Jumbo Glacier deal enshrines Indigenous protected area, consigns mega-resort to history
Credit to Author: Derrick Penner| Date: Sat, 18 Jan 2020 09:00:36 +0000
Conservation has won in the 30-year battle over the $1 billion Jumbo Glacier resort with an agreement to extinguish the developer’s tenures and turn the area into a First Nations protected area, the Ktunaxa First Nation announced Saturday.
The Ktunaxa began an effort last year to buy out proposed resort owner’s tenures for Jumbo to turn the land into a conservation area that they call Qat’muk, backed in part by $16.1 million in funding from Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Canada Nature Fund and $5 million from private foundations.
The Ktunaxa Nation Council was to formally announce Saturday a deal with the province and federal government, negotiated with the help of the Nature Conservancy Canada, to extinguish development rights in the Jumbo Valley.
“The way I’m characterizing it, is it’s turning the page and ending a chapter of decades of defensiveness on our part in terms of defending our beliefs (and) wanting development to not occur,” said Kathryn Teneese, chair of the Ktunaxa Nation Council.
“Now we have the opportunity to work together with like-minded folks to design something to be reflective of what’s important to the people in our area.”
As late as last fall, Glacier Resorts, proponent of the Jumbo resort, said it would appeal the decision of the B.C. Court of Appeal that upheld the 2015 cancellation of its environmental certificate.
To the Ktunaxa, Qat’muk is considered a spiritual home of the grizzly bear and the bear’s spirit.
The company’s vision was to build a village with 1,400 condos and year-round ski resort with 23 lifts and alpine gondolas, which would support 750 permanent full-time jobs, a prospect welcomed by the businesses in the Columbia Valley.
Vancouver architect Oberto Oberti, who first proposed the resort in 1991, did not return calls Friday, but he spent more than 20 years working on the environmental assessments and planning work that led to approval in 2012 of a master plan for the resort by the province, which included a resort municipality designation.
Teneese said the parties agreed to keep the price tag for the tenures private.
Teneese said the Ktunaxa and province are now working on a plan for the estimated 700 square kilometre Qat’muk. Specific boundaries have not been set, but Qat’muk is immediately north of the Purcell Wilderness Conservancy and will include the Jumbo Glacier watershed and parts of adjacent watersheds.
Teneese said initial ideas for the protected area don’t include changes in existing access to the area, but the Ktunaxa don’t want to see any permanent housing built and want to ensure that enough land is protected to maintain undisturbed and uninterrupted wildlife corridors.
“The other thing I see is an opportunity for us to move forward in a tangible way to begin the implementation of the” UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Teneese said, considering that B.C. has adopted legislation embracing UNDRIP’s goals.
Speaking for the province, cabinet minister Michelle Mungall called the agreement “reconciliation in action and it is the right thing to do.”
“Keep Jumbo Wild is no longer a bumper sticker pleading for the very centre of our region,” Mungall said in a statement. “It is a reality.”
Nancy Newhouse, a vice-president of the Nature Conservancy of Canada-B.C., said the Ktunaxa asked for its expertise to help negotiate the agreement, but the organization will not have a further role.
However, she said the effort fits with NCC’s commitment to the conservation of large landscapes and “aligns with our vision of making sure nature is here for now and future generations.”