Southern Alberta Council on Public Affairs (SACPA)

For more than a century the foothills and Front Range Mountains of western Alberta have been recognized as being vital to the water supply for western Canada. Virtually all the water that sustains communities, ecosystems and the economy of prairie Canada comes from this narrow strip of land arrayed along the Continental Divide. For all its importance, however, water management decisions affecting this enormous region have ignored the significance of land health and focused almost exclusively on building dams. Implementation of the 2014 South Saskatchewan Regional Plan, which is designed in part to protect the South Saskatchewan headwaters, has encountered resistance from off-road vehicle enthusiasts who want unlimited access to designated trails, despite the damage caused to ecologically sensitive areas. Speaker: Kevin Van Tighem Kevin Van Tighem retired from the top job at Banff National Park in 2011, but that hasn’t stopped him from having an impact. The author a