The Garibaldi at Squamish project is a proposed year-round destination mountain resort on Brohm Ridge, which includes 124 ski trails and 21 lifts, plus resort accommodation and commercial developments. In addition, the Resort Municipality of Whistler has opposed to this project due to environmental inconsistencies. My role in this project is to provide an environmental assessment to clarify the conditions of the resort with the use of maps and results. To do this, I extracted the land use data contained in the project boundary, and classify it for this analysis. Then I extracted specific required data to solve certain parameters of the project, including snow range, red-listed species, and other ecosystems, to determine which areas are interfering with the resort planning. At last, I was able to produce helpful percentages and visual representations regarding the environmental assessment for this project. After analyzing the results, the project area contains 52.62% occupied by old growth forest, ungulate habitat, red-listed ecosystems and fish habitats. Also, 29.91% of the total area is in a low snow location due to the elevation of the terrain.
In my opinion, the project is viable as long as it has a creative approximation to the area, so it doesn’t interfere with the surrounding ecosystems. The two major challenges are the fish habitat and the old growth forest, because any disturbance in the water can affect the rest of the ecosystem and the forest is a static entity. However, the forest can be incorporated into the project in architectonic terms, and the fish habitat should be preserved by having no human interaction, but still allowing the surrounding animal life to keep having habitual contact with it.
Finally, I believe that the project should be allowed if it respects all the criteria involved in the environmental assesment, by implementing all norms and regulations to protect the area. However, if the protected areas are going to be violated by any aspects regarding the construction and later activities of this resort, then the authorization should be denied by all means.