Prince Albert National Park

For some time now, the Saskatchewan Environmental Society has been contributing to and monitoring developments of the Prince Albert National Park’s management plans. In 2002 and 2003, a savage debate raged over whether or not Parks Canada should spray pesticides in the Waskesiu townsite in order to kill a naturally occurring forest insect, the spruce budworm.

Parks Canada had initially announced that they would not be spraying pesticides in the National Park for the following reasons:

• The spruce budworm outbreak is a natural part of the boreal forest ecology.
• Eighty percent of the trees in the townsite will survive the spruce budworm outbreak.
• For those white spruce that do die as a result of budworm, death is not immediate—trees can survive for up to 20 years.
• Regardless of the spruce budworm issue, the spruce canopy will experience progressively higher mortality as time passes.
• It is hard to make an argument for cosmetic use of pesticides based on this scenario.
• There are many members of the community and public strongly opposed to spraying.
• In other national parks with similar outbreaks, spraying of pesticides did not take place as the insect did not become a major operational or public safety issue. In the campgrounds or park headquarter areas, dead trees were removed as required.
• The current application of policy is that Parks Canada is not in favour of suppressing active insect population cycles in the national parks.
• A pesticide spray program is not consistent with either policy direction or evolution.
• There appears to be little operational gain from spraying.

However, despite these reasons, Parks Canada reversed its decision to spray pesticides. For more information on why Parks Canada should have stayed with their mandated decision, see the SES report, The Case Against Overhead Pesticide Spraying in The Townsite of Waskesiu Lake, Prince Albert National Park of Canada (PDF).

Also see Parks Canada’s own policy decision (PDF) about why they should not spray pesticides.

For a summary of what finally took place, see our last report to members, Parks Canada to Spray Waskesiu Town Site for Spruce Budworm, an article from the SES May/June 2003 Newsletter.

Standards | Climate change | Forest certification | Sustainable economic development | Prince Albert National Park