Introduction

Abstract

AbstractUnlike national parks and protected areas in sparsely populated areas, the governance of near-urban parks requires a more careful balancing of conservation and recreation objectives. This study investigates an extreme and deviant case of the governance of a near-urban conservation park. At 36,131 hectares (89,282 acres), Gatineau Park is located adjacent to the Canadian cities of Ottawa and Gatineau. The park has been described by conservationists as a “semi-wilderness” (CPAWS 2008), and the park’s governing body, the National Capital Commission (NCC), recently recognized that the park’s three main sectors (Lac La Pêche, Meech-Mousseau-Lac Philippe, and Green Wedge) are fragmented ecosystems and that the park is an ecological island, completely cutoff from waterways as a result of highways and roads (NCC 2010). The Gatineau Park provides a deviant case in that privately-owned lands have not only been allowed to persist through a piecemeal approach to land acquisitions, but that “park residents” have been accommodated by federal and municipal authorities. The end result is both the complication of the park’s planning and management, and the environmental degradation through urbanization, especially in the park’s central area of Kingsmere and Meech Lake. The case study is extreme because, unlike national parks and provincial areas generally, Gatineau Park is unique in that it does not have protected legislation, setting out either the park’s administrative mandates, boundaries, or oversight. After providing the rationale for the phronetic approach adopted in this study, the Introduction turns to the conceptual lenses employed of jurisdiction, territory, and mobility.