Parks Canada is conducting a National Park Management Review for each of its mountain parks, including Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Parks. They are encouraging everyone to participate in the ongoing process.

Superintendent for Mount Revelstoke and Glacier National Park Karen Tierney says Parks Canada is putting an increased emphasis on gathering public input on the management plans. “Management plans are intended to be a long-term direction for a park or site,” she says. “That direction needs to reflect the views, the values of Canadians. That management plan is actually our contract back to Canadians. It’s our accountability document.

“We’re looking at this as building the relationship with the community, building ownership of the plan with the community, to help take action on it, to help move it forward because we can’t do it alone. We need the involvement of the community in everything we do,” says Tierney.

As part of the process, Parks held an open house at the Revelstoke Community Centre on July 30 to seek input and allow the public the opportunity to interact directly with Parks staff on hand.

Information was available on a broad spectrum of topics such as endangered species, forest fire management, recreation activities, and many, many more.

Youth components included an art station where kids could draw pictures highlighting things they valued about the park. At another station they wrote news headlines from the future that described the parks as they’d like to see them in the future.

Other stations at the open house encouraged participants to pinpoint their favourite areas in the parks and post notes or stories about them.

Deadline for providing input on the plan is the end of August, and Parks hopes to bring a draft plan back to the public by October, at which point they will seek further public input on the plan.

Parks will be holding a backcountry public workshop on August 24 at 7 p.m. at the Revelstoke Community Centre. The session will focus on issues specific to backcountry users.

Comprehensive information on the management plan review is available on the Parks Canada Web site. Navigate to the home page for each individual park and follow the management plan review link. There is an interactive website that allows you to post comments online.

“Our goal is to find as many ways and provide as many opportunities for people to get involved,” says Tierney.