the past, much like the traditional role of the back country warden.”
In the old days, a dedicated parks official such as Kaye could make a difference. When he came to the 194-square-kilometre Elk Island National Park one hour’s drive east of Edmonton back in 1989, it was one of the few protected areas representing the last ten percent of Canada’s aspen parkland ecosystem—a bird watcher’s paradise.
For sixteen years Kaye coordinated an elk management system. There were similar programs for the protection and propagation of wood bison and plains bison. By 2014, Elk Island had provided 885 wood bison, 1088 plains bison and 4690 elk to conservation initiatives in Western Canada, Alaska and the Republic of Sakha in Russia.
In 1917, when the Migratory Birds Treaty was introduced by the U.S. and Canada to halt the hunting of trumpeter swans, there were only 130 left in Canada and the continental U.S. Due to programs managed by the likes of Rob Kaye, their numbers have now surpassed 50,000.
This is what park ranger can do.
Atypical Jasper Park visitor, 1953
But in 2012, Canada eliminated 638 jobs from Parks Canada and 1,038 seasonal employees were cut back to shorter terms. Kaye claims biologists, historians, social scientists and archaeologists working out of Parks Canada offices were also affected. Hiring freezes prevented meaningful recruitment. Morale fell.
“Employees, frustrated with having to squeeze funds out of shoestring budgets,” he writes, “mourned the loss of their peers. They were left looking over their shoulders, wondering who would be next.”
Kaye believes Parks Canada desperately needs to re-evaluate its support of commercial and private interests that contradicts its own policies. He gives specifics about the degradation of services.
He claims only three part-time resource management specialists now cover Jasper’s 10,860 square kilometres of area zoned as wilderness that comprises 97 percent of the park’s total area. The horse herd has been cut from 65 to 30, with more downsizing imminent. Backcountry trails will soon become impassable without maintenance; untended warden cabins are aging beyond repair.
“Successive governments—of which the Harper government has been by far the worst offender—have largely ignored the value of the environment, placing national parks in peril.
“Prime Minister Harper has declared war on science, particularly studies related to nature and the impacts of human activities.
“In a society structured around economic growth with minimal consideration towards environmental responsibility,” Kaye writes, “our governments continue to value commercial interests over the long-term ecological, social and economical benefits of protecting wilderness.”
978-0-9940518-0-6
But what memories I have of climbing a peak in Banff National Park in 1963 with a buddy waitress: our summer job. There was a shy summer fire watcher– summer job for budding Park ranger! He hadn’t seen a teenage for weeks! But I was angry that our government has re-named this mt. after an American President — so I just told our USA tourists that Eisenhower was a big, local hero, gold miner in Albertan Rockies. Yes, we also watched Marilyn Monroe as she was filming “The River O No Return” in Banff’s Bow River that summer. She was at the Banff Spring’s Hotel to enjoy a fake dangerous boat ride — just blocks from our downtown cafe! Fun memories — but we need more Park Rangers today than ever.. as more people know after our summer of frightening forest fires!
Isn’t it ironic how wasteful the government is, how they justify throwing money (our tax dollars) away while cutting services and telling us to “tighten our belts”? I saw it put in the best, most succinct way on an election sign: “Stephen Harper is toxic to all living things.” Guess he’s got a spare planet somewhere to go when we can no longer breathe the air, drink the water or grow anything edible in the soil. Would someone please start his spaceship NOW! I’d sure be happy to see that blast off.
Just to keep things clear.. There are Parks Canada Wardens ( Federal) and Provincial Rangers.. 2 different titles though a lot of the same goals and duties.