Joe Pavelka at Arts Place
Save the Date!
On June 25th Protecting our Futures will be hosting a talk by Joe Pavelka, PhD, at artsPlace. Joe is Professor at Mount Royal University. His doctoral dissertation examined resort community evolution and amenity migration. He was also a consultant to the Town of Canmore on the current Recreational Master Plan. Over the course of his career, Joe has authored several research articles, two books, and is a public speaker on sustainable tourism and destination planning.
The event will start at 7:00 pm with further details to follow.
Status of the Development Proposal? Unknown
The Developer has not indicated when a formal proposal will be submitted to the Town of Canmore Planning Department for review. We do not know whether a proposal will be submitted, when it will be submitted, when the Town of Canmore Planning Department’s review will be completed and if a recommendation, either for or against the project, will be made to Council. It appears that a proposal may not reach Council prior to the October 2025 Canmore Town Council election.
Stay Up to Date
It is possible that Council could vote on the project within four weeks of receiving a recommendation from the Canmore Planning Department. That is, the four steps in the process: the announcement of the project recommendation, a public hearing, the second and third reading of the Council decision, could all be completed within one month. It is crucial that we are all ready to respond.
Please stay engaged and encourage your neighbors, local friends and families to stay informed of the status of the project, add their names to the petition and to our mailing list.
Protecting our Futures Needs Your Help!
Do you have an interest in preserving the proposed hotel and spa site in accordance with its designation as “Community Open Space and Recreation Lands”? Would you enjoy working with a highly committed group of Canmore residents? Do you have skills in the areas of public engagement, effective communication, networking or graphic design? Or would you be willing to go door knocking, put up posters etc.? We would love to hear from you! Please contact protectingourfutures@gmail.com if you have the interest and capacity to help out.
Wildlife Impacts
Protecting our Futures has been working with a wildlife biologist to better understand what effects the proposed spa/hotel could have on wolves, grizzly bears, elk and other wildlife that we know use the areas around Rundleview.
According to the developer, the proposed spa/hotel will clear 9-12 acres of open space that wildlife currently frequent. In a valley where cumulative effects are ever increasing, another incremental, direct loss of habitat is not acceptable. But it’s the impact beyond those 9-12 acres that may be even more important.
The proposed development site directly abuts the Quarry Lake Local Habitat Patch and Georgetown-Quarry Lake Wildlife Corridor. Both of these protected areas are already compromised in their capacity to support wildlife, due to their small size and high levels of human activity (Herrero and Jevons 2000, BCEAG 2012). Best practices for wildlife indicate we should be limiting development on lands adjacent to these habitats – not increasing it (Ford et al 2020, Integral Ecology Group / Y2Y 2022). In fact, the Bow Valley Ecosystem Advisory Group guidelines are clear that hotel development is not appropriate within such close proximity to a habitat patch (BCEAG 2012). The Town of Canmore has committed to following these guidelines (Town of Canmore Municipal Development Plan 2016, sections 4.2.12, 4.2.13).
The proposed spa/hotel location, is approximately a half a kilometer connection between the regionally-significant Georgetown Canmore Nordic Centre Habitat Patch and the Quarry Lake Habitat Patch. The Quarry Lake Habitat Patch continues approximately one kilometer to the Three Sisters Along Valley Wildlife Corridor. Together these four parcels (of which the proposed spa/hotel location is an integral part) comprise one of the few remaining routes via which wildlife can travel between Banff National Park and Kananaskis Country. Observations of wolves in Three Sisters and frequent grizzly bear sightings around Nordic Centre and Grassi Lakes confirm the importance of these areas for connectivity (Integral Ecology Group / Y2Y 2022). Research overwhelmingly indicates that wildlife’s ability to continue to travel through this habitat depends on human activity and development on nearby lands (BCEAG 2012, Ford et al 2020, Whittington et al 2022, Thompson et al 2025).
If anything, in fact, new studies show that the impacts of nearby development on wildlife movement and other behaviour are likely more extensive than previously thought. Recent investigations into the zones of influence of human activity, wildlife flight initiation distances, and disturbance in the Bow Valley suggest that the hotel and spa will negatively affect wildlife use habitat several hundred [CH1] meters away from the development footprint (Ford et al 2020, Thompson et al 2025). We also know that wild animals are most likely to travel through high human-use areas at night rather than during the day (Gaynor et al 2018, Whittington et al 2022). Increased foot and vehicle traffic, noise, and lights at night around a hotel will deny animals this nighttime security, further reducing the likelihood that wildlife will use adjacent corridors and habitat patches.
Of course, the potential for human-wildlife conflict is a significant concern. Twenty-five years ago, provincial ecologists observed wolves turning around at the Rundle Forebay and noted it was a “major barrier to wildlife movement” that risked forcing wildlife to move through the Rundleview neighborhood on their way to and from South Canmore and Banff National Park (Herrero and Jevons 2000). The proposed development site is one of the few remaining locations where wildlife can still skirt the Rundleview neighborhood.
As of 2022, more than 85% of habitat suitable for travel of wolves and grizzly bears had already been lost from the Bow Valley (Whittington et al. 2022). The science is clear: The development of a spa/hotel adjacent to habitat patches and wildlife corridors will only serve to further undermine the functionality of those spaces for wildlife. Canmore’s Municipal Development Plan states: While the natural environment and the recreational opportunities within and surrounding Canmore will continue to be a primary economic driver for the community and a competitive advantage of the town, it must not come at the expense of the environment, including wildlife”. Protecting our Futures will be reminding the Town of this responsibility as well as its obligation to consider the BCEAG Wildlife Corridor and Habitat Patch Guidelines for the Bow Valley for development proposals adjacent to habitat patches and wildlife corridors.
Literature cited:
Town of Canmore Municipal Development Plan (2016)
Bow Corridor Ecosystem Advisory Group. 2012. Wildlife Corridor and Habitat Patch Guidelines for the Bow Valley (update). 143 pages.
Ford, A. T., Sunter, E. J., Fauvelle, C., Bradshaw, J. L., Ford, B., Hutchen,J., Phillipow, N., & Teichman, K. J. (2020). Effective corridor width: Linking the spatial ecology of wildlife with land use policy. European Journal of Wildlife Research, 66(4), 69.
Gaynor, K., C. Hojnowski, N. Carter, and J.S. Brashares. 2018. The Influence of Human Disturbance on Wildlife Nocturnality. Science 360: 1232-1235.
Grizzly Bear Movement and Conflict Risk in the Bow Valley: A Cumulative Effects Model. 2022. Matt Carlson, Integral Ecology Group and Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.
Herrero, J and S Jevons. 2000. Assessing the Design and Functionality of Wildlife Movement Corridors in the Southern Canmore Region
Thompson PR, Paczkowski J, Whittington J and CC St. Clair. 2025. Integrating human trail use in montane landscapes reveals larger zones of human influence for wary carnivores. Journal of Applied Ecology 62: 344-359.
Whittington, J., Hebblewhite, M., Baron, R. W., Ford, A. T., & Paczkowski, J. (2022). Towns and trails drive carnivore movement behaviour, resource selection, and connectivity. Movement Ecology, 10(1), 17.
[CH1]Could also say, “200-500” m away – especially if indicated that the 3 Sisters Corridor and Georgetown/CNC habitat patch are within this distance in previous paragraph