Dear Editor:
After attending the opening at the museum highlighting B.C. Parks centennial, I was really irate about the pathetic lack of funding that the government is contributing to this celebration.
Our local museum did its best to cobble together a display for the event, but the envelope with a few pins, stickers and fridge magnets provided by B.C. Parks was ridiculous.
According to the B.C. Parks handout (a pitiful two-page front-and-back affair), one of the featured items this year is a B.C. Parks 100 Passport that families can use to travel around the province and discover our park heritage. Yet there is absolutely nothing available concerning this program on the B.C. Parks 100 website.
It is symbolic of what has been happening to our provincial park system over the past decade. After creating more parks than any other jurisdiction in North America, we are doing next to nothing to protect or interpret them. There are only 10 full-time park rangers in the entire system, and B.C. and Mississippi are the only jurisdictions in North America without park interpretive programs!
Over the past 40 years, I have worked with B.C. Parks personnel to describe the hiking opportunities available in Mount Robson and Mount Assiniboine Parks, and I have been amazed at what they can accomplish with so few resources. But I have also witnessed the steady erosion in services and official presence in both of these showpiece reserves as well as other parks around the province.
Nothing promotes this province and its natural beauty like our provincial parks, and yet they have been virtually abandoned by the government. Super Natural British Columbia my foot!
Brian Patton
Invermere
