The Joffre Lakes Visitor-Use Strategy was Developed by B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, in conjunction with the Lil’wat and N’Quatqua Nations, to manage the growing number of visitors to the park and protect its natural and cultural features.
The Strategy proposes to limit daily visitation to the park through free day-use passes, increase parking from 250 to 350 cars and add washrooms, and maintain backcountry tent pads (through a reservations system). The complete strategy can be viewed here:
Highlights include:
• Continuing the First Nations Park Stewards Program, first introduced in 2019.
• Protecting important habitat for plants and wildlife through strategies like continuing the dog ban, increasing bear caches, and rehabilitating illicit trails.
• Addressing safety concerns with tactics like keeping campsites closed during the winter, enforcing no parking zones, and creating an emergency response plan.
• Ensuring sustainable use at the park by maintaining some winter parking and possibly developing facilities and trails to disperse visitor use.
• Managing visitation by establishing a park capacity, exploring day-use permits for commercial and non-commercial visitors, and enforcing camping reservations for the backcountry campground.
• Fostering appreciation for and knowledge of the park with messaging.
• Understanding visitor trends.
• Managing the park in a financially sustainable way.
Community members and stakeholders are invited to participate in the planning process by completing a short 10 min survey before April 4: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HVGCX3C
It offers an opportunity for you to share:
· your values and concerns about the park,
· your level of support for proposed management actions, and
· your feedback on the content within the draft Visitor Use Management Strategy.
You’ll need to have reviewed the Plan before being able to respond to the questions. It’s 6 pages and easy to digest:
The Wellness Almanac 