The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - “This was TOTALLY preventable” - hunter responds to Jasper fires

00:00:00.000 nearly half of the historic village of jasper burned to a crisp overnight on wednesday

00:00:14.940 firefighters worked throughout the day as fires hummed on the town's edge but were forced to

00:00:20.300 retreat when the wind suddenly picked up and the fires entered to town burning the west end of much

00:00:25.520 of jasper village now wildfires aren't new to alberta but they seem to be getting worse every

00:00:31.820 year and that has only led to further division with questions like who's to blame the province

00:00:37.820 or the federal government is this the result of climate change or improper fire and forest

00:00:44.120 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

00:00:55.160 hey rachel happy to be here so one of the reasons why i wanted to have you specifically on the show

00:01:01.440 is because i know you spend a ton of time in the woods you're always posting some of your exciting

00:01:06.320 excursions going out for those long camping trips so you are someone who actually knows the woods

00:01:11.420 and the forest really well i know a lot of people like to comment on things but i think it adds a

00:01:15.480 little bit of expertise when someone actually spends time out there and knows what they're

00:01:19.620 talking about if i was going to go for a camping trip i'd probably want to bring you along just to

00:01:23.800 make sure that i don't get eaten by a bear or something but uh why don't you just start by

00:01:28.000 explaining some of your experience with the audience what you've observed and how much time

00:01:32.540 you spend out in the woods in places like jasper over the past number of years yeah sure so actually

00:01:38.940 online i'm known as marty up north i've been known as marty up north for 20 years let's say and um i spent

00:01:46.620 i spent a good 25 years of my adult life working on just outside of jasper i lived in towns like edson

00:01:54.860 and fox creek and grand prairie and and when you live up north you know the wilderness is all around

00:02:00.880 us and so and and you you become you know if you want to enjoy living up north you have to enjoy the

00:02:06.900 wilderness whether it's hiking fishing things like that and particularly one of my passions is is

00:02:12.480 hiking you know you said camping and and i don't i i camp but i hike i go into the back country into

00:02:18.760 the wilderness and i go far from the main roads and jasper you know i i had a tweet the other day

00:02:25.700 so what's happening in jasper for me right now is devastating i mean it's heartbreaking because it's

00:02:30.220 it's uh it it is my playground and it is a place that's near and dear to me and to a lot of albertans

00:02:36.000 and people around the world and um so i i i spend a lot of time in the wilderness in jasper in

00:02:44.220 particular i mean jasper has about 1600 kilometers of backcountry trails like historic trails that were

00:02:50.120 established by fur traders and and and hardly a video of mine like i've probably published 50 videos

00:02:57.820 of just me hiking in the backcountry and in almost every video there's a moment where i pause and i turn

00:03:03.400 the camera and i explain something to people something that i'm witnessing and one of the

00:03:08.340 topics that often comes up while i was hiking is the mismanagement of the forest you know people for

00:03:12.880 instance would ask me like do you see animals on your hikes i'm like oh you you never see animals

00:03:18.020 because the forests are not natural anymore and and the food that the animals want is not there

00:03:23.880 you know i i turn the camera around and show old trees that are dying or trees that have been

00:03:29.600 infested by beetles or you know things like that so you know that that's the that was the basis of

00:03:36.220 my tweet yesterday when i was unhappy is that unfortunately i think what happened in jasper

00:03:40.420 was completely preventable well it's always nice to have a real expert join us and not someone who's

00:03:45.180 sort of like an academia expert where they just read about things and never go try anything for

00:03:48.960 themselves i know i'm certainly tired of those types of experts my audience is too you spoke a little

00:03:53.700 bit about the devastation in jasper for my audience who might not have seen much of those clips yet

00:03:58.680 we have a clip here we're going to show you guys just so you can get a sense of just exactly how

00:04:03.120 damaging that fire was and how much of the town burned out take a look at this next clip

00:04:08.580 okay this is not tough with the with the cat we may need one or two so i when once i know i'll i'll let

00:04:17.000 you know what about the nodwell perm

00:04:29.940 the nodwell going down to the petro can and just wait for there

00:04:37.660 all right i'm on my way yeah that uh there's another water truck parked there i think

00:04:45.920 there's mom and dad's house

00:04:48.200 i'm stepping away from the radio for about five minutes

00:04:52.980 i think when you hear the individual who was recording that video just say that was mom and

00:05:16.900 dad's house you know that just really kind of hits home the impact of the fact that someone lived there

00:05:21.420 and you know there all those memories have been burned all their belongings have been burned down

00:05:26.500 just absolutely devastating not to mention just the fact that jasper was such a historic village

00:05:30.920 you even mentioned going hiking along some of the fur trails i am really kicking myself you know i've

00:05:35.460 lived in alberta for about two years just over two years and i never made it up to jasper

00:05:38.720 so certainly disappointing and i'm going to make every effort to go as soon as i can

00:05:42.520 but i mean you you said you spent a lot of time there it's sort of your playground how did you feel

00:05:46.900 when you got your first the first few images came through and you realized exactly how

00:05:51.520 how damaged jasper was going to be from these wildfires on wednesday

00:05:55.120 well my my first reaction of course is is was sorrow like i'm upset you know i'm sad about it but then

00:06:02.080 my it quickly turned to sort of anger because it's like i said it's it was preventable to me it was

00:06:08.260 preventable um especially in light of the fact that here in alberta i mean we had a major forest fire

00:06:14.260 like this the damage you know a good portion of slave lake before you came to alberta slave lake

00:06:19.060 got damaged fort mcmurray got damaged we had we've had little villages like hondo and smith get damaged

00:06:25.260 but you know we've had two significant ones so we should have learned a few lessons from from those

00:06:30.020 ones so yeah it it it quickly goes from sadness to anger when i look at those pictures and relief and

00:06:37.540 there's a bit of relief because luckily a good chunk of the city or the town of jasper survived

00:06:43.040 because boy the way jasper is situated it's in a valley it's in the athabasca valley with big

00:06:48.500 mountains on both sides so it's kind of like it's trapped right there's only one way in and one way

00:06:52.860 out and a fire coming down that valley could absolutely have done way worse than what it did

00:06:59.160 so kudos to the guys who fought the structural fires in town you've said now a couple times that

00:07:05.700 this was preventable and i want to dig into that a little bit deeper so what do you think exactly

00:07:10.660 the federal government did wrong to not allow for this to be contained earlier or to be maybe

00:07:16.320 entirely avoided i know something that's come up so much since i've moved to alberta when we're

00:07:19.680 talking about wildfires is that they are not doing enough controlled burns to get rid of some of the

00:07:25.780 dead wood that we see everywhere and it just allows fires to grow and grow and grow when they do occur

00:07:30.100 so why don't you just start by addressing that do you think we need to have more controlled burns in

00:07:34.700 areas where maybe some pine beetles have come through and absolutely ravaged especially in jasper you

00:07:39.520 know there was i was reading reports that maybe 98 percent of of of some trees in jasper had been

00:07:45.720 infected by pine beetles and we actually have some images we can throw up you can just see the the

00:07:49.700 mountains in jasper are covered with red which shows that they've been totally infested with these

00:07:54.060 pine beetles is that one of the things that you've noticed you you you just gave a lesson in forest

00:07:59.360 management 101 you know you know the average person can see it right everybody who lives in alberta

00:08:05.440 especially calgary edmonton who drives through the rockies we all see those red trees on the

00:08:10.160 side of the hill that have been uh sometimes they're they're the they're damaged because of

00:08:14.900 an earlier forest fire but a lot of times they're damaged by a pine beetle and you know the pine

00:08:19.180 beetle um the pine beetle only attacks mature pine trees well actually the pine beetle will attack all

00:08:25.620 the trees the all the pine trees but the mature trees it's like an old person who gets the flu have a

00:08:31.620 hard time fighting the pine beetle and in the effort of fighting how a tree fights the pine beetle is it

00:08:37.500 produces sap and it tries to eject the pine beetle and an old tree produces so much sap that it kills

00:08:43.020 itself trying to fight off the infestation a young tree fights it off easily so that's what happens so

00:08:49.640 the trees in a lot of our areas first of all the trees are getting too old so we're allowing trees to

00:08:54.540 get too old and and we should you know if we if we don't harvest those trees then nature takes over

00:09:01.740 and either the pine beetle will kill them or a fire will come along or the wind will knock them down so

00:09:06.000 we're allowing trees to get too old which is a problem right everybody has this vision of oh we

00:09:10.840 love old growth forests and but when you think old growth you're imagining whatever what you're seeing

00:09:16.280 in british columbia like the big the big redwoods and sequoias but here in alberta old growth means a tree

00:09:22.360 that's 120 years old so it needs to be harvested otherwise nature will take care of itself so in

00:09:27.880 and in the parks they're stuck they don't want to harvest so they kind of have to let nature take

00:09:34.300 care of itself which ends up being the fire the devastating fire and if they're going to take that

00:09:39.400 approach and let the fires go in well so one of the ways they do it is yes is the control burn so

00:09:45.380 historically you can go you you know that the trees are dead you know they're going to get invaded by

00:09:49.460 the pine beetles but you at least remove a lot of the other fuel that's in the area the stuff on the

00:09:53.700 ground so we we don't do enough control burns that's i i think we don't do enough control burns

00:09:59.100 i don't think we do enough harvesting we're afraid to harvest trees in the national parks

00:10:04.260 and and then the other thing we are terrible at doing in our parks is is the mix of the forest right

00:10:10.620 and so when you look at our forest they they're mostly made up nowadays of spruce and um and pines the

00:10:19.160 the coniferous coniferous trees and what we need more of are the the the less commercially valuable

00:10:27.940 trees like the poplars and the aspens but we go out of our way to prevent those from growing so

00:10:33.080 you know there's a lot of mismanagement in that sense when it comes to us not doing enough of those

00:10:39.200 controlled burns that seems like it would alleviate a lot of the initial harm why do you think we're not 0.95

00:10:43.680 doing them anymore a couple of things i mean some of it is just bureaucracy the the darn bureaucracy

00:10:50.860 of the federal government because the parks in this case are managed by the federal government

00:10:55.180 and and you know even when it comes to control burn they're they're arguing among themselves as to

00:11:00.920 where it should be done for what reason at what time they're also scared now i mean they they they've

00:11:07.020 lost the expertise of of managing these control burns because they've had several control burns in the

00:11:11.320 last decade sort of get out of hand on them so so they're nervous they're they're in a catch-22 they

00:11:17.600 want to do the right thing but they're kind of scared to do the right thing or unable to do the

00:11:22.380 right thing there was some debate online as to you know whose fault this was a lot of people pointing

00:11:27.380 blame at daniel smith's united conservative party government other people pointing to the federal

00:11:31.500 government now jasper national park it says it right there in the name it is a national park it does

00:11:36.480 fall under the purview of parks canada which is a federal entity you know fairly self-explanatory

00:11:41.960 do you think that this is something that maybe we would have better success in if the provincial

00:11:48.100 government had more of a say in what was going on in the parks or maybe even attempted to take it over

00:11:53.880 entirely as some people have suggested they should do well that's an interesting question that no i

00:11:58.820 think i think you know let's say we transferred jasper over to the provincial government tomorrow

00:12:02.820 we we probably end up with a similar situation i mean jasper and banff you know they're they're

00:12:08.460 struggling the other struggle with those two places with all the national parks is they they they have

00:12:13.100 a mandate on one side of protecting a piece of an ecosystem for future generations but on the other

00:12:19.200 side they're also trying to they recognize it's touristy and there's money to be made and so i think i think

00:12:24.860 um now so that balance between protecting and tourism might be better handled by the provincial

00:12:32.340 government who's closer because i mean one of the other problems you know of course is distance

00:12:36.240 right ottawa technically manages the provincial the the national parks while ottawa bureaucrats in

00:12:42.360 ottawa are a long ways away from from banff and jasper so there'd be some improvements perhaps but

00:12:48.140 there'd also be some of the same problems i think so you think that the united conservative party

00:12:52.800 government or the alberta government more generally speaking wouldn't be necessarily quick to do those

00:12:57.760 controlled burns that you're saying are so necessary partly because tourism you think maybe the

00:13:01.580 controlled burns would sort of scare off tourists for those spring months when they typically look

00:13:05.500 to do them or you just think bureaucrats are going to get in the way once again 0.93

00:13:08.940 combination of both yeah i mean i i would hope i actually i mean if i think about it i would hope

00:13:15.860 that if you transfer the management of the parks and that's a possibility actually the parks could stay

00:13:21.300 as as federal entities managed by uh the local experts the provincial government um i would like to

00:13:29.700 think that we have more expertise in managing force than the federal government so yeah actually

00:13:34.020 fundamentally i would hope that alberta can do a better job whether it's the ucp or the ndp

00:13:38.680 yeah you know i tend to be of the mindset that whenever something is more local you tend to get a

00:13:43.500 better response because the people who are running it just know the issue a little bit better it's like

00:13:47.620 you know people are always paying so close attention to federal politics but you should actually pay

00:13:51.460 closer attention to your local government because they tend to impact your direct life most often

00:13:56.680 living in calgary i can say that firsthand we have one of the worst governments and they ruined

00:14:00.760 everyone's summer with these water restrictions so you know case in point but when we're actually

00:14:05.800 looking at danielle smith and her government you know a lot of people were pointing fingers at her 0.79

00:14:10.160 saying this is your fault you haven't been taking climate change seriously what do you make of all that

00:14:14.560 no that i i saw those posts i mean first of all their their their their mistake they they forget the

00:14:22.940 fact that danielle only came into power you know a year ago so they're blaming her for cuts and things 1.00

00:14:27.980 that happened in in 2021 2022 and and i've i've i've familiarized myself with the budget i mean that's

00:14:34.740 something i look at closely and i can say for a fact that danielle has increased the firefighting budget 0.98

00:14:40.460 in the province she she she learned from fort mcmurray she learned from from uh slave lake and when

00:14:47.180 she came into power she's made the necessary adjustments in fact up until this fire in jasper

00:14:52.620 the whole the whole trend of the number of fires in alberta and the size of the fires and the acreage

00:14:58.980 loss was on a perfectly downward trajectory like everything was looking good this you know we just

00:15:04.700 went through a bad period of of lightning strikes up north so up in the grand prairie area and places

00:15:09.680 like that but we're we're we're on trend for bringing things under control def in in fact when you look

00:15:15.840 at the long-term trends um there's less fires than there used to be in the past and then we're

00:15:21.400 burning less acreage so you know a lot of people like to point out to last year i think last year

00:15:26.520 was just a an outlier or or something more nefarious i mean yeah there was a lot of land that was burned

00:15:32.200 last year i have my theories on that yeah i think a lot of people were concerned that those were

00:15:37.600 intentionally lit and i know that the premier had said they had hired investigators to look into those or at

00:15:42.700 least that they were human caused at best but uh it was definitely a very smoky summer last year

00:15:48.440 and i know that albertans are kind of getting tired of the smoky summers because it's winter for so much

00:15:52.240 of the year finally we have a little warm weather and then you know you don't want to bring the kids

00:15:55.540 outside because it's not good for their lungs but just because you you brought it up you know you

00:15:59.260 brought up the issue of danielle smith being attacked for for raising for lowering the firefighting

00:16:04.020 budget she was actually asked about this at a press conference this week we're going to play that for

00:16:07.400 you guys now just because i know some of my audience might have seen a little bit about this

00:16:10.240 and i just wanted to set the record straight so here's danielle smith being asked about 0.61

00:16:14.060 whether she lowered the firefighting budget take a listen hello premier smith thank you for taking my

00:16:19.060 question so your government over the last few years has made various cuts to alberta's wildfire

00:16:26.580 fighting budget do you regret making those cuts now why why not well look i mean my first uh firefighting

00:16:33.900 season was last year and uh what we did in response to that was we increased the the firefighting

00:16:40.720 budget by 50 percent in uh 20 23 4 it was a hundred point four million dollars in 24 25 we increased it

00:16:49.820 to 155.4 million and that's the highest it's ever been um the and there's a reason for that is is that

00:16:57.020 we we knew that we needed to get some of the equipment and change some of the practices as minister lowen

00:17:01.760 had mentioned we uh declared the start of forest fire season early we had all of our personnel hired

00:17:07.680 and in place by april 15th which is uh at may 15th by may 15th um and uh in addition to that because

00:17:15.920 of the amount of uh damage that we saw last year when i when i first came in we had a billion dollar

00:17:22.960 contingency um my first budget we increased that to a 1.5 billion dollar contingency

00:17:28.640 and this budget we increased to a two billion dollar contingency so there is no limit to the

00:17:34.400 amount of money that we will spend to make sure that we have the resources that we need and to

00:17:38.400 make sure that we have the money available to assist with the with the recovery so i would say that we've

00:17:44.640 looked at the lessons of the past and and we we made the uh the appropriate amount of uh of investment

00:17:51.520 in this budget here so just because i know how my audience is going to react to that clip i just want

00:17:56.880 to set the record straight that actually wasn't a mainstream media reporter asking that question

00:18:00.880 that was actually a western standard reporter and you know i don't blame him it was probably one of

00:18:04.880 those situations where you see a narrative trending on xo danielle smith cut the firefighting budget and 0.99

00:18:10.080 then look what happened and sometimes you know you ask a question without digging into it too deep i

00:18:14.640 myself am guilty of that so no shade to that reporter we all make those mistakes at times but you know

00:18:20.960 when danielle smith is talking we actually increase the budget because we saw what happened last year and we

00:18:25.280 we want to put an end to essentially not having enough money and she talked about the investments

00:18:29.200 that she's making are we seeing that same level of investment from the federal government who

00:18:34.320 actually runs our national parks like jasper marty oh i knew you were going there no we're not i mean

00:18:39.520 can you imagine if steven gilbeau was on stage the number of questions i could ask him right like

00:18:45.120 you promised us i'm sure there's clips on us he promised whatever or maybe not gilbeau but somebody

00:18:50.800 promised water bombers we haven't bought a new water bomber in in canada and in in the last five

00:18:56.560 or six years um there's definitely clips of of mp standing up in the house of commons asking the

00:19:02.800 environment minister whether it's gilbeau or his predecessor uh mckenna like you know the mp for

00:19:09.040 yellowhead or not yellowhead but for jasper saying hey you know we have a problem and and so the and and

00:19:16.080 there is an old clip i think it is mckenna saying oh jasper's our top priority i mean there's

00:19:21.280 we can pull document after document after document of of reports that were published about you know

00:19:28.800 expressing problems in jasper and how this was just a you know uh a disaster waiting to happen

00:19:34.800 so and and i want to go back to one quick thing right we we talk about jasper and jasper as a as a

00:19:40.720 national park is a huge area but the town of jasper also has the same name right the town of jasper

00:19:46.480 and so we talk about them in the same sentence but they are a little bit separate you know you asked

00:19:51.840 about control burns like the control burns that the park wants to do are like in some of the far

00:19:56.960 away areas and i like and nobody like that's fine if they want to go do a little control burn in some

00:20:01.920 far away area and it doesn't work perfectly that's okay but the the town of jasper itself was

00:20:07.760 mismanaged like you know that there's no excuse for that i mean a town is surrounded by trees

00:20:13.680 where where where you know everybody was screaming i mean as another example like the the you know

00:20:19.200 people went golfing in jasper you could go golfing in jasper and you could see these pine trees that

00:20:24.080 were dead on the golf course and then you'd ask the the golf course superintendent like what do you

00:20:29.920 hey larry when you're going to get rid of these trees and he would literally shrug and go oh it's

00:20:33.920 too much paperwork right i mean i even published i i went and found the forms online just to cut a

00:20:38.720 tree on your property in jasper a dead tree was a two-page form application form that required like

00:20:44.880 an arborist to sign off and blah blah blah blah blah so the bureauc the bureaucracy in the town of jasper

00:20:53.040 failed miserably honestly nothing boils my blood more than talking about bureaucracy my husband and

00:20:59.040 i are in the process of hopefully purchasing a home and it's just like all the paperwork and

00:21:03.520 everyone who needs to get their little cut just because you want to buy a home it's like how is

00:21:07.360 this what we've dissolved into in a country that when you want to make an agreement with another

00:21:11.040 person to purchase a home there's like a million jumps you have to hoop through and everyone gets

00:21:14.480 you know to take their little slice out of the process like it's absolutely infuriating to me

00:21:18.720 and just yeah imagine being in jasper you've got a dead tree in the back of your and you can't cut it down

00:21:23.360 it's absolutely stunning so when you're saying that the town of jasper itself was mismanaged

00:21:27.200 you're saying that there was dead trees all surrounding the the site of the town itself

00:21:32.160 there's dead trees everywhere on the golf course another problem was that the there there were

00:21:38.000 there were dead trees and there were no trees the proper trees like i said the proper trees that you

00:21:42.480 want in town in a mix are the poplars and the um and and the aspen because they stop fire from moving

00:21:51.840 like when in fort mcmurray when the fire was coming down it stopped at the river where there was these

00:21:56.640 big aspen groves but and and aspens serve two purposes they happen to be a good food and they

00:22:03.120 stop fires because of the way they're shaped and the aspens lose their leaves in the in the winter

00:22:10.160 which allows the moisture to really hit the ground anyways you know so so jasper had no trees

00:22:15.440 and whatever little trees they had were completely destroyed because they allow the elk and everybody

00:22:20.800 loves the elk you know the elk are walking around town but again like push the elk out into the

00:22:26.400 valleys and somewhere away from the main town where the tourists could still go see them and then do

00:22:30.880 and and keep focused on so so yeah so managers in in town lost their focus we see that all the time

00:22:37.760 right i mean i said it this morning somebody in town and jasper's primary job was to keep the town

00:22:44.320 safe and they failed yeah and i mean i i suspect that probably no one's no one's head will be on

00:22:49.680 the chopping block for this so it seems to happen time and time again while we're still on the topic

00:22:54.080 of sort of forest management practices you posted something about cut lines that had been filled and

00:23:00.240 and wrecked let's like we have a clip of that now let's just play that clip and then you can explain

00:23:03.920 to all of us what we're really what we're seeing there and what the issue was of the government coming

00:23:08.480 in and cutting down forest to block those cut lines let's play that next clip now well that's a cut line

00:23:15.600 and the government came in here the alberta government came in here and did this insane destruction

00:23:24.800 because they don't want us using these cut lines for any purpose

00:23:31.360 so they do this they knock down trees on freaking believable

00:23:38.480 like this is a major cut line that we used to quad down there and somehow or other they think that

00:23:50.000 plugging one cut line like this is going to save caribou or i don't know what they're thinking but

00:24:05.600 well government workers drinking beer

00:24:24.800 so they just literally dug it all up knocked down trees put holes everywhere so we can't use it

00:24:30.560 on our atvs we can't hunt okay marty so explain to me what are cut lines used for and explain as

00:24:37.040 well a little of your frustration for why they were cut down is it simply because you were no longer

00:24:40.960 able to access those roots on your atv or is there something deeper going on there

00:24:45.760 yeah so i so i actually i personally filmed that that's me talking i filmed that three weeks ago

00:24:50.400 um i was heading up north this is in the grand cache area which is north of of jasper and it's in

00:24:56.400 crown land big big crown land big giant force and i hunt there i've been hunting there for 30 years

00:25:02.080 so we were actually heading into our hunting camp to set up our camp so we can use it in august and

00:25:06.960 september and everywhere we were turning we were blocked all these cut lines have been

00:25:12.560 rolled over so for the viewers cut lines typically are um were cut in the 1960s

00:25:20.400 they're straight lines that cut across the land sometimes they're on uh and and they were used

00:25:25.600 for seismic activity that we you know they would send equipment down there sort of like do the

00:25:30.480 ultrasounds and find out where the oil might be buried in the ground so these cut lines are historic

00:25:36.320 they've existed since the 1960s and for for backcountry people like myself and horsemen and whatnot

00:25:42.640 they become sort of little back road highways and um and and so and they're all over the province and it

00:25:49.840 allows amazing access to the forest like and and a cut line is a thin little cut line so when you

00:25:55.600 look at the amount of land taken off because of the cut line it's minuscule so they're useful for us

00:26:02.640 they're useful for hunters campers all sorts of people and i found out why they were doing this in the

00:26:09.120 area where we are this is a pilot project and they're trying to protect some caribou so apparently

00:26:14.320 and i've never seen them in the area in 35 years of hunting there but apparently there's a small

00:26:18.960 herd of caribou in there and they want to protect the caribou by eliminating the access it's a pilot

00:26:25.520 project i don't know who came up with this idea or how it's going to work but we found out that it

00:26:30.560 was like a five million dollar contract that was tendered last year to somebody and they went in there

00:26:35.520 and and there are viewers who questioned me they said i don't know that's you know that's a

00:26:39.280 deadfall from the wind blowing it down because they they saw the root balls nope they went in there

00:26:44.400 with big mechanical equipment and they they dragged the trees down shovels you know not

00:26:50.960 excavators and and so they're blocking the lines i don't think they did any consultation with anybody

00:26:56.800 and and then so i just bring that up as an example because we were you know we were picking on the

00:27:01.680 federal government but i said you know to be fair let's pick on the alberta government a little bit

00:27:06.480 and uh and and and it's also an example of like if we have to access a fire somewhere you've

00:27:12.640 eliminated an amazing way that we used to be able to get in i mean at the end of that specific cut

00:27:17.360 line that one there was actually uh an abandoned um what we call a snowcat a bombardier track vehicle

00:27:25.600 that had been using to fight a fire probably 50 years ago so you know the government in its infinite

00:27:31.280 wisdom is creating and uh solving pretending to solve one problem and creating another one so i that's

00:27:37.200 that's all i wanted to show with that clip is that there's mismanagement going on everywhere just a

00:27:42.240 funny rachel just to show you how funny this is we we actually we actually tried to clear it you know

00:27:48.240 cut it with chainsaws we couldn't make any progress we gave up but a little bit down there was an actual

00:27:53.280 sign so government workers got sent to clear these to make this land impassable and then i don't know

00:27:59.680 if they're messing with us but they put warning signs that said danger uh uneven terrain ahead i'm like

00:28:05.120 like how you buggers like i mean we are in a forest to be fair yeah like uh anyways it was probably

00:28:12.160 their first time out there like let's give them a pass yeah let's give them a pass but um yeah it's

00:28:18.320 it's uh yeah thanks for letting me share that clip because it's it's unfortunate i i think it's again

00:28:24.480 it's another example of mismanagement yeah i think it's another example of mismanagement but it also goes

00:28:28.960 back to what we were talking about a little bit before was the lack of consultation with the people who are

00:28:33.120 actually using these spaces and people like yourself who are hunters like if you want to know what's

00:28:37.920 going on in an area like especially when you're in nature like who better to go in and talk to than

00:28:42.000 the hunters and the farmers they have so much knowledge on the land and what it needs and it's

00:28:46.080 so frustrating when government bureaucrats come in with like obviously we know these are people who

00:28:50.160 don't love and respect the land because they were littering you saw a beer can when you were out

00:28:53.200 there right so yeah these are the yeah i mean if he wanted to know about caribou ask us and we'll tell

00:28:57.520 him you know i'd say i haven't seen caribou but if you want to know where the elk and the moose are in

00:29:01.600 that area i would have told them gladly you know yeah it's too bad so marty just to sum up because

00:29:06.480 we know that you know the federal government they're going to listen to this podcast and

00:29:09.760 they're going to take our advice if there was three things they could do better for managing

00:29:13.520 our national parks sounds like we need some water bombers we need some controlled burns anything else

00:29:18.080 you would add to that list uh water bombers control burns and uh less bureaucracy i mean get you

00:29:26.240 know stop studying the problem and get it done because the the nothing nothing nothing we're

00:29:31.600 mentioning is uh is new to them but they're just never they don't seem able to act on it so get it

00:29:36.720 done just ask marty you can you can change your twitter handle to that just ask marty just ask marty

00:29:41.760 yeah marty thank you so much for joining us today i really appreciate it i know my audience will

00:29:45.920 really enjoy your insight as i said it's always nice to have a real expert come on and not just an

00:29:50.080 academic who studies these things but doesn't deal with them on a regular basis so we really appreciate you today

00:29:55.440 i totally appreciate the time cheers everyone all right everyone that's all we have time for on

00:29:59.920 this special episode of the alberta roundup i hope that you guys have a great rest of your weekend

00:30:04.720 i'll be back next week god bless

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The Alberta Roundup with Isaac Lamoureux - July 27, 2024

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

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