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There’s still a long way to go

Wee’ve made great strides to equality, but the journey is just beginning

It would be easy to think that the announcement Friday by MLA Linda Larson and Environment Minister Mary Polak meant that we were well on our way to, if not a national park, a national park reserve in the South Okanagan.

In truth, very little has changed since Larson gave an update on the situation to the RDOS at the end of December 2016, when she painted a less than positive picture of the project ever becoming a reality. That was some five years after B.C. pulled out of talks with Parks Canada, in 2011.

The only change is that the province has agreed to sit down with the Osoyoos, Lower Similkameen and Penticton Indian Bands and discuss protecting two areas as federal national park reserves and the third as a provincial protected area.

That’s it. No goals for starting discussions, no timeline for accomplishing anything. Polak said not to expect anything to happen before the May 9 provincial election, but we suspect it may be considerably longer than that.

After all, it’s been eight months since the feedback on the Protected Areas was released, and that took seven months after the 60-day public input period closed. That was after the feedback was reviewed by an anonymous five-person focus group set up by Larson.

The other question is the continuation of existing uses, which Polak said the province is committed to. The three bands should certainly expect their traditional hunting, fishing and other land rights to be respected, but what about other uses, like recreational hunting or ranching? These are uses which go against the purpose of creating the protected areas: to preserve fragile, unique habitat and endangered species, some of which exist nowhere else in the world along with allowing other species a safe haven within park boundaries, a chance to renew their population without the threat of hunting.