National Parks

Airstrips

For more than a decade, Parks Canada has been working to restore wildlife movement to the Cascade corridor, the narrow band of land lying between the north side of the Trans-Canada Highway and Cascade Mountain and Mt. Norquay. Because the Town of Banff lies on the south side of the highway, this strip is a critical route for wildlife to by-pass the town and make optimal use of the resources of the Bow Valley.

Ten years ago the corridor was blocked by a hotel, a bison paddock, a cadet camp, and the Banff airstrip. The bison paddock and the cadet camp have now been removed, and the hotel has new limits on its expansion. The closure and decommissioning of the airstrip is the important last step in this process. Both the Banff and Jasper airstrips also lie on rare montane grassland, a landscape type which has been identified as valuable and under threat in both national parks.

CPAWS is supportive of the closure and decommissioning of both airstrips. This is because of both their ecological impact and the inappropriateness of small craft recreational flying in national parks.

Some pilots have claimed the strips are needed for emergency use. The option of leaving the strips open for emergency use only was removed when local recreational flyers succeeded in a legal position that open recreational use could not be effectively prohibited on a commissioned airstrip. Accordingly in law, Parks Canada is faced with a clear black or white choice: the airstrips must either be open for all use or completely closed and decommissioned. Given the Parks mandate, we can only support the decommissioning to complete the closure currently in place.

For more background on the Cascade corridor restoration project, please refer to CPAWS:“What’s Happening in our Mountain Parks?”

For more information on the project, the environmental assessment, and the comment process, please refer to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

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