The Preservation Era, as Figure 2.7 demonstrates, was defined by a sharp increase in the creation of provincial parks in general and a growing concern for preservation (red) in both new and existing parks.48 Strategic Land Use Planning (SLUP) sought to provide broad direction for the management of Ontario’s Crown lands and resources. It directed park creation in the 1980s during the post-recreation boom era of Ontario’s park system.49 Any new park established during the preservation era could not negatively affect access for other non-recreation natural resource users.50 SLUP recommendations led the legislature to create five new wilderness parks and 149 other provincial parks in 1983.51 The small number of new wilderness parks as well as their lack of planning disappointed preservationists. On the other side of the coin, resource industries, sportsmen, commercial-tourism operators, and some Indigenous groups criticized SLUP for prioritizing wilderness.52 In order to assuage the concerns of the mining industry and Indigenous hunters, the province initially stated that “non-conforming activities,” such as hunting and
47 Gerald Killan, “The Development of a Wilderness Park System in Ontario, 1967-1990:
Temagami in Context,” in Temagami: A Debate on Wilderness, ed. Matt Bray and Ashley Thomson (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1990), 87.
48 For an example of increased concern for preservation in existing provincial parks in the 1980s, see Claire Elizabeth Campbell’s discussion of the topic in: Shaped by the West Wind:
Nature and History in Georgian Bay (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005), 179-183.
49 “Guide for Crown Land Use Planning,” Ontario, accessed 16 May 2018, https://www.ontario.ca/page/guide-crown-land-use-planning.
50 “’One of the finest park systems in the world’: Managing Ontario’s Provincial Parks and Protected Areas,” Ontario Forest History,
http://www.ontarioforesthistory.ca/files/Ontario_Provincial_Parks_.pdf.
51 Killan, “Ontario Provincial Parks,” 46-48.
52 Killan, “The Development of a Wilderness Park System in Ontario,” 91.
mining exploration would be allowed under certain conditions. The Ministry of Natural Resources reversed this decision in 1988. It decided that no further commercial resource
extractive activity would take place in its parks, with the exception of logging in Algonquin and Lake Superior Provincial Parks. This decision was also paired with another year of impressive park creation in 1989. After the 1980s, the province focused on the maintenance and finance of existing parks, instead of large numbers of new acquisitions. However, financial and managerial ingenuity in Ontario enabled the province to expand its park system in the 1990s and 2000s in a way that was not possible for the other three park systems in this study.53
Ontario was not exempt from the budgetary problems that constrained park development elsewhere. One way that the province fueled further park expansion was by embracing business and stewardship partnerships with private organizations and individuals, most importantly the Ontario Heritage Foundation (OHF).54 As a trust, donations to OHF were tax exempt so park officials hoped that a partnership with the OHF would result in increased land donations for Nature Reserves by private owners. In 1981, the Ministry of Natural Resources created a volunteer program for Ontario’s provincial parks, which grew to 500 volunteers in just three years. In 1983, the province created a groundbreaking partnership with its first “friends” group, The Friends of Algonquin Park. The province also launched a provincial park marketing
campaign in 1981 designed to draw more visitors and revenue. This marketing campaign paired with improvements in park facilities led to a marked increase in park visitors during the 1980s;
from five and a half million in 1981 to over eight million in 1987. In 1986, the park system generated $500 million in economic activity.55 Early and resourceful private/public partnerships
53 “’One of the finest park systems in the world,’” 12-16.
54 Killan, “The Challenge of Constraints: 1978-1988,” in Protected Places, 288-322. The 1967 Ontario Heritage Foundation Act outlined the objectives of the organization as “to receive, acquire by purchase, donation or lease, hold, preserve, maintain, reconstruct, restore and manage property of historical, architectural, recreational, aesthetic or scenic interest by municipalities or organizations for the use, enjoyment and benefit of the people of Ontario.” “Chapter 315: The Ontario Heritage Foundation Act” in c315 Ontario Heritage Foundation Act III (1970): 113.
55 “’One of the finest park systems in the world,’” 11-12.
and a willingness to spend money to make money contributed to Ontario’s high rate of park creation in the 1980s that was not present in the other three park systems.
Most of the new “preservation” parks fit into the “Nature Reserve” category in Ontario’s park classification system. Parks in this classification were created to protect and preserve specific landscapes and their ecology. They did not have facilities, and many of them did not allow camping or other recreational activities. Such parks were inexpensive to manage because they require little to no upkeep or personnel. The ability to create this kind of park that does not have facilities and that is specifically for preservation further enabled Ontario to continue and accelerate park creation in the 1980s and 1990s when other provinces and states chose or were forced to cut back on their park systems.
Figure 2.7: Ontario Provincial Park Development, 1980-2009.
Idaho
The state park system in Idaho, like in Pennsylvania, was related closely to forestry.
However, unlike in Pennsylvania where the rise of professional forestry also drove state park creation, the presence of federal national forests in Idaho stymied state park development. In 1907, just before the first state park in Idaho was created, national forests accounted for
20,336,427 acres of the state’s area.56 Although a majority of Idaho residents were suspicious of government control of any land, there was a marked divide between south and north. The south, which relied on irrigation for grazing and other agriculture, welcomed protection of watersheds further north in the state. The north, populated largely by miners and lumbermen, did not welcome the arrival of the U.S. Forest Service. Political opponents of the forest service in the state included Senator Weldon B. Heyburn who stated that the state needed men, not trees and scoffed at the idea that the state’s forests needed protection and management. Eastern
conservationists, including Gifford Pinchot, did not convince Idaho’s residents of the need for planned forest management, but succeeded in imposing it on the state anyway.57
Throughout the twentieth century, Idaho’s conservation and preservation efforts were inconsistent. Historian J.M. Neil states that “on the one hand, [Idahoans] hated to lose any opportunity to profit from development of the state’s natural resources, but on the other hand, they had a nagging sense that they really ought to preserve some of the best of the state’s scenery and, just maybe, could make a profit at the same time.”58 At the turn-of-the-century, Idaho
56 J.M. Neil notes that national forests in Idaho in 1907 “covered more ground than the total areas of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland combined.” To the White Clouds: Idaho’s Conservation Saga, 1900-1970 (Pullman, Washington:
Washington State University Press, 2005): 1.
57 J.M. Neil, “I. The Forest Service Arrives,” in To the White Clouds: Idaho’s Conservation Saga, 1900-1970 (Pullman, Washington: Washington State University Press, 2005): 1-14.
58 Neil, To the White Clouds, 28.
abandoned a possible national park at Shoshone Falls in favour of a major irrigation project.59 As a western state, Idahoan politicians, ranchers, and other conservative figures were involved in decades of organized, anti-conservationist and anti-federal land ownership activities, which culminated in the “Sagebrush Rebellion” of the 1970s and 1980s.60 Sagebrush rebels, led primarily by western ranchers, energy officials, and timber executives, and their likeminded forbearers argued that all federal land should be transferred to the states because individual states would be better managers, economic growth in the West was stunted due to unfair federal land-use restrictions, and that all states should have the right to control all of the land within their borders. Federal conservation initiatives in the West were viewed as an Eastern elitist, neo-colonialist effort to stifle individual rights.61 More broadly, Idaho residents subscribed to a general belief that governments at all levels should not intervene in “business as usual.”62 This belief extended to park creation and contributed to Idaho’s stunted state park development.