(00:00):
This season was made possible with support from the government of Alberta's Heritage Preservation Partnership Program and Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Southern Alberta.

(00:09):
Well, I'm in over my head, no one told me trying to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it could be. Well, I'm in over my head, what do I really need? Tryin' save the planet, oh will someone please save me? Tryin' save the planet, oh will someone please save me?

(00:33):
Welcome to In Over My Head, I'm Michael Bartz. While looking into the unique history of our provincial parks, I want to learn about Miquelon Provincial Park and the importance of park interpretation programs to the visitor experience.

(00:44):
I'm Glen Hvenegaard. I am a professor of environmental science at the University of Alberta's Augustana campus in high school, I remember going distinctly to a counsellor and did this little series of questions
that develops or determines your aptitude. Anyway, he said I should be a forest ranger. In grade 12, I got my first job in parks in Kananaskis country cleaning campgrounds and putting in gates. But soon I realized I really enjoyed other aspects of parks work. And so I became a park ranger for a couple years in Bow Valley and then later on a park warden at Elk Island National Park in Parks Canada system, and then also an interpreter at Dinosaur Provincial Park in southern Alberta. So yeah, quite a diverse experience from maintenance to enforcement to interpretation. And that led me thinking that there's a career in this and I really enjoyed it, especially living in these wonderful places and working with people who want to be there.

(01:35):
And so graduate school was on my mind as I thought of what the future could ring. So yeah, I did a master's project in Edmonton with one of my mentors, Jim Butler, and we did a project looking at the economic value of parks, especially birdwatching, down at Point Peele in Southern Ontario. So that led to more projects. And then I wanted to go back for more school. And so I went to Victoria for a graduate degree in geography where we looked at a national park in Thailand and the sustainability ecotourism possibilities. So yeah, if I'm working to research that really helps solidify my background in Parks.

(02:11):
One provincial park that I'm interested to learn about, which is kind of your expertise is Miquelon Provincial Park. Tell me about that park.

(02:18):
Yeah, it's a great park. It's a local hotspot for a lot of people to visit. It draws lots of people in the sort of east-central area of Alberta. It's got a long, very interesting history. It was established in 1958 or nine, and it was suffering. There was a lot of incursions into the park, a lot of changes happening, but with the designation and the careful protection, it's become a real gem in the system. It began its life in the twenties as a migratory bird sanctuary under federal legislation to protect migratory birds going back from United States and Canada. And it was well protected for about 10 years until Alberta became authorized to manage its own natural resources in 1930. And so there was a bit of a lull in protection in the thirties, forties, and fifties before it was finally designated as a provincial park. And in those early days of 19, the 1920s, a local naturalist by the name of Frank Farley was appointed to be the guardian of the park. And he was a local bird watcher, educator, investor. He conducted monitoring, he put up fences, he ensured poachers weren't intruding into the area and sort of set the stage for what protection could look like here in Central Alberta.

(03:35):
Absolutely. And he was doing a bird count, right? Yeah. And then you've actually kept that going, right?

(03:41):
That's right, yeah. He started a Christmas bird count for the Camrose area in the twenties, and when he passed away in 49, there was a hiatus of counting birds and a colleague and I brought it back in 1999. So now
we have interesting data to compare from present day all the way back to 1920s and thirties.

(04:01):
What sort of changes have you observed?

(04:03):
Yeah, some are human cause, some are natural. Back then there were sharp-tailed grouse and lots of gross peaks. And today we've got new things that we wouldn't have found back then, such as American
crows and common ravens and Eurasian collar doves and house finches. So yeah, ecosystems don't stay the same. Some of it's caused by human development, some of it's natural expansion. It's fascinating to keep a watch. That's the value of these bird counts that we can actually determine trends over time.

(04:33):
So you actually look back at his records and compared them?

(04:36):
Exactly. And they usually just had a handful of people going out to count where we've got a small army going out to these different zones.

(04:44):
And you talked about even initially, that area was to protect birds. Was that just from hunting or,

(04:51):
And to provide habitat protection. So no development and to provide education and a series of reserves across the continent to ensure migratory birds have a place to travel and stay. This is in an era following
the 1910s and twenties. There was habitat change across the whole continent. Waterfowl populations, which were really high profile for hunters and for conservationists. Their numbers were dropping. And
so this was a government response to those changing trends. And so there's a long negotiation between Canada, the United States to agree on as migratory Bird Convention Act. And when it was implemented,
places like Miquelon were established and they appointed people like Farley to protect those places. There's a whole series across the whole continent to that purpose.

(05:36):
Oh, okay. Tell me more about that.

(05:38):
And some of them have remained, Miquelon still has portions that are sanctuaries. And in the United States we've got migratory bird refuges, and now Mexico is a signatory. And so for those early stages, they protected places that were extremely valuable as migratory stopover points, habitat for waterfowl as well as upland birds. And they gave us options for some of these parks that would come later in time.
So without that intervening sort of legislation governing activities and development and protecting habitat, we would've been hard-pressed to find good places to establish new parks.

(06:17):
And Miquelon, it's a world heritage site, right? Or UNESCO?

(06:21):
UNESCO Biosphere. Biosphere. One of the parks that encompass a larger ecosystem called the Cooking Lake Marine, also called the Beaver Hills. So at the north end is Elk Island National Park. The south end is
Miquelon Lake Provincial Park. So together they've, along with the counties and other NGOs have collaborated together to propose and receive designation for a UNESCO biosphere. So the Beaver Hills
Biosphere is the name, and it's designed to be an approach to collaboration towards sustainable use of the area. So they try to think about the long-term viability of communities, landowners, park protection,
agriculture, and other uses there. I'm on the science Committee of the Beaver Hills Biosphere, and there are other committees that are working towards specific purposes, whether it's focused on tourism or history or collaboration with wildlife. So there are a couple in Alberta and 20 some across Canada and several hundred around the world. And there's collaboration locally of course, but there's also collaboration with all these other biospheres. And there's a great learning that can happen amongst these. So we share a lot of similarities with the biosphere in France or in Brazil or wherever.

(07:34):
And Miquelon is also a dark sky preserve.

(07:36):
Yeah, a dark sky preserve is a special designation in Canada, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada administers it. And there's also an international dark sky area organization. So their goal is to promote awareness of the dark sky, the value of the dark sky, as well as to try to reduce light pollution. And light pollution is so prominent that we're not even aware of it because we haven't, most of us haven't experienced a really truly dark sky where the Milky Way is just vivid and spectacular in the sky. So these dark sky preserves aim to promote the dark sky. And we now know there's a lot of really important benefits to wildlife sustainability, to human health, to the landscape. So dark skies are really
important. My colleague and I are working on a new research project around dark sky tourism where designations of dark sky reserves actually draw people in and they want to observe the auroras, they want to see the meteor shower, they want to experience the Milky Way in all of its glory.

(08:38):
And there's a lot of benefits there for people, for wildlife as well as for local communities. For example, there are Aurora watches that pop up on an app and they tell you there's a good chance of seeing an Aurora tonight. And so people will go out to these dark Skype reserves. And there a few examples of the parking lots in the winter at Elk Island at Miquelon becoming full because word has gotten out and there's an amazing site to be seen. So there's some great benefits there. In the winter, it's great because the nights are so long you don't have to stay up till one in the morning to see the night sky. We've also looked at the Jasper Dark Sky Preserve. That's another one in Alberta, and they actually have a three week long festival celebrating the dark sky. So we've been looking at that about rural sustainability and changes over time and the outcomes for people. So there's a lot of good benefits from nature protection in this case, the night sky.

(09:31):
Yeah. And tell me more about that. What sort of questions are you asking in that research?

(09:35):
We're asking basic things about are you satisfied with your visit and what have you learned and what helps your learning, but also what are your attitudes towards dark sky? Do you think they need to be protected? And what are you willing to do to help protect the dark sky? So in short, people are really satisfied with their visits. They learn an awful lot. They have really strong attitudes towards dark sky protection, but they're a little bit hesitant about doing something personally to protect the next guy. And that requires a little extra investment.

(10:01):
What would that look like?

(10:03):
It could involve simply changing your outdoor lighting, changing the kinds of lights, making them scope down, encouraging your local municipality to change your policies around building codes. So all that's possible, and I think we have a lot of work to do there, but people, their attitudes are strong about it. So that's encouraging.

(10:20):
And I don't know if this is part of your research, but I also assume the dark sky is also good for the wildlife as well.

(10:28):
Absolutely, yeah. Many animals are especially adapted to thriving in the true night. And whether it's an owl hunting or small mammals foraging, that's where they make their living. And so as the light night sky is polluted with the lighting, they can't do as well. And that has implications for those individuals, but also their populations and over time the whole integrity of that ecosystem. So yeah, the night sky is important, and humans have lost touch with the truly dark sky. We can live 24 hours a day with some kind of light and we don't have to worry about it. But we have evolved in a circumstance where we needed to. And historically people have cherished the night sky, lived with it, thrived in it, and now we don't have that experience anymore.

(11:16):
And Glen, my understanding is at Miquelon, there's actually a research center too, right? Yeah. Tell me about that.

(11:21):
Yeah, the University of Alberta Augustana Campus has worked in collaboration with Alberta Parks and using a previously used housing site, we were able to build a brand new research station at Miquelon. So it's called the Augustana Miquelon Lake Research Station. And part of that, through the donation of Brian Hesje, we have the Hesje Observatory for astronomy. And it's a fabulous collaboration between parks and the
university and other donors, all really, really valuable whereby students and professors and researchers from abroad and students can all find a place to conduct research in parks. And we need to know more about the parks, of course, and these provide a great learning experience for students of all kinds. So the research station has a place to stay. It's got wifi, it's got a lab, a classroom, and now we have this astronomical observatory. So it's a state-of-the-art observatory.

(12:13):
You can program it to target certain areas of the sky. We've got great weather forecasting systems, we can predict when it's going to be viewable, and we've got staff people to support that experience so
students can now join into a dark sky event there as well as the public. And it's amazing experience. So I remember seeing the moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn for the first time, and it's kind of like a mind-blowing experience to think that it's all visible with my naked eye, not naked eye, but through the telescope. But also to hear historical stories and indigenous stories about the meaning of the constellations, and to recognize that this all happens in a dark sky reserve at Miquelon. Those are really rich experiences for students and visitors alike.

(13:01):
So I'd like to talk about your research a bit more specifically, Glen, we kind of touched on it a bit, but maybe you can just explain the research that you do.

(13:09):
So I teach in environmental science and I conduct research in this area of human nature interactions. And there's many ways that is expressed. I've been doing studies on ecotourism and birdwatching and whale watching, and lately I've been quite interested in environmental interpretation, environmental education, where people can go to join an event, a park interpreter, and of their own free will. It's not required, it's not part of a classroom, but it's a free choice kind of experience. And it happens all across the world. It happens across Canada, and it happens locally as well. So we've conducted a study over the last five years where we've looked at the outcomes of that interpretive experience. So you probably
remember going as a kid or as an adult too, on a guided hike or a outdoor dramatic theatrical presentation or gone into the visitor center to ask a few questions.

(14:01):
All those are part of the interpretive experience. And Mike, our research question was, what are the outcomes? What do people get out of it? And it turns out it is important and significant. We compared people who went to an interpreter program with those who didn't, and those who did attend an interpreter program had much greater satisfaction about their trips. They reported much greater learning about any aspect of the park, slightly stronger attitudes towards park-friendly activities, and a
slight change in behaviour towards park-friendly activities. They didn't change in their connection to place or their memories of the place, but we found that even when we talked to them a year later, that satisfaction learning was maintained and that idea of positive memories about their trip rang true to them. So that means that these interpretive experiences are a wise investment from the park manager's point of view.

(14:56):
They actually helped deliver really good visitor experiences. And that was important over the last few years because during the pandemic for health reasons, interpretation, which involved person-to-person kind of contact was cut back along with some different budgetary priorities. So if we had two years of very limited personal interpretation in our provincial parks, and that was restored two years ago, and our research was one bit of information that they could use to help justify that restoration. And so now we have a full suite of programs across the province and the visitors can really access that and really improve their experiences.

(15:33):
Yeah, no, it's good to know that it has that lasting impact as well. Yeah. And with your research, did it change some of the interpretation programs that are offered?

(15:40):
We're just working on that part of it. We analyzed the kind of program, the kind of interpreter, the kind of topic, even the size of the audience and the length of the program. And now we're doing that correlation with their satisfaction and learning in a nutshell. We haven't published this yet, but those large outdoor theater types of programs are really beneficial. There's a better return on these investment because there's a big crowd to one or two interpreters at the front. But anyway, people love
them. They're energetic, they're fun, they're engaging. There's audience involvement, there's singing, there's dancing and costumes, and they're just very entertaining. It's a form of edutainment where people learn lots by having fun. And we know that those two go together learning and having fun, but they also go together with changing attitudes and changing behaviours. And parks need a lot of supporters, and this is one way that they can gain those supporters. So if people have a positive feeling about their experience, they're more likely to be an advocate for parks into the future.

(16:43):
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I know you had a memory of when you were young seeing the theatrical
productions. Maybe tell me a bit about that.

(16:51):
Yeah, many years ago, this is perhaps in I'd say the mid-nineties, my family, including my two parents, my brother, two brothers and their children, and we all went to Kananaskis to William Watson
Lodge, and we went to an outdoor theater program at Elkwood Amphitheater, and the topic of the night was squirrel ecology. It's a topic that you wouldn't necessarily think that would be offered, but we went
to the program and we sat down in the back, we watched the interpreters work, the crowd learning about them, generating interest, asking questions, and these are wonderfully enthusiastic, charismatic
university students. And the program started and pretty soon we were all singing along the songs. They were dancing, they were involving kids to come up and take part in the program. And throughout the rest of the weekend, and for years afterwards, we sang a couple of those songs from that interpreter program.

(17:44):
So they lasted with us and they really resonated. A few years ago, Pam and I went to another interpretive program, and before the program started, they were playing background songs, one of which was the song that we had learned in that squirrel program years before. So we laughed and laughed and brought back so many great memories. So that's what park experiences can do. They can really create strong memories that connected to the place and that connection is so important for
developing an appreciation of that park. And those experiences as a child and as a teenager are one of the most important components of an adult becoming environmentally engaged. It can happen as an adult, but most of the research on adults engaged in environmentalism goes back to some childhood experience where they really connect to a place. It could be the family cabin, it could be that park camping experience, it could be a trip across Canada, but whatever. Those really help bond a person to
the place and help them want to learn more, and then they appreciate more about what that place has to offer, and then they're willing to be an advocate.

(18:47):
Just out of curiosity, I don't think it's part of your research, but how long have those live interpretation programs, how long have they been a thing in the Alberta parks?

(18:56):
Right. There's a long history outside of Canada, and in Canada began in BC and Ontario, but in Canada, in Alberta, they began in 1968 with the first interpreter hired at Cypress Hills Provincial Park. And there were other employees doing that kind of work, but this is the first one where they were hired to do the job. And so that slowly evolved and grew over time. And Alberta now has a really strong reputation for really engaging interpretation program. Many of the areas of Alberta offer outdoor
theater, and so there's a strong emphasis on that. But also they hire people who are really knowledgeable, passionate. They don't have to be singers and dancers, but dancer. They can be, and they're used in that way. But people from across the country now look to Alberta as one of those leaders, and Alberta's a strong player in environmental education and interpretation across the country.

(19:55):
Yeah, I guess was there any other element of your research that you wanted to share that's applicable to our topic?

(20:00):
Yeah, I'll just refer to another research project that we took part in. This was led by Chris Lemu from Wilford Lau University, and we joined in, it was a study of what kind of benefits do visitors get out of their visits to provincial parks. And so we looked at four parks, including Miquelon and Kananaskis and dinosaur, and we asked them what kind of health and wellbeing benefits are they both expecting and did you receive from their visits to the parks? And it was tremendous. So people really highlighted the psychological well-being benefits. They highlighted the physical well-being benefits and social wellbeing benefits, and the follow-up question, did you receive any of those benefits we're almost matching, so
people like 85%, 90% people were those benefits and almost similar numbers received those benefits. So what that says is that these parks have, it just reinforces the observations that we had about people going to these places during the pandemic, for example, people needed to get outside, they needed to socialize, they needed to have some fresh air, they needed to have a place of quiet contemplation and so on. And so they serve a really important purpose, and we need more of them. We need more opportunities. We need to expand our system. And there are some international commitments that Canada has made and Alberta has made that we need to follow through on. For example, I think Alberta
has about 12% of its land base designated in protection, and there's a commitment to achieve 17% in short order, as well as moving beyond. There's a goal to achieve 30% by the year 2030, and that's a very
short time period away.

(21:38):
Yeah, that's quite a big jump. How do you feel about that?

(21:42):
Yeah, well, we need to make more rapid progress. We need to get people excited to push their politicians and the bureaucracy towards that goal. The benefits that parks provide, of course, are all on this visitor front, but the benefits are important for protecting biodiversity and for alleviating the climate crisis. So these two big other crises facing US parks can play a really important role in.

(22:05):
And it seems like you've demonstrated not only just the ecological benefits, but like you said, the benefits to residents themselves and how that could be an part of the equation as far as should we keep parks or expand parks? I think it sounds like the more that we can make that known, the better, right?

(22:23):
Yeah. So the people living near the parks have the opportunity to benefit by being visitors, but also they benefit by virtue of people, the other visitors coming, spending money buying local products. And the
wise visitor would try to support that because the local residents are really the stewards of those places or can contribute well to the stewardship of those places. My master's project on the value of
birdwatching really demonstrated that people come to point Peele in southern Ontario for the month of May when the bird migration's on and they spend an awful lot of money. These are well-healed people
coming from far away places, spending money on restaurants and hotels and rental cars and souvenirs. And the local community really benefits. And if they benefit, that means they can see a reason for
protecting those places and then take action towards that. If the local protected area doesn't have that attraction, they will not benefit anymore economically. So they can be important part of rural sustainability.

(23:20):
The rural sustainability thing really interests me. Maybe kind of help me define what that actually looks like. Rural sustainability, is it mostly just those protected areas and nature, or what does that look like?

(23:29):
No. Yeah, nature protection happens outside of protected areas too. You can imagine, well, in East Central Alberta, there's a big industry around waterfowl hunting. And so the resource are the migratory geese and ducks that fly through. And the places that these birds stop at need attention. And without that, the hunters wouldn't come and spend their money and support guides and outfitters and hotels and restaurants. So that kind of resources, especially one, the dark ski is another one. Indigenous sites, for example, that people are really interested in need special protection and care and appreciation of the local customs and histories. So we need to think about those as the resource that keeps on giving. But it can't keep on giving unless we maintain it for the long term. So we need to think about sustainability in that long term as well as pay attention to the other components of sustainability, which I think you might be alluding to, where we need to think about the people and the history and customs living in an area.

(24:29):
They need to think about the flow of money through an area. So buying locally, supporting local entrepreneurs rather than staying at the multinational hotel chain instead. So all those together, the economic side, the environmental side and the social side, all need consideration when we think about rural communities and in Alberta, we're seeing a big need for supporting rural communities because the proportions of people living rural are declining. And opportunities to maintain a rural lifestyle are few and far between. So if it comes from, in this case, tourism from the natural environment, that's one option. It can come from other ways of course, but that's one where the environment and rural sustainability can support each other, have a synergy.

(25:11):
I Guess, Glen, do you like, I'm curious maybe, I know with your research you are getting people's perceptions on how they feel about the parks and the benefits. Do you have any maybe personal stories of people you've interacted with in your research that you can think of that stand out for you? Any stories of people who have been particularly impacted by their visit to the park?

(25:34):
I think I've one administrator in our local region who has a slogan about, he says Parks need people and people need parks and parks need people, because parks have varying levels of political attention,
prioritization, budgets, and the list goes on at the same time. People need parks for all these benefits that we've been talking about. We're a much richer society if we have those benefits available. The psychological, the wellbeing, the emotional, the social, physical benefits, and in terms of experiences, they can be life-changing. There have been examples of the young kid attending an interpreter program and saying, that's what I want to be. I want to be a wildlife biologist when I grow up. Or they might return home after visit to the park to say, that was an enriching experience, let's go again next year. It could be as simple as that. Or it could be an entrepreneur saying, I want to support this. I'm going to
donate a million dollars to expanding this park or whatever. So anyway, the list goes on. Parks can really impact people in a lot of different ways. We just don't know when and where that will occur. So we have to be ready and available to support them.

(26:45):
And I guess if we've kind of touched on it as we've been chatting, but if people want to protect their parks, what do you recommend that they do?

(26:54):
I would say the first and most important is to go to them, visit them, experience them, and tell your friends and neighbours about the places that they have nearby they can go to. That's really important.
They need to be jazzed about parks and they have a lot to contribute. Secondly, be part of the support movement for parks. There are many organizations in Alberta, including the Canadian Parks and
Wilderness Society, Alberta Wilderness Association, nature Alberta. There are many local ones as well, and they all do really good work on our behalf. So a few dollars or volunteer hours for those kinds of
groups are really well spent. They can really double, triple, and quadruple in impact down the road. These are well-educated, insightful people working for them, and they can really work on our behalf towards protecting our park system. And to learn about these places, we need to be anticipating what should happen in the future. New parks, fixing problems, changing budgetary priorities, voting strategically, all those are important parts of the citizen experience. We need to be involved. We can't just sort of take it for granted there. If we do that, we might lose out.

(28:03):
Because I'm looking at kind of the heritage, some of the history around the parks. Why do you feel that that's important to talk about when we're looking at protecting and preserving these spaces?

(28:13):
Yeah, our places serve a lot of roles in society, and one of them is that historical role. It's kind of like the museum in town. And these museums capture what was here in many different ways, and it could be the Wildlife Museum or the Human History Museum. They capture and represent a stage of our history that we need to remember. Things change over time, of course, and we can't live in the past, but we want to know and be aware of and appreciate the past. One of my former supervisors, Phil Dearden, and wrote an article about the kinds of roles that parks play in the community. So the bank role, the museum role, the zoo role, where you can see wildlife readily, and these are all important, and a community would be poorer if we didn't have those working in our community. And parks can play many of those roles

(29:03):
Next time on Remembering Alberta Parks. I have a conversation around conservation in Kananaskis.

(29:11):
It's prime time again to really look at Kananaskis and look at the history, learn from that, go back to those concept of what the highest value of that region is, and then start to look forward and say, how do we
manage this place to make sure that we are protecting those key values? And that is a place that people can safely and sustainably access nature.

(29:36):
In Over My Head's, Remembering Alberta Parks was produced by Michael Bartz with production assistance from Shinichi Hara. Special thanks to all the guests who gave generously of their time and expertise.

(29:45):
I'm trying to save the planet, oh will someone please save me?

(29:56):
This season was made possible with support from the government of Alberta's Heritage Preservation Partnership Program, and Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Southern Alberta.