FLMF Access Management Study
Beginning in October 2008, a review of tools and strategies for access management was carried out on behalf of the Foothills Research Institute. The review was funded by the Energy Partners to the Institute, directed by the Foothills Landscape Management Forum (FLMF) and explicitly focused on how access was and could be managed on public lands. The goal of the review was to provide an information base that would facilitate the development of a comprehensive access management pilot project in Alberta.
At the start of this review, the FLMF posed four questions:
• How is access management done?
• How is it adopted?
• What regulatory and non-regulatory tools are employed?
• How effective are they?
To answer the questions, the consultant, Eos Research & Consulting Ltd., completed a literature review, interviewed experts in government, industry, academia and among public user groups, and undertook a survey of public land managers, users and other interested parties. While the work focused on three principle jurisdictions: Alberta, British Columbia and U.S. federal lands, documents and information from other parts of Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom were also reviewed.
Perhaps the overriding lesson is that access management is one of the most difficult land use planning problems. This is particularly true when the objective involves denying public users access to existing routes. That being said, the following answers are offered in response to the original questions:
How is access management done?
Done well, access management involves an integrated system that includes clear goals and objectives, planning, communication, physical measures, enforcement, performance measurement, monitoring and review.
How is it adopted?
Access management is usually adopted as the result of a planning process that strives to balance a range of competing interests.
What regulatory and non-regulatory tools are employed?
The tools employed by jurisdictions wanting to manage access on public land range from legislative tools such as Alberta’s Public Lands Act to physical measures such as gates and road decommissioning.
How effective are they?
All of the tools provide some level of effectiveness in the right situation. However, effectiveness appears to be closely correlated to the setting in which tools are applied and, to the supporting measures that they are adopted in combination with. For example, a gate is more effective if employed in a physical setting that does not permit traffic to easily detour around it, where the reason for its presence is explained in terms that relate to users’ interests and where there is some level of enforcement to reinforce its purpose.
The FLMF and the Energy Partners continue to work on this issue. As a first step towards implementation, the FLMF has agreed with Alberta SRD to develop a secondary road plan in the Berland-Smoky Access Management Area. Other initiatives are expected to follow.