Juno News - July 27, 2024


“This was TOTALLY preventable” - hunter responds to Jasper fires


Episode Stats

Length

30 minutes

Words per Minute

198.44847

Word Count

6,003

Sentence Count

3

Misogynist Sentences

1


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 nearly half of the historic village of jasper burned to a crisp overnight on wednesday
00:00:14.920 firefighters worked throughout the day as fires hummed on the town's edge but were forced to
00:00:20.280 retreat when the wind suddenly picked up and the fires entered to town burning the west end of much
00:00:25.480 of jasper village now wildfires aren't new to alberta but they seem to be getting worse every
00:00:31.780 year and that has only led to further division with questions like who's to blame the province
00:00:37.780 or the federal government is this the result of climate change or improper fire and forest
00:00:44.080 management joining me to discuss today is one very popular ex-user known as marty up north
00:00:50.480 his full name is marty belanger marty thank you so much for joining us today to discuss
00:00:55.140 hey rachel happy to be here so one of the reasons why i wanted to have you specifically on the show
00:01:01.400 is because i know you spend a ton of time in the woods you're always posting some of your exciting
00:01:06.280 excursions going out for those long camping trips so you are someone who actually knows the woods and
00:01:11.540 the forest really well i know a lot of people like to comment on things but i think it adds a little
00:01:15.580 bit of expertise when someone actually spends time out there and knows what they're talking about if i
00:01:20.740 was going to go for a camping trip i'd probably want to bring you along just to make sure that i don't
00:01:24.340 get eaten by a bear or something but uh why don't you just start by explaining some of your experience
00:01:29.800 with the audience what you've observed and how much time you spend out in the woods in places like jasper
00:01:34.600 over the past number of years
00:01:35.980 yeah sure so actually online i'm known as marty up north i've been known as marty up north for
00:01:42.900 20 years let's say and um i spent i spent a good 25 years of my adult life working on just outside of jasper i
00:01:53.460 lived in towns like edson and fox creek and grand prairie and and when you live up north you know the
00:01:59.560 wilderness is all around us and so and and you you become you know if you want to enjoy living up north you have to enjoy the wilderness
00:02:07.160 whether it's hiking fishing things like that and particularly one of my passions is is hiking you know
00:02:13.220 you said camping and and i don't i i camp but i hike i go into the back country into the wilderness
00:02:19.260 and i go far from the main roads and jasper you know i i had a tweet the other day so what's happening
00:02:26.400 in jasper for me right now is devastating i mean it's heartbreaking because it's it's uh it it is my
00:02:31.640 playground and it is a place that's near and dear to me and to a lot of albertans and people around
00:02:36.620 the world and um so i i i spend a lot of time in the wilderness in jasper in particular i mean jasper
00:02:45.160 has about 1600 kilometers of backcountry trails like historic trails that were established by fur traders
00:02:51.380 and and and hardly a video of mine like i've probably published 50 videos of just me hiking in the
00:02:59.160 backcountry and in almost every video there's a moment where i pause and i turn the camera and i
00:03:04.220 explain something to people something that i'm witnessing and one of the topics that often comes
00:03:09.440 up while i was hiking is the mismanagement of the forest you know people for instance would ask me like
00:03:13.920 do you see animals on your hikes i'm like oh you you never see animals because the forests are not
00:03:19.900 natural anymore and and the food that the animals want is not there you know i i'd turn the camera
00:03:25.980 around and show old trees that are dying or trees that have been infested by beetles or you know
00:03:31.740 things like that so you know that that's the that's that was the basis of my tweet yesterday when i was
00:03:37.420 unhappy is that unfortunately i think what happened in jasper was completely preventable well it's always
00:03:42.680 nice to have a real expert join us and not someone who's sort of like an academia expert where they
00:03:46.800 just read about things and never go try anything for themselves i know i'm certainly tired of those types
00:03:51.300 of experts my audience is too you spoke a little bit about the devastation in jasper for my audience
00:03:56.280 who might not have seen much of those clips yet we have a clip here we're going to show you guys
00:04:00.500 just so you can get a sense of just exactly how damaging that fire was and how much of the town
00:04:06.820 burned out take a look at this next clip okay this is not tough with the with the can we may need one
00:04:14.460 or two so i when once i know i'll i'll let you know okay sounds good okay thank you thank you
00:04:22.020 what about the nodwell perm
00:04:29.940 the nodwell goes down to the petrol can and just wait for there
00:04:37.620 all right i'm on my way yeah that uh there's another water truck parked there i think
00:04:45.860 when you hear the individual who is recording that video just say
00:05:16.100 that was mom and dad's house you know that just really kind of hits home the impact of the fact
00:05:20.260 that someone lived there and you know there all those memories have been burned all their belongings
00:05:25.700 have been burned down just absolutely devastating not to mention just the fact that jasper was such
00:05:30.020 a historic village you even mentioned going hiking along some of the fur trails i am really kicking
00:05:34.260 myself you know i've lived in alberta for about two years just over two years and i never made it up
00:05:37.940 to jasper so certainly disappointing and i'm going to make every effort to go as soon as i can but i mean
00:05:43.060 you you said you spent a lot of time there it's sort of your playground how did you feel when you
00:05:47.300 got your first the first few images came through and you realized exactly how how damaged jasper was
00:05:53.060 going to be from these wildfires on wednesday well my my first reaction of course is is was sorrow like
00:05:59.620 i'm upset you know i'm sad about it but then my it quickly turned to sort of anger because it's
00:06:06.020 like i said it was preventable to me it was preventable um especially in light of the fact
00:06:11.700 that here in alberta i mean we had a major forest fire like this that damaged you know a good portion
00:06:16.340 of slave lake before you came to alberta slave lake got damaged fort mcmurray got damaged we had we've
00:06:22.260 had little villages like hondo and smith get damaged but you know we've had two significant ones so
00:06:27.540 we should have learned a few lessons from from those ones so yeah it it it quickly goes from sadness to
00:06:34.260 anger when i look at those pictures and relief and there's a bit of relief because luckily a good
00:06:40.020 chunk of the city or the town of jasper survived because boy the way jasper is situated it's in a
00:06:45.940 valley it's in the athabasca valley with big mountains on both sides so it's kind of like
00:06:50.260 it's trapped right there's only one way in and one way out and a fire coming down that valley could
00:06:56.420 absolutely have done way worse than what it did so kudos to the guys who fought the structural fires
00:07:02.500 in town you've said now a couple times that this was preventable and i want to dig into that a
00:07:07.700 little bit deeper so what do you think exactly the federal government did wrong to not allow for this
00:07:14.180 to be contained earlier or to be maybe entirely avoided i know something that's come up so much
00:07:18.500 since i've moved to alberta when we're talking about wildfires is that they are not doing enough
00:07:22.260 controlled burns to get rid of some of the dead wood that we see everywhere and it just allows fires
00:07:28.340 to grow and grow and grow when they do occur so why don't you just start by addressing that do you
00:07:31.940 think we need to have more controlled burns in areas where maybe some pine beetles have come through
00:07:36.900 and absolutely ravaged especially in jasper you know there was i was reading reports that maybe 98
00:07:42.820 of of of some trees in jasper had been infected by pine bills and we actually have some images we can
00:07:48.100 throw up you can just see the the mountains in jasper are covered with red which shows that they've
00:07:52.660 been totally infested with these pine beetles is that one of the things that you've noticed
00:07:56.660 you you you just gave a lesson in forest management 101 you know you know the average person can see
00:08:03.540 it right everybody who lives in alberta especially calgary edmonton who drives through the rockies we
00:08:08.420 all see those red trees on the side of the hill that have been uh sometimes they're they're the
00:08:13.780 they're damaged because of an earlier forest fire but a lot of times they're damaged by a pine beetle
00:08:18.180 and you know the pine beetle um the pine beetle only attacks mature pine trees well actually the pine
00:08:24.500 beetle will attack all the trees the all the pine trees but the mature trees it's like an old person
00:08:30.020 who gets the flu have a hard time fighting the pine beetle and in the effort of fighting how a tree
00:08:35.940 fights the pine beetle is it produces sap and it tries to eject the pine beetle and an old tree produces
00:08:41.620 so much sap that it kills itself trying to fight off the infestation a young tree fights it off easily
00:08:48.340 so that's what happens so the trees in a lot of our areas first of all the trees are getting too old so
00:08:53.140 we're allowing trees to get too old and and we should you know if we if we don't harvest those
00:08:59.620 trees then nature takes over and either the pine beetle will kill them or a fire will come along
00:09:04.500 or the wind will knock them down so we're allowing trees to get too old which is a problem right
00:09:09.060 everybody has this vision of oh we love old growth forests and but when you think old growth you're
00:09:14.100 imagining whatever what you're seeing in british columbia like the big the big redwoods and sequoias but
00:09:20.260 here in alberta old growth means a tree that's 120 years old so it needs to be harvested otherwise
00:09:25.140 nature will take care of itself so in and in the parks they're stuck they don't want to harvest
00:09:31.860 so they kind of have to let nature take care of itself which ends up being the fire the devastating
00:09:37.380 fire and if they're going to take that approach and let the fires go in well so one of the ways they
00:09:43.540 do it is yes is the control burn so historically you can go you know that the trees are dead you know
00:09:48.340 they're going to get invaded by the pine beetles but you at least remove a lot of the other fuel
00:09:52.260 that's in the area the stuff on the ground so we we don't do enough control burns that's i i think we
00:09:57.780 don't do enough control burns i don't think we do enough harvesting we're afraid to harvest trees in
00:10:03.060 the national parks and and then the other thing we are terrible at doing in our parks is is the mix of
00:10:09.540 the forest right and so when you look at our forest they they're mostly made up nowadays of spruce and um
00:10:18.100 and pines the the coniferous coniferous trees and what we need more of are the the the less
00:10:26.580 commercially valuable trees like the poplars and the aspens but we go out of our way to prevent
00:10:31.860 those from growing so you know there's a lot of mismanagement in that sense when it comes to us not
00:10:38.180 doing enough of those controlled burns that seems like it would alleviate a lot of the initial harm why
00:10:42.980 do you think we're not doing them anymore um a couple of things i mean some of it is just
00:10:48.820 bureaucracy the the darn bureaucracy of the federal government because the parks in this case are
00:10:53.620 managed by the federal government and and you know even when it comes to control burn they're they're
00:10:59.220 arguing among themselves as to where it should be done for what reason at what time they're also scared
00:11:05.540 now i mean they they they've lost the expertise of of managing these control burns because they've had
00:11:10.100 several control burns in the last decade sort of get out of hand on them so so they're nervous
00:11:16.020 they're in a catch-22 they want to do the right thing but they're kind of scared to do the right
00:11:20.900 thing or unable to do the right thing there was some debate online as to you know whose fault this
00:11:26.260 was a lot of people pointing blame at daniel smith's united conservative party government other people
00:11:30.580 pointing to the federal government now jasper national park it says it right there in the name it is a
00:11:35.300 national park it does fall under the purview of parks canada which is a federal entity you know
00:11:40.500 fairly self-explanatory do you think that this is something that maybe we would have better success
00:11:46.660 in if the provincial government had more of a say in what was going on in the parks or maybe even
00:11:52.260 attempted to take it over entirely as some people have suggested they should do that's an interesting
00:11:57.940 question that no i think i think you know let's say we transferred jasper over to the provincial
00:12:02.020 government tomorrow we we probably end up with a similar situation i mean jasper and banff you
00:12:07.780 know they're they're struggling the other struggle with those two places with all the national parks is
00:12:12.100 they they they have a mandate on one side of protecting a piece of an ecosystem for future
00:12:17.380 generations but on the other side they're also trying to they recognize it's touristy and there's
00:12:22.020 money to be made and so i think i think um now so that balance between protecting and tourism
00:12:29.860 might be better handled by the provincial government who's closer because i mean one of the other
00:12:34.420 problems you know of course is distance right ottawa technically manages the provincial the the the
00:12:39.780 national parks while ottawa bureaucrats in ottawa are a long ways away from from banff and jasper so
00:12:46.420 there'd be some improvements perhaps but there'd also be some of the same problems i think so you
00:12:50.660 think that the united conservative party government or the alberta government more generally speaking
00:12:55.380 wouldn't be necessarily quick to do those controlled burns that you're saying are so necessary
00:12:59.780 partly because tourism you think maybe the controlled burns would sort of scare off tourists
00:13:03.620 for those spring months when they typically look to do them or you just think bureaucrats are going to
00:13:07.780 get in the way once again uh combination of both yeah i mean i i would hope i actually i mean if
00:13:14.740 i think about it i would hope that if you transferred the management of the parks and that's a possibility
00:13:19.940 actually the parks could stay as as federal entities managed by uh the local experts the
00:13:26.260 provincial government um i i would like to think that we have more expertise in managing force than
00:13:32.100 the federal government so yeah actually fundamentally i would hope that alberta can do a better job
00:13:36.660 whether it's the ucp or the ndp yeah you know i tend to be of the mindset that whenever something is
00:13:41.860 more local you tend to get a better response because the people who are running it just know the issue a
00:13:46.500 little bit better it's like you know people are always paying so close attention to federal
00:13:49.860 politics but you should actually pay closer attention to your local government because they
00:13:53.060 tend to impact your direct life most often living in calgary i can say that firsthand we have one of
00:13:58.980 the worst governments and they ruined everyone's summer with these water restrictions so you know
00:14:03.780 case in point but when we're actually looking at danielle smith and her government you know a lot of
00:14:08.100 people were pointing fingers at her saying this is your fault you haven't been taking climate change
00:14:12.500 seriously what do you make of all that no that i i saw those posts i mean first of all they're they're
00:14:20.020 they're they're mistake they they forget the fact that danielle only came into power you know a year ago
00:14:25.780 so they're blaming her for cuts and things that happened in in 2021 2022 and and i've i've i familiarize
00:14:33.220 myself with the budget i mean that's something i look at closely and i can say for a fact that danielle
00:14:38.580 has increased the firefighting budget in the province she she she learned from fort mcmurray
00:14:43.940 she learned from from uh slave lake and when she came into power she's made the necessary adjustments
00:14:50.100 in fact up until this fire in jasper the whole the whole trend of the number of fires in alberta and
00:14:57.060 the size of the fires and the acreage loss was on a perfectly downward trajectory like everything was
00:15:02.260 looking good this you know we just went through a bad period of of uh lightning strikes up north so
00:15:07.940 up in the grand prairie area and places like that but we're we're on trend for bringing things under
00:15:13.220 control def in in fact when you look at the long-term trends um there's less fires than there used to be
00:15:20.180 in the past and then we're burning less acreage so you know a lot of people like to point out to last
00:15:25.620 year i think last year was just a an outlier or or something more nefarious i mean yeah there was a lot
00:15:31.220 of land that was burned last year i have my theories on that yeah i think a lot of people
00:15:36.100 were concerned that those were intentionally lit and i know that the premier had said they had hired
00:15:40.260 investigators to look into those or at least that they were human caused at best but uh it was
00:15:46.020 definitely a very smoky summer last year and i know that albertans are kind of getting tired of the
00:15:50.100 smoky summers because it's winter for so much of the year finally we have a little warm weather and then
00:15:54.340 you know you don't want to bring the kids outside it's not good for their lungs but just because you
00:15:58.100 you brought it up you know you brought up the issue of danielle smith being attacked for for
00:16:02.020 raising for lowering the firefighting budget she was actually asked about this at a press conference
00:16:06.020 this week we're going to play that for you guys now just because i know some of my audience might
00:16:08.980 have seen a little bit about this and i just wanted to set the record straight so here's danielle
00:16:12.900 smith being asked about whether she lowered the firefighting budget take a listen hello premier
00:16:17.940 smith thank you for taking my question so your government over the last few years has made various cuts to
00:16:24.660 alberta's wildfire fighting budget do you regret making those cuts now why or why not well look i
00:16:31.780 mean my first uh firefighting season was last year and uh what we did in response to that was we increased
00:16:39.540 the the firefighting budget by 50 percent in uh 20 23 4 it was a hundred point four million dollars
00:16:47.380 in 24 25 we increased it to 155.4 million and that's the highest it's ever been um the and there's
00:16:54.500 a reason for that is is that uh we we knew that we needed to uh get some of the equipment and change
00:16:59.940 some of the practices as minister lowen had mentioned we uh declared the start of forest fire season early
00:17:06.180 we had all of our personnel hired and in place by april 15th which is uh may 15th by may 15th um
00:17:13.380 and uh in addition to that because of the amount of uh damage that we saw last year when i when i first
00:17:20.580 came in we had a billion dollar contingency um my first budget we increased that to a 1.5 billion
00:17:27.060 dollar contingency and this budget we increased to a 2 billion dollar contingency so there is no limit
00:17:33.940 to the amount of money that we will spend to make sure that we have the resources that we need and to make
00:17:38.580 sure that uh we have the money available to assist with the with the recovery so i would say that
00:17:44.260 we've looked at the lessons of the past and and we we made the uh the appropriate amount of uh of
00:17:51.060 investment in this budget here so just because i know how my audience is going to react to that clip
00:17:56.420 i just want to set the record straight that actually wasn't a mainstream media reporter asking
00:18:00.340 that question that was actually a western standard reporter and you know i don't blame him it was
00:18:04.340 probably one of those situations where you see a narrative trending on xo danielle smith cut the
00:18:09.060 firefighting budget and then look what happened and sometimes you know you ask a question without
00:18:13.460 digging into it too deep i myself am guilty of that so no shade to that reporter we all make those
00:18:18.820 mistakes at times but you know when danielle smith is talking we actually increase the budget because
00:18:23.700 we saw what happened last year and we want to put an end to essentially not having enough money and
00:18:28.100 she talked about the investments that she's making are we seeing that same level of investment from
00:18:33.220 the federal government who actually runs our national parks like jasper marty oh i knew you
00:18:38.020 were going there no we're not i mean can you imagine if stephen gilbo was on stage the number of
00:18:43.220 questions i could ask him right like you promised us i'm sure there's clips on us he promised whatever
00:18:48.980 or maybe not gilbo but somebody promised water bombers we haven't bought a new water bomber in in in
00:18:54.500 canada and in in the last five or six years um there's definitely clips of of mp standing up in the
00:19:01.220 house of commons asking the environment minister whether it's gilbo or his predecessor uh mckenna
00:19:07.220 like you know the mp for yellowhead or not yellowhead but for jasper saying hey you know we have a
00:19:13.300 problem and and so the and and there is an old clip i think it is mckenna saying oh jasper's our top
00:19:19.860 priority i mean there's we can pull document after document after document of of reports that were
00:19:26.260 published about you know expressing problems in jasper and how this was just a you know uh a
00:19:32.660 disaster waiting to happen so and and i want to go back to one quick thing right we we talk about
00:19:38.260 jasper and jasper as a as a national park is a huge area but the town of jasper also has the same name
00:19:45.460 right the town of j and so we talk about them in the same sentence but they are a little bit separate
00:19:51.140 you know you asked about control burns like the control burns that the park wants to do
00:19:55.540 are like in some of the far away areas and i like and nobody like that's fine if they want to go do
00:20:00.580 a little control burn in some far away area and it doesn't work perfectly that's okay but the the town
00:20:06.100 of jasper itself was mismanaged like you know that there's no excuse for that i mean a town is
00:20:12.100 surrounded by trees where where where you know everybody was screaming i mean as another example like
00:20:18.260 the the you know people went golfing in jasper you could go golfing in jasper and you could see these
00:20:23.220 pine trees that were dead on the golf course and then you'd ask the the golf course superintendent
00:20:29.380 like what do you hey larry when you're going to get rid of these trees and he would literally shrug
00:20:33.220 and go ah it's too much paperwork right i mean i even published i i went and found the forms online
00:20:38.020 just to cut a tree on your property in jasper a dead tree was a two-page form application form that
00:20:44.100 required like an arborist to sign off and blah blah blah blah blah so the bureau the bureaucracy in
00:20:50.100 the town of jasper failed miserably honestly nothing boils my blood more than talking about bureaucracy
00:20:58.500 my husband and i are in the process of hopefully purchasing a home and it's just like all the
00:21:02.820 paperwork and everyone who needs to get their little cut just because you want to buy a home it's like
00:21:06.980 how is this what we've dissolved into in a country that when you want to make an agreement with another
00:21:11.060 person to purchase a home there's like a million jumps you have to hoop through and everyone gets
00:21:14.500 you know to take their little slice out of the process like it's absolutely infuriating to me
00:21:18.660 and just yeah imagine being in jasper you've got a dead tree in the back of your and you can't cut it
00:21:22.420 down it's absolutely stunning so when you're saying that the town of jasper itself was mismanaged
00:21:27.220 you're saying that there was dead trees all surrounding the the site of the town itself there's dead trees
00:21:33.140 everywhere on the golf course another problem was that the there there were there were dead trees and
00:21:38.900 there were no trees the proper trees like i said the proper trees that you want in town in the mix
00:21:44.980 are the poplars and the um and and the aspen because they stop fire from moving like when in
00:21:52.340 fort mcmurray when the fire was coming down it stopped at the river where there was these big aspen
00:21:57.460 groves but and and aspens serve two purposes they happen to be a good food and they stop fires because of
00:22:04.580 the way they're shaped and the aspens lose their leaves in the in the winter which allows the
00:22:10.900 moisture to really hit the ground anyways you know so so jasper had no trees and whatever little trees
00:22:16.500 they had were completely destroyed because they allow the elk and everybody loves the elk you know
00:22:21.940 the elk are walking around town but again like push the elk out into the valleys and somewhere away
00:22:27.780 from the main town where the tourists could still go see them and then do and and keep focused on
00:22:33.060 so so yeah so managers in in town lost their focus we see that all the time right i mean
00:22:39.780 i said it this morning somebody in town in jasper's primary job was to keep the town safe and they
00:22:44.900 failed yeah and i mean i i suspect that probably no one's no one's head will be on the chopping block
00:22:50.420 for this so it seems to happen time and time again while we're still on the topic of sort of forest
00:22:55.300 management practices you posted something about cut lines that had been filled and and wrecked let's like
00:23:01.220 we have a clip of that now let's just play that clip and then you can explain to all of us what
00:23:04.900 we're really what we're seeing there and what the issue was of the government coming in and cutting
00:23:08.820 down forest to block those cut lines let's play that next clip now well that's a cut line and the
00:23:15.860 government came in here the alberta government came in here and did this insane destruction because
00:23:25.220 they don't want us using these cut lines for any purpose
00:23:31.300 so they do this they knock down trees on freaking believable
00:23:36.580 like this is a major cut line that we used to quad down there and somehow or other they think that
00:23:50.020 plugging one cut line like this is going to save caribou or i don't know what they're thinking but
00:24:06.580 well government workers drinking beer
00:24:24.740 so they just literally dug it all up knocked down trees put holes everywhere so we can't use it
00:24:31.140 on our atvs we can't hunt okay marty so explain to me what are cut lines used for and explain as well
00:24:37.140 a little of your frustration for why they were cut down is it simply because you were no longer able
00:24:41.140 to access those roots on your atv or is there something deeper going on there yeah so i so i
00:24:46.900 actually i personally filmed that that's me talking i filmed that three weeks ago um i was heading up
00:24:51.700 north this is in the grand cache area which is north of jasper and it's in crown land big big crown
00:24:58.180 land big giant force and i hunt there i've been hunting there for 30 years so we were actually
00:25:03.220 heading into our hunting camp to set up our camp so we can use it in august and september and everywhere
00:25:08.740 we were turning we were blocked all these cut lines have been rolled over so for the viewers cut lines
00:25:15.780 typically are um were cut in the 1960s they're straight lines that cut across the land sometimes
00:25:23.780 they're on uh and and they were used for seismic activity that we you you know they would send
00:25:28.260 equipment down there sort of like do the ultrasounds and find out where the oil might be buried in the
00:25:33.700 ground so these cut lines are historic they've existed since the 1960s and for for backcountry people
00:25:40.100 like myself and horsemen and whatnot they become sort of little back road highways and um and and so and
00:25:48.260 they're all over the province and it allows amazing access to the forest like and and a cut line is a
00:25:53.300 thin little cut line so when you look at the amount of land taken off because of the cut line it's
00:26:00.260 minuscule so they're useful for us they're useful for hunters campers all sorts of people and i found
00:26:06.900 out why they were doing this in the area where we are this is a pilot project and they're trying to protect
00:26:12.740 some caribou so apparently and i've never seen them in the area in 35 years of hunting there but
00:26:17.780 apparently there's a small herd of caribou in there and they want to protect the caribou
00:26:22.180 by eliminating the access it's a pilot project i don't know who came up with this idea or how it's
00:26:28.100 going to work but we found out that it was like a five million dollar contract that was tendered last
00:26:33.540 year to somebody and they went in there and and there are viewers who question me they said oh no that's
00:26:38.260 you know that's a deadfall from the wind blowing it down because they they saw the root balls no they
00:26:43.860 went in there with big mechanical equipment and they they dragged the trees down shovels you know
00:26:49.860 not um excavators and and so they're blocking the lines i don't think they did any consultation with
00:26:55.860 anybody and and then so i just bring that up as an example because we were you know we were picking on
00:27:01.460 the federal government but i said you know to be fair let's pick on the alberta government a little bit
00:27:06.420 and uh and and and it's also an example of like if we have to access a fire somewhere you've
00:27:12.580 eliminated an amazing way that we used to be able to get in i mean at the end of that specific cut
00:27:17.300 line that one there was actually uh an abandoned um what we call a snowcat a bombardier track vehicle
00:27:25.620 that i've been using to fight a fire probably 50 years ago so you know the government in its infinite
00:27:31.220 wisdom is creating and uh solving pretending to solve one problem and creating another one so i
00:27:36.900 that's that's all i wanted to show with that clip is that there's mismanagement going on everywhere
00:27:41.860 just a funny rachel just to show you how funny this is we we actually we actually tried to clear
00:27:47.700 it you know cut it with chainsaws we couldn't make any progress we gave up but a little bit down
00:27:52.340 there was an actual sign so government workers got sent to clear these to make this land impassable
00:27:58.980 and then i don't know if they're messing with us but they put warning signs that said danger uh
00:28:03.700 uneven terrain ahead i'm like oh you buggers like we are in a forest to be fair yeah like i
00:28:11.140 anyway it was probably their first time out there like let's give them a pass
00:28:14.820 yeah let's give them a pass but um yeah it's it's uh yeah thanks for letting me share that clip
00:28:21.940 because it's it's unfortunate i i think it's again it's another example of mismanagement yeah it's another
00:28:27.140 example of mismanagement but it also goes back to what we were talking about a little bit before was
00:28:31.140 the lack of consultation with the people who are actually using these spaces and people like yourself
00:28:36.020 who are hunters like if you want to know what's going on in an area like especially when you're in
00:28:39.860 nature like who better to go in and talk to than the hunters and the farmers they have so much
00:28:43.700 knowledge on the land and what it needs and it's so frustrating when government bureaucrats come in
00:28:48.100 with like obviously we know these are people who don't love and respect the land because they were
00:28:51.620 littering you saw a beer can when you were out there right so yeah these are the yeah i mean if you
00:28:55.300 wanted to know about caribou ask us and we'll tell them you know i'd say i haven't seen caribou but if
00:28:59.860 you want to know where the elk and the moose are in that area i would have told them gladly you know
00:29:03.620 yeah it's too bad so marty just to sum up because we know that you know the federal government they're
00:29:08.180 going to listen to this podcast and they're going to take our advice if there was three things they
00:29:12.180 could do better for managing our national parks sounds like we need some water bombers we need some
00:29:16.740 controlled burns anything else you would add to that list uh water bombers control burns and uh less
00:29:24.580 bureaucracy i mean get you know stop studying the problem and get it done because the the
00:29:30.100 nothing nothing nothing we're mentioning is uh is new to them but they're just never they don't seem
00:29:35.060 able to act on it so get it done just ask marty you can you can change your twitter handle to that
00:29:39.620 just ask marty just ask marty yeah marty thank you so much for joining us today i really appreciate
00:29:44.820 it i know my audience will really enjoy your insight as i said it's always nice to have a real expert
00:29:49.140 come on and not just an academic who studies these things but doesn't deal with them on a regular basis so
00:29:53.540 we really appreciate you today i totally appreciate the time cheers everyone all right everyone that's
00:29:58.900 all we have time for on this special episode of the alberta roundup i hope that you guys have
00:30:03.060 a great rest of your weekend i'll be back next week god bless