I've stood in some mighy-mouthed hollow that's plumb-full of hush to the brim...

There are valleys unpeopled and still...

selections from The Spell of the Yukon, by Robert Service

After a few days of hiding out in Waterton National Park earlier this summer, our family decided to take the long way home through Montana and the US Glacier National Park. It was new country for us and the famous Going to Sun Road beckoned.

We were not alone. This year is Glacier's 100th anniversary and to say it's a busy place is an understatement. On top of the tourists, U.S. stimulus money has spurred significant construction work on the seasonal Going to the Sun Road resulting in multiple 10 to 20 minute waits along much of the historic route.

Mind you, there are far worse places to be stuck in traffic. Take a vintage car rally with hundreds of Model T era vehicles, add the jaw-dropping backdrop of Glacier's mountains and a 15 minute wait on the road will pass very quickly, allowing bumper-to-bumper, 30 km/h traffic to continue. Ah, wilderness!

At the Logan Pass interpretive centre things got worse. Finding a parking space is easier at a shopping mall at Christmas - find someone walking toward their vehicle and wait for them to leave. Once on foot, we found a table set up in front of the centre with folks gathering signatures on a petition for Canada to designate a large chunk of the Flathead River Valley in British Columbia as a National Park.

I've written before on my misgivings of a National Park in the Flathead. I'm in a supporter of National Parks, but I don't think the Flathead needs one and it could well be counter-productive to 'protecting' the wilderness for which the Flathead is now famous.

Seeing a petition-gathering exhibit in a foreign country got my hackles up. I didn't start telling them where to take their petition, but I do have an issue with a campaign to target folks with little background on, or vested interest in, the Flathead (in either Montana or BC). Having just spent far too much time in the parking lot, I can assure you that the license plates haled from all over the US and I'm willing to bet that was the only time most of them will have given a thought to the Flathead River in British Columbia.

If the Flathead is to remain wild, then perhaps it's just as well they don't come visit. And if being a National Park means visitation rates even half of what was on the Going to the Sun Road, the Flathead will be in a for a big change.

To me, the main reason the Flathead remains a wild place, "plumb-full of hush to the brim," is not for lack of industrial development, for the valley has witnessed its fair share over the years. Yet it remains a place with "remarkable diversity" according to Wildsight.

Rather, it is the absence of a permanent human presence that protects the Flathead. One of the largest, unpopulated valleys in southern Canada it is this room to roam that has helped maintain the Flathead in its current state.

Last month's UNESCO report on the Waterton-Glacier World Heritage property recognized the Flathead's importance, but does not call for the Canadian Flathead valley to be made a park. A key conclusion of the UNESCO report directly counters Parks Canada's current management directive of increasing visitation. To maintain ecological connectivity throughout the greater Waterton-Glacier-Flathead "Crown of the Continent" ecosystem, the report recommends "minimising future infrastructure development and removal of unnecessary structures, maintenance of core natural areas and rehabilitation of degraded areas, and development of a pro-active plan for enhancing connectivity in the area." That's what a National Park should do, but the experience of Banff and Glacier and others suggests reality is often otherwise.

There are opportunities to retain the Flathead's significant ecological value without making it into a tourist trap. Let's start with revising the Southern Rockies Regional Management Plan while examining opportunities for a Wildlife Management Area. The key to keeping the Flathead wild is to have the valley "unpeopled and still." We can do that without a National Park.