It's a new plan, but an Alberta environmental group says it's based on old, logging-oriented thinking.

The provincial government released a new forest management plan for southwestern Alberta this week, allowing loggers to cut more of the older timber that dominates the Crowsnest Pass region.

Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mel Knight says the new plan aims at protecting water resources and decommissioning old resource roads - a move designed to help grizzly bear numbers recover. It updates policies that were put in place in 1986.

But an Alberta Wilderness Association spokesperson says the new management plan fails to reflect concerns voiced by Albertans during public consultations. Instead, it allows a Calgary-area sawmill greater access to timber stands across the mountainous C5 management zone, running from the edge of Waterton Lakes National Park right up to the southern part of Kananaskis Country.

"I don't see any substantial changes in the plan," says Nigel Douglas, the association's conservation specialist. "I'm disappointed. It's a missed opportunity."

Southern Albertans had spoken out against plans to clear-cut areas near Beaver Mines and Castle Falls, along with land alongside iconic Crowsnest Mountain. But sustainable resources officials say "limited harvesting" is required to reduce the the threats of forest fire and the further spread of mountain pine beetles.

The new plan, they say, aims at "managing the timber resources for sustainability while minimizing the impacts of forestry operations on non-timber resource values, land uses and human activities."

Douglas says that confirms logging as the government's top priority for the area. About one-third of all land in the C5 area, about 114,000 hectares, will be available for logging.

"What we need is a forest management plan, not a forestry plan," he said. Douglas also challenged the plan's focus on the pine beetles.

"This plan will cause much more damage than the pine beetles could ever do."

Wilderness group members question the economic value of logging southern Alberta's alpine forests, he added. They're now logged by Spray Lake Sawmill, a Cochrane company that shut down the only Crowsnest Pass sawmill after acquiring its cutting rights.

The thin logs are now hauled hundreds of kilometres before being processed, Douglas points out.

"It's a pretty marginal operation" that's being supported by turning over access to that much land, he says.
"But that land is highly important as wilderness habitat."