Recent Correspondence Peterborough Examiner KAWARTHA HIGHLANDS - Park works best 9/19/2002 Opponents of a proposal to turn 35,000 hectares of primarily Crown land north of Burleigh Falls into Ontario’s newest provincial park are going to have to come up with a better alternative than sending the process back to square one. The fact that they haven’t is an indication that the provincial park plan is sound and should be adopted. Five years have passed since the concept that developed into the Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park plan first appeared. Born out of the Progressive Conservative government’s Lands for Life program, it was christened publicly as the Kawartha Highlands Signature Site in July 2000. A 12-member advisory committee was selected to get public input and recommend whether the 24-kilometre long, 15-kilometre wide site become a provincial park or conservation area. From that moment, some opposition was guaranteed. A large number of private properties sit within the site: cottages, businesses and camps. The committee recommends that those properties remain private, but the fact that they would be surrounded by a provincial park rather then largely unrestricted Crown land will have impacts. Some of those private property owners were bound to prefer that the status quo remain, or at most be changed as minimally as possible. What they are asking for is possible. However, it is not what the provincial government has decreed will happen and was not an option being considered. Should it have been? The idea is certainly worth considering. The Kawartha Highlands site had been used extensively by hunters, campers, canoers, hikers, cottagers etc. for decades, in some cases 100 years or more. As use has increased over the past 30 or 40 years, an informal system of trails, portages and campsites has developed in the back lakes where there are no cottages. Thousands of outdoor enthusiasts use the area every year alongside trappers, hunters, year-round and seasonal residents. As those opposed to a park designation point out, that system could simply be allowed to continue. Creating a formal park will increase awareness of the area’s natural attractions and draw in more “outsiders” who will put more strain on the environment. That argument holds, but only for the short term – short, that is, in the lifespan of nature. The current non-regulated system of use could probably go on for another 10 or 20 years without any serious damage to the environment. But at some point the number of users would pass the upper limit that would be allowed into a controlled provincial park. And all during those intervening years, the protection provincial park status offers against pollution by human waste of all types would be missing. Long-term, the environmental advantages of changing to park status are unquestionable. However, wilderness protection is not the province’s only, or even primary, goal. If that was the case it would restrict access. Kawartha Highlands is to be exploited, in as benign a manner as possible, as a wilderness recreation area. Algonquin Park is the model that proves that the system can work. It continues to be home to some businesses, cottages, resorts and hotels. There are summer camps and one high-end resort on interior lakes, even limited logging. Provincial park status can work at Kawartha Highlands. It is the best option for sustaining and controlling public recreational use of a rugged, beautiful semi-wilderness alongside private property owners who make their lives there.