Garibaldi at Squamish Ski Resort Project EIA (HD Map)

Part 1. MEMO

Prepared for: British Columbia Snowmobile Federation (BCSF)

Project: Garibaldi at Squamish Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)

Prepared by: Shunqi Zhang, Natural Resource Planner, UBC Geography Dept.

1. Project Description

Proposed by British Columbia Snowmobile Federation (BCSF), this projects aims to analyze the environmental impact of Garibaldi at Squamish Resort construction. In 2010, BC Environmental Assessment Ofﬁce reports that the initial project proposal lacks the information on the potential effects on vegetation, ﬁsh and wildlife habitat. Therefore, this EIA project focus on identifying the potential environmental concerns on those natural resources mentioned above. Meanwhile, this study also re-examines the “climatological considerations rule out reliable skiing on the lower 555m of vertical” criticism from the Resort Municipality of Whistler in 1997 .

2. Data & Methodology

This project is conducted based on Undulated Winter Range & Old Growth Forest data obtained from DataBC and Terrestrial Resource Information Management (TRIM), Terrestrial Ecosystem Mapping (TEM), Park & Project Boundary, Digital Elevation Model (DEM) provided by UBC Geography Department. The entire analysis is performed on ESRI ArcGIS platform.

The data preparation process involves Data Acquisition, Data Parsing, Data Filtering, Data Mining. Data is parsed by creating geodatabase and ﬁle re-organizing, data ﬁltering is completed by clipping raster/vector layers from ArcTools based on the project boundary polygon shapeﬁle.

To perform this GIS analysis, multiple data mining techniques are used:

• Reclassify: some data is reclassiﬁed to two types: Elevation lower than 555m and Elevation on and above 555m. example, creating different buffer zones based on the elevation of river (50m for rivers lower than 555m elevation and 100m for rivers higher than 555m elevation).

• Conversion: Convert raster DEM data (reclassiﬁed) to vector polygon data.

• Spatial Join: To perform elevation related analysis we need to assign river vector with elevation information by join function.

• Select by Attribute with Boolean expressions: This technique is widely used throughout the data mining process. For example, creating new layers, identifying endangered ecosystems, creating snowline contour

• Union & Dissolve: In order to calculate the overall protected area, union command is used to create a new layer and dissolve command helps to dissolve the overlapped area. Statistics: Statistics function is used when calculating the percentage of total projected area that meets certain criterion.

• Editor: Editor is used to edit the attribute data in creating red-listed species (endangered ecosystems) layers.

3. Findings

Based on the GIS Analysis, the potentially impacted areas and the percentages of total projected area are listed below:

• Old Growth Forest: 6.78%

• Ungulate Habitats: 7.89%

• Fish Habitats: 26.02%

• Red-listed Species (Endangered Ecosystems): 24.8%

• Area with unreliable snow condition (below 555m): 29.93%

• Total Protected Area: 52.63%

4. Analysis & Implications

According to the Analysis, the two greatest environmental concerns are the potential damage to red-listed species (endangered ecosystems) and ﬁsh habitats as they cover the largest percentages of projected areas, namely 24.8% and 26.02%. For Old Growth Forest and Ungulate Habitats, I personally ﬁnd them less vulnerable to human interference compared to the former two since its possible to set up ski area boundaries and permanently closed areas (like many ski resorts now) then leave these areas intact.

With 29.93% of the projected area has unreliable natural snow conditions, artiﬁcial snowmaking might be required. However this is not an economically feasible and environmental friendly solution due to large consumption on water and power. Meanwhile, almost the entire lower areas are endangered ecosystems and ﬁsh habitats, the construction of the resort will certainly damage those red-listed species as well as ﬁsh habitat riparian management zones.

Fish habitats are also at high risk of direct impact caused by resort construction. Also due to the scattered distribution of streams, available skiable areas become limited and discontinuous, showing a relative low recreational value from snow sport players’ perspective.

In order to mitigate the detrimental environmental impact, the solution is to build the recreation zone above the red-listed species area, however, the impact on ﬁsh habitats is unable to avoid due to their scattered distributions in higher elevations. In fact, with more than 50% the project areas are ecologically fragile, it is not a good idea to establish a ski resort here.

Therefore, for the sake of the natural environment (and skier/snowboarders’ happiness too), the project should be opposed based on this EIA project.

Part 2. Personal Insights

I personally would not agree with this project which I have also wrote in the memo. The ski resort itself has dramatic detrimental impact to the environment given the fact more than half of the projected areas are protected area. And even if the construction of the resort fully follow the environment protection plan, the recreation value has been decreased. With a large proportion of area thats under the 555m snowfall line, artificial snowmaking is required and this would cost a huge amount of power, and neither is this a economically feasible plan. Since Whistler already has a mature ski-based industry chain with world-class facilities, I also doubt this project’s quality compared to Whistler Blackcomb.