Dinosaur Provincial Park (DPP)

Dinosaur Provincial Park (DPP) was established on June 27th, 1955 and is located near Brooks, Alberta in our country’s largest bad land (“Dinosaur Provincial”, 2014). The landscape has a unique habitat for bird biodiversity, and is the origin of the most dinosaur fossils ever discovered (“Dinosaur Provincial”, 2014; Evans, 2010). Dinosaur Provincial Park became a world heritage site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on October 26th, 1979 (“Dinosaur Provincial”, 2014; “Park research”, 2014). While the park management plan is in development, DPP is currently governed by the Alberta Government’s Provincial Parks Act (“Park Research”, 2014). The ecological values all Alberta provincial parks, and consequently

The underlying intrinsic value here is one of biodiversity (Dudley et al., 2010). This value is important in DPP due to the Cotton Wood trees that are part of an “endangered riverine ecosystem” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2014,para. 2) for an extensive habitat of birds (“Park research”, 2014).

The third purpose of Alberta Provincial Parks and the most noticeable when visiting DPP is “preservation of specified areas, landscapes and natural features and objects… that are of … scientific interest or importance” (“Provincial Parks Act”, 1977, p.3) The value of human knowledge (Dudley et al., 2010) is engrained in this park, and we can see this in its agreements with scientific researchers, academic institutions and most notably, the Royal Tyrell Museum (“Park Research”, 2014) There is a rich history of scientific exploration and palaeontology in the bad lands (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica,

The legislation for all of Alberta’s provincial parks has a blanketing effect, that neglects key values of a distinctive and unique park, like DPP. It imposes the government of Alberta’s values broadly, without taking into account every diverse park’s specificities. It would perhaps be beneficial for the Park Management Plan that is currently being created to be more specific to the park by having a heavier emphasis on intrinsic biodiversity values to protect cotton wood trees, the birds that live near them, and to also the landscape and the bones buried below them for scientific purposes. Values like recreation that would work for other provincial parks, like Fish Creek Provincial Park in metro Calgary are, in my own experience at DPP, hurting it’s landscape and overshadowing other value that should be prioritized in the