Chinchaga Wildland Provincial Park
Chinchaga Wildland Provincial Park is a wildland provincial park in northwestern Alberta, Canada. The park is a environmentally protected tract of land within the of the greater Chinchaga wilderness area. It is a disjunct outlier of the Foothills Natural Region of Alberta. It was established on 15 December 1999. The greater Chinchaga area was identified in 1995 as an Environmentally Significant Area. It was designated by the Alberta Government as a protected area under the "Special Places" program. The park is administered by the Upper Peace Land Use Framework. Location The park is in Clear Hills County in northwestern Alberta about west of Manning and approximately east of the British Columbia border. The upper course of the Chinchaga River forms the Park's northern border while the southern border is the slopes of Halverson Ridge. Elevations in the Park range from less than at the Chinchaga River in the north to over at the top of Halverson Ridge. The park is extremely isolated and remote and without formal roads. The closest road is the Chinchaga Forestry Road, a high-grade gravel road running west from the Mackenzie Highway and crossing into British Columbia north of the Chinchaga River. Significant previous oil and gas exploration activity has left seismic cut lines throughout the park allowing access via off-road vehicles. History The Chinchaga area was mainly used by small populations of First Nations and Métis for hunting. Chinchaga Firestorm 1950 In the spring of 1950 the watershed of the Chinchaga River experienced drought conditions that extended over boreal regions of northern Canada. On 1 June 1950 human activity caused a forest fire in the Chinchaga area, one of the largest if not the largest in modern North American history. The ignition point was north of Fort St. John, British Columbia. At the time of the fire Imperial Oil surveying crew were on site. Other sources theorize that slash burning from agricultural clearing could have been the initial spark. The fire burned north-eastward nearly to Keg River, Alberta and continued to burn throughout the summer and early fall until the end of October. It destroyed of the Chinchaga area. Size estimates have varied due to the imprecise measurement techniques of the time period. Estimates at the time ranged from . In 2008 and 2009 the final size was considerably larger than previous estimates, placing the total burned area at . While most likely not the largest fire in the history of the North American boreal forest, it produced the largest burned area of any recorded fire on the continent. 1997 In the 1997 report commissioned by the Alberta Environmental Protection the Chinchaga Diversity Area and the Chinchaga River were designated as an Environmentally Significant Areas (ESAs). Senate Committee Report on Boreal Forest 1999 In June 1999, the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry's Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest published their report Competing Realities: The Boreal Forest at Risk which contained 35 recommendations intended to ensure that Canada adopt "a natural forest landscape-based approach to managing