TheSpruce Lake Protected Area, formerly known variously as theSouthern Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park,Southern Chilcotins, and also asSouth Chilcotin Provincial Park, is a 71,347-hectareProtected Area in the British Columbia provincial parks system, approximately 200 km north ofVancouver. The area had been the subject of an ongoing preservationist controversy since the 1930s. In 2007, its status as aprovincial park was downgraded to protected area.
Recreational activities in the park included hiking, cycling, swimming, fishing and hunting, and there were walk-in wilderness camping sites. Wildlife in the protected area includegrizzly bear, Californiabighorn sheep andwolverine.[1]
In June 2010, Bill 15 created the South Chilcotin Mountains Park, a "Class A" park of 56,796 hectares, from Spruce Lake Protected Area. The remaining approximately 14,550 hectares were set aside fortourism andmining, but commerciallogging is still prohibited. The bill also confirmed the implementation of the 2004 decision for mining/tourism zones in the Lillooet Land and Resource Management Plan area.[2][3]
The area was designated as aprotected area by theBritish Columbia provincial government in 2001, and then established as a Provincial Park by then-Minister of Water, Land and Air ProtectionJoyce Murray in 2004, with the new park's boundaries including 70% of the protected area and permitting limited resource extraction in the remaining area on the protected area's periphery.
The protected area designation resulted from the Lillooet Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP), which attempted to address local community, environmental, recreation and resource interests. Even though it is not in theChilcotin District proper, the area has been called the "South Chilcotins" since about 1980, when a group of conservationists started to promote the area for protection as a park. The South Chilcotin name is derived from its geographic position in theChilcotin Ranges, into theBridge River Country where the park is located. Bert Brink, one of British Columbia's most renowned naturalists, advocated for the conservation of this area for over sixty years and lived to see it become a park before he died in 2007.
The protected area was located on the inland lee of thePacific Ranges of theCoast Mountains, on the north flank of theBridge River Country and theChilcotin Country to the north. It adjoinedBig Creek Provincial Park andTsʼilʔos Provincial Park, which bordered it on the north and northwest, respectively. Part of the larger subrange of thePacific Ranges known as theChilcotin Ranges, the area was partially protected in the 1990s after 60 years of debate and controversy.
Historically this region was the hunting territory ofChief Hunter Jack of theLakes Lillooet, whose big-game hunting business shared the region with hunters of theTsilhqot'in people. The shared use of the area north of theBridge River and Gun Creek was part of the settlement of an early 19th-century peace which had ended a long and bloody war between Hunter Jack's people and theTsilhqot'in.
Trails from theBridge River Country led over the region toTaseko Lake andChilko Lake in theChilcotin Country, and also east across theCamelsfoot Range to theFraser River nearBig Bar.
The area was the object of a protracted quarrel between preservationists and resource development which first began in the 1930s when prospectors and guide-outfitters dedicated to its natural beauty proposed it for preservation status. Charlie Cunningham, whose career as a wildlife filmmaker began in this area, was a driving force in the original movement for preservation. The Charlie Cunningham Wilderness proposal was revised in the 1970s as the Spruce Lake-Eldorado park proposal, and also as the Spruce Lake Management Planning Unit, but as land-use plans impinged on the proposed park area these names were abandoned.
The area's unique and distinct landscape and ecology, different from the rest of theChilcotin Ranges or theBridge River Country, made it stand out for protection amid a region already wild and extremely beautiful beforelogging andhydroelectric development transformed the valley to the south.
Many environmentalists hope that the creation ofTsʼilʔos andBig Creek Provincial Parks will help shore up the protection of the South Chilcotin Provincial Park which remained vulnerable to government review.[citation needed] Hunting guide Ted (Chilco) Choate of Gaspard Lake, on theChilcotin Plateau, has joined in the call to combine all three parks, plus theChurn Creek Protected Area to the northeast, as well as some of the surrounding country and the deep, much higher heart of thePacific Ranges, into aNational Park. Industry and government remain publicly committed to shared use and sustainable planning.
51°03′50″N123°02′08″W / 51.06389°N 123.03556°W /51.06389; -123.03556
