Searle, a former Parks Canada naturalist who teaches geography at the University of Victoria, began to study the parks in 1996 after hearing reports they were under environmental siege. Searle's research, funded in part by The Royal Canadian Geographical Society and World Wildlife Fund Canada, took him to 26 of the 38 existing parks. Park staff are frustrated and deeply concerned. Though they are winning small battles, they are losing the war. Searle witnessed dozens of examples of these pressures.
Elk walk down the street.
The wolf population in Manitoba's Riding Mountain National Park is half the size it once was, and loons in Kejimkujik National Park in Nova Scotia are threatened by mercury and the exploding raccoon population. Mining near Jasper in Alberta and logging around Pukaskwa in Northern Ontario are too close to park borders for comfort. An extra boardwalk, an extra trail, more picnic sites, more ecotourism in the back country. Realizing the fragile state of Canada's national parks has not discouraged Searle so much as spurred him on. It is a pattern that has to change, he insists, if Canada's national parks are to survive.