FAQs
- Providing public transit access to popular destinations
- Closing roads overnight to limit human disturbance
- Communicating how to behave in a wilderness area to visitors
- Implementing permits and restrictions
- Investing in expanding and improving infrastructure.
What is Visitor Use Management?
Visitor Use Management includes all the different ways the park manages how visitors and residents use the park – this can be in terms of type, amount, distribution, and timing of use. Visitor Use Management Planning is a tool adopted by national parks and world heritage areas across North America and around the world to help manage the impacts of people on ecosystems and improve the quality of park experiences for visitors and residents alike.
Why is Visitor Use Management planning needed?
Jasper National Park has seen increasing visitation for years.
Parks Canada currently uses many strategies to effectively manage visitation across the Park, including reservations, encouraging trip planning, Jasper Now, and informing visitors about appropriate behaviour in natural spaces and ways to avoid human-wildlife conflict.
While many areas of the park are managed as wilderness, and see low levels of visitation, this increase in visitation is having significant impacts in popular destinations like Lake Annette and Lake Edith, Pyramid and Patricia Lakes, Mount Edith Cavell, Maligne Canyon, Valley of the Five Lakes, and Old Fort Point.
Impacts associated with this increase include increased traffic congestion, crowding, delayed emergency responses, infrastructure capacity, and increased disturbance to wildlife and vegetation.
Parks Canada believes that planning work is needed for these areas where, as visitation continues to increase, existing strategies may no longer be sufficient to ensure high-quality visitor experiences, visitor safety, and resource protection.
How will Visitor Use Management Planning take place in Jasper?
In developing a Visitor Use Management Plan for Jasper, Parks Canada will follow a process called the Interagency Visitor Use Management Framework. This framework has been adopted by the United States National Park Service and protected areas around the world. It represents an internationally recognized best practice for sustainable tourism in protected areas.
The framework provides a process for balancing the complex challenge of providing authentic, high-quality visitor experiences while protecting park resources. The process helps balance visitor use characteristics like the type, timing, amount, and distribution of visitation with protecting the broad valleys, rugged mountains, glaciers, vast forests, alpine meadows and wild rivers that make Jasper special.
Engagement with Indigenous partners, stakeholders, and the public is beginning in summer 2024 to better understand views on the challenges and opportunities associated with increased visitation to Jasper. This feedback will help inform the development of visitor use management strategies and actions. We intend to engage with partners, stakeholders, and the public on draft strategies and actions in 2025.
For more information on the visitor use management framework, please visit the Interagency Visitor Use Management Council website .
How can I get involved?
An important part of the development of the Visitor Use Management Plan is in understanding the perspectives and aspirations of interested Indigenous communities, key stakeholders and Canadians.
Parks Canada is currently seeking feedback on the challenges and opportunities associated with increased visitation to Jasper. This feedback will help inform the development of draft visitor use management strategies and actions. Consultation on these draft visitor use management strategies is planned for 2025 before any are implemented.
What are some examples of Visitor Use Management strategies and actions?
Many may be familiar with timed-entry reservations that are being implemented in US National Parks, or with the closure of Moraine Lake Road to personal vehicle use.
The scope and scale of visitation challenges in US National Parks and in Banff National Park are different from Jasper.
A key principle in developing Visitor Use Management strategies and actions will be ensuring that the approaches chosen are grounded in what makes Jasper special and are proportional to the scope and scale of challenges Jasper faces.
Other Visitor Use Management strategies and actions that have been implemented in other protected areas include:
