Skills Acquired:

• Gained familiarity with BC Government TRIM data (Terrestrial Resource Information Management)
• Employed tools including clipping, reclassification, merging, buffering, and spatial joining
• Made selections by attributes in order to statistically quantify areal percentages of ecosystem affected
• Exercised technical writing skills for the purpose of a realistic environmental consultancy scenario

Ethics and Environmental Projects

I personally believe, my perspective being aligned with that which I espoused in the memo below, that the Garibaldi at Squamish Project is unfeasible, given that the project as presently proposed has been quantitatively shown to affect an unconscionably large proportion of the proposed area: 52.7% of the proposed area falls within the habitats of red-listed species. In contrast to the tone set by the memo, however, I would not personally believe that economic considerations (in particular, the fact that the areas lower than 600m are anticipated by models of future climate change to experience very low levels of snowfall) should enter into an environmental impact analysis. In our current capitalistic society, it is not the role of the government to proclaim which projects or businesses should be allowed to enter the market, on the basis of the feasibility of their business plans alone. The essence of free enterprise relies upon a generally permissive regulatory environment, in which businesses succeed, and businesses fail – and they must have the freedom to do so, even if scientists believe their efforts futile. I am therefore personally of the opinion that environmental impacts should be the sole criterion for an impact assessment, irrespective of the presence of legitimate economic concerns.

The aforementioned report is reproduced below, with two accompanying maps to display the results:

eia_garibaldiatsquamish

eia_garibaldiatsquamish_hillshade

Memo: Summary of an Environmental Impact Assessment of the Garibaldi at Squamish Project

The Garibaldi at Squamish project is a proposed year-round mountain resort in British Columbia. Located on Brohm Ridge, it is situated 15km North of Squamish, 80km North of Vancouver, and 45km South of Whistler. As of January 2016, it has received conditional approval for the construction of 124 ski trails and 21 ski lifts, in addition to accommodation and commercial development.
As a natural resource planner, I state as disclaimer that I have been commissioned by the BCSF (British Columbia Snowmobile Federation) –an entity initially opposed to the project- to assess whether there remains sufficient evidence to continue to oppose the project, or whether the relevant concerns can be addressed alongside the project’s approval. I will evaluate specifically the project’s viability in light of environmental considerations that include: Ungulate Winter Range (UWR), Old Growth Management Areas (OGMA), habitat of various red-listed species, proximity to rivers, and climatological considerations pertaining to elevation.
In terms of this study’s methodology, data acquisition consisted of first querying and then downloading data from the DataBC website as well as the G-drive of the University of British Columbia’s Geography Lab. Main data sources include a Digital Elevation Model of BC, the locations of the project boundaries, Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping (TEM) data, Terrestrial Resource Information Management (TRIM) data, in addition to spatial data pertaining to UWR and OGMA from the DataBC website. Data was then filtered by selecting only data contained within the project area.
Having filtered the data, data analysis proceeded by determining the project area located below 600m, based on a Digital Elevation Model for BC. The percentage relative to total project area was then determined for Old Growth Forest by adding up the various OGWAs and dividing by the total project area. An analogous process was performed for UWR (specifically, the Mule Deer and Mountain Goat species) and red-listed species (ie. Cat’s-tail Moss, Cladina, Falsebox, Flat Moss, Kinnikinnick, and Salal), though this required initial selection of the subset of the respective dataset that corresponded to each of these species. The percentage relative to total project area of fish-bearing streams and within fish habitat adjacent to streams was calculated by first classifying each river based upon whether it was above or below the 600m elevation threshold. Then, the ‘Buffer’ tool in ArcToolbox was employed to determine all areas up to 100m or 50m away from these rivers, where a 100m buffer was assigned to rivers below 600m and a 50m buffer assigned to those above 600m. It should be noted that this elevation-dependent buffering was chosen due to the perceived lower probability that rivers above 600m are fish-bearing. Finally, the various aforementioned protected areas were overlain upon one another in order to determine the percentage of total project area covered by protected areas, and a map was produced to represent the size and shapes of the protected areas, over the span of the entire project area.
The primary result of the analysis described reveals that 52.7% of the proposed project area falls within areas subject to protection, owing from the presence of Old Growth Forest, Ungulate species habitat, red-listed species habitat, and fish-bearing rivers or areas in close proximity to such. With respect to these individual components, the analogous percentages relative to total project area are 6.8%, 7.8%, 24.8%, and 26.3%, respectively. (It should be noted that the sum of these latter percentages is greater than the 52.7% figure because there is overlap amongst the areas.) Furthermore, the
analogous percentages for specific species’ habitat are 4.2%, 3.6% and 0.5%, 5.4%, 1.5%, 0.3%, 16.0%, 0%, 1.1% for Ungulate (Mule Deer, Mountain Goat) and red-listed species (Cat’s-tail Moss, Cladina, Falsebox, Flat Moss, Kinnikinnick, Salal), respectively. Finally, a calculated 26.3% of the proposed project area falls below 600m elevation.
On the basis of these results, a number of recommendations shall now be made. Firstly, on the basis that the majority of the proposed project area (52.7%) falls within protected areas, it would seem reckless to approve the building of a ski resort, with the need for deforestation and construction along the slope thus engendered. Barring changes to these habitats, the fact that the protected area is such a large proportion of the total project area would appear to render mitigation efforts infeasible.
Secondly, the fact that approximately one-quarter of the area (26.3%) falls below the 600m elevation deemed generally infeasible for skiing -owing from projections of future climate change suggests that much of the proposed lower ski area would require continual and substantial ‘snow-making’, implying potential future economic unsustainability in light of climate change. A detailed climate modeling analysis would however be required to attain quantitative projections of future regional climate change and further substantiate this claim. Nonetheless, even in the absence of such knowledge, visual inspection of the map (‘GaribaldiAtSquamish.pdf’) illustrates that the vast majority of the project area below 600m is covered by protected species’ habitat (particularly Flat Moss and Salal) and the 100m fish-bearing river buffer, rendering efforts to build at these low elevations especially destructive. Such damage could perhaps be mitigated by building a chairlift at the North-Western extent of the project area, such that ski runs would run from the South-Eastern extent downhill to the North-West, being careful to cross as few rivers and OGWAs as possible.
Conversely, independent of environmental concerns, issues of a more logistical nature do not appear to present significant problems. Road access is fairly well spread out, though the NE corner of the project area is not well-serviced. Additionally, park boundaries do not in principle pose any concern, seeing as the project boundary at its North-Eastern and Southern extent appears to be coincident with the park boundary. It may not be guaranteed, however, that park visitors would adhere strictly to such a boundary, in which case a small buffer between the ski area boundary and the park boundary would be advisable.
In summary, the fact that the majority of the proposed area of the Garibaldi at Squamish Project is presently classified as protected leads this report to conclude that approval of the project in its present form is inadvisable. However, were the project area to be restricted to only terrains above 600m, and were care taken to build ski runs by crossing a minimum of rivers, Old Growth Management Areas, and Ungulate Winter Range, environmental impact could be substantially reduced.