No more personal canoes, kayaks at Waterton Park

If you are thinking about bringing along your canoe, kayak, paddle board or windsurf board to Waterton Lakes National Park this summer…don’t. The folks with Parks Canada say due to the threat of invasive species including harmful mussels and whirling disease non-motorized watercraft will not be permitted from outside of the park beginning April 1.

Locke Marshall, Field Unit Superintendent at Waterton Lakes National Park says this is coming into effect now despite invasive species affecting the waters for several years, because visitors with personalized watercraft have not been heeding to the check stations outside the park gates prior to putting their devices into the park’s lakes. 

In addition to Waterton, this restriction will also affect those visiting Yoho and Kootenay National Parks.

Marshall explains that because these mussels and other invasive species have no natural predator they are very prolific.

“They spread very rapidly,” says Marshall, “and as such they can – in an affected water body – they can actually filter out the greater majority of the nutrients leaving nothing for the native species so the ecosystem basically collapses. The native filter feeders die out quickly. Those animals that rely on the filter feeders for food die out and the all the way up the chain to the small and large fish that live in a place like that.”

Park visitors will still be able to rent watercraft at the lake since they remain at the park and do not cross contaminate with other bodies of water, but angling for fish will not be allowed in flowing waters such as rivers and streams inside of the national park.  Fishing in the park’s lakes, however, will continue based on current regulations.