Phénomènes karstiques et tourisme dans les parcs nationaux de l'Ouest canadien : la mise en valeur progressive d'un patrimoine naturel
Authors: Heritier Stéphane 
Published: November 2018

The karst phenomenon and tourism in western canadian national parks : the progressive promotion of a natural heritage

Canadian national parks located in the Rockies and in the Selkirk range (Alberta and British Columbia) can be considered as places of major interest to focus research on the Canadian parks. Since the beginning of the National Park System in 1885, transcontinental railway companies have promoted tourism activities within national parks based on scenery and natural sites. With more than 10 millions visitors per year, these parks have become a favorite tourist destination for many Canadian and Americans. Nature and different natural processes, such as falls, lakes, canyons and caves, karst springs, glacial processes and postglacial landforms, are thus considered as tourist resources [Sanguin & Gill, 1990]. The present paper analyzes how karst landscapes have become a significant part of the tourist dynamics within the Canadian national parks. These landforms and processes seem to be involved in a tourism process based on the promotion of the entire environment, its dynamics and its mechanisms. The final point will be to interrogate the way in which karst processes and landforms have become «subjects» that offer opportunities for tourism development through the terms and conditions of their promotion as a support for parks attractivity. A century of tourism development has enlarged the scientific opportunities for visitors, introducing the latter to the geomorphologic as well as the human heritage. Since the end of the 1960s, coordinated regional programs have been developed (tourism management, interpretation, etc.) between the mountain parks and the tourism sector (railway companies, private interpreters, businesses, etc.). The use and the promotion of karst has been gradually developed, especially for endokarstic and hydrokarstic forms and processes, like mountain scenery, karst lansdcapes have become a foundation for nature tourism. As parts of national parks, the hydrokarst and the canyons... are geomorphosites [Reynard & Panizza, 2005] which are protected for their ecological value. Nowadays, they are also preserved for their scientific and esthetic values but also because they are considered as significant parts of the tourism industry. Since the 1960s, scientific studies have incited actors to develop a global approach in environment management that converges on «ecological integrity», a major concept for Parks Canada. In the end, the differing values (aesthetic, cultural, economic, ecological, scientific) identified by Reynard [2005] converge in the concept of «heritage value», understood as the synthesis of the identified values for geomorphosites, based either on a mathematic evaluation or on a synthetic analysis. Regarding the history of karst sites promotion within the Canadian mountain parks, and the recent proposal concerning a restrictive karst policy [Horne, 2004-b], it seems the karst phenomenon has obtained a genuine economic, touristic and heritage status.