The Moraine Lake parking lot used to fill up completely before six o’clock on a summer morning during the busiest time of year. Cars lined up on the entrance road, headlights in the dark, and drivers trying to find a spot before the lot’s capacity was reached. The glacially turquoise Moraine Lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, which is arguably the most photographed view in the Canadian Rockies, attracted so many people that the parking infrastructure appeared to have been built for a different age. It had been, in a way. When Banff National Park was founded in 1885, it was difficult to get visitors there at all.
Its current issue is nearly the exact opposite. Banff has had a more than 35 percent increase in visitors over the last ten years, reaching a record 4.5 million in a single year. That trend was accelerated by the federal government’s Canada Strong Pass, which provided free access to national parks as part of a national celebration. Free admission to one of the most breathtaking locations on the continent attracted more visitors, as one might anticipate. The park’s natural system, animals, and infrastructure were unprepared for what that appeared to be in scale.
In consequence, Parks Canada has completely closed the Moraine Lake road to private automobiles. After trial limitations shown that it was the only method to control traffic on a small mountain road that could not handle the volume, the decision was made permanently. Now, a park-and-ride facility down the valley provides shuttle bus service to the lake. Compared to the car-access period, visitors now prepare ahead, wait longer, and arrive more thoughtfully. There is less noise in the lake itself. There is less traffic in the road’s wildlife corridor. There is a legitimate dispute about whether the shuttle system offers a better guest experience than driving in, but there is a strong environmental argument in favor of the move.
Although Moraine Lake is the most obvious example, the park as a whole has seen modifications in access management. One of the most oversubscribed permits in the Canadian national park system is still for Lake O’Hara, a wilderness location that has traditionally used a reservation system because of its sensitivity. At the other end of the accessibility spectrum, Lake Louise is a parking lot that used to handle a lot of automobile traffic. To deter drive-through visitors and encourage those who plan to spend actual time in the area, there have been large fee hikes. The regional bus system that serves the Banff townsite and its environs, Roam Public Transit, has been aggressively marketed as an alternative to relying solely on cars in the park.
All of this is caused by distinct and well-documented ecological stresses. Bears, wolves, and elk are frequently hit by cars on the Trans-Canada Highway and access roads, making wildlife deaths on park roads a long-standing problem in Banff. There will be more cars in animal corridors when there are more people, which will increase friction between the two groups that the park is meant to serve. Before Parks Canada’s policy changed to reflect the gravity of the warnings, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society had been formally voicing similar concerns for a number of years.
What Banff is navigating is part of a larger conversation. The idea behind the creation of Canada’s national parks was that all Canadians should be able to visit them. In order to manage the tension between that ideal and the ecological requirement to prevent abuse of the land, it is necessary to acknowledge that unlimited access is no longer consistent with large-scale preservation. Other parks, such as Yosemite, Fiordland in New Zealand, and the most popular locations in Iceland, have undergone similar calculations. Banff is currently resolving it in public, using a management strategy that entails genuine inconvenience and genuine opposition from some tourists who would have preferred things to remain the same.
It is actually unclear if the current actions will be enough to stabilize the ecological situation in the long run. A mountain ecology is put under pressure by 4.5 million visitors, even those who are well-managed. The shuttle buses cut down on traffic, but they don’t cut down on passengers. The park’s administrators are now formally involved with the issue of how many tourists a location like Banff can sustainably handle, as well as who gets to make that decision, unlike ten years ago.
