Friday, November 2, 2007

From the Inbox - Save Kananaskis!

Nation, I get email from all across our great province and beyond, asking for my assistance in bringing causes, events, and injustices to light.

One such email came from a group calling itself "Save Kananaskis" (they wanted to be the "Save Kananaskis Society", but the provincial government denied them society standing).

Their website covers their issue in much greater detail than I could hope to, so I'd encourage anyone interested in conservation, or anyone who lives in Calgary but plays in K-Country, to check it out for yourselves.

A very well-produced video highlights their cause, here.

Other videos of the type of nonsense that is allowed to happen in what many Calgarians mistakenly think is a provincial park (it is, in fact, a Forest Land Use Zone, allowing clear-cut logging, oil and natural gas wells, and hunting on the same trails as you and your kids hike on!) can be found here, here, here, and here. By the way, if you're one of the 500,000 Calgarians living in the city's South, you'll be interested to know that those jeeps, SUV's and even the Neon are driving through (and leaking oil, gasoline, and god only knows what else) into water that feeds the Elbow River.

Which is the source of your drinking water.

Enjoy!

"Save Kananaskis" is having a rally TODAY, November the 2nd, at 4:30 pm outside the CAOC Building (1111 Memorial Dr.), on the river side of Memorial at the Louise Bridge. The map and further information are available here. They are hoping to pressure the province to extend the protection of a full Provincial Park to the Eastern parts of Kananaskis near Bragg Creek, which currently allow everything you saw in the videos above.

To the thousands of Calgarian outdoors enthusiasts who proudly call themselves members of the E.S. Nation - now's your chance to have a direct impact. Calgary's playground, Kananaskis, is in the middle of a tug-of-war between conservation and resource development. Which side will you choose?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Our concern is social, economic and environmental - people recreate, businesses sell stuff to them and the critters need trees to make a home. The Savage highlighted the importance of the Elbow River watershed which supplies about 1/2 of Calgary's water.

Environmental groups have been doing much of the heavy lifting to balance industrial versus personal use. We like to focus on social and economic issues. Those are our trees and we're subsidizing the loggers to cut them down. Then the outdoor stores in Calgary and businesses in Bragg Creek will go broke, because the people won't want to visit a clear-cut.