Seeing the forest for the tourists?

Resource-based tourism is a growing industry in northwestern Ontario.

In order to better understand its potential, Dr. Mike Yuan, professor and director of the Centre for Parks, Recreation and Tourism Research at Lakehead University, recently completed a comprehensive recreation planning framework for Crown lands in the Dog River-Matawin Forest region, including Quetico Provincial Park.

The study, the first of its kind in Canada, covered over 1.4 million hectares of land.

Its premise is to recognize an integrated approach to forest sustainability, giving due consideration to alternative value within a forest, such as the potential for tourism and recreation, as well as the timber itself.

Yuan says the framework will provide greater understanding of the impact of different forest management practices on tourism and recreation in terms of the public's needs, and could have fundamental impacts in terms of how tourism may occur on Crown lands.

Presently, the only protected areas are provincial parks and various designated conservation areas. Crown lands are all the public lands outside the protected areas, accounting for the great majority of public lands in Northern Ontario.

Their management has great implications for the resource-based tourism industry in the region. In other words, if an outfitter's camp wanted to set up on Crown land, there would be no guarantee that the land an operator is using would remain in pristine condition.

"One of the big problems we have is that resource-based tourism operators don't have land tenure," Yuan says. "Because of that, they don't know what will happen to the land next year."

This instability discourages outfitters to invest and start businesses on Crown land when there is little assurance the land won't be changed in the future.

Flawed system

Currently, Crown lands are primarily used for extractive purposes. In order to get recreation and tourism to gain some stability, Northern Ontario Tourism Outfitters (NOTO) in co-operation with the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) developed resource stewardship agreements. The process deals with each case individually between the forest unit, the MNR and the tourism operator toward mutual future goals.

While well intentioned, there are drawbacks to this approach. Not only are these agreements time consuming, but there is no legislation behind them. Thus, it is questionable whether or not they could be legally binding if tested in court.

Although the resource stewardship agreements are a step in the right direction for tourism operators, Yuan says it does not provide long-term permanence for recreation and tourism on Crown land.

"I see it as being a false sense of security in terms of land tenure."

Ultimately, Yuan would like recreation to have some legal standing as diversification is absolute key to forest, community and regional health and stability.

www.lakeheadu.ca

By ADELLE LARMOUR

Northern Ontario Business