The land and ice desired by Vancouver resort promoter Oberto Oberti is your land. Oberti and his provincial government lobbyists are attempting to privatize control over 6000 hectares of public land, including the surface of Jumbo Glacier, for the profit of Oberti and his investors.

In anticipation of the handover of public lands to Oberti, the government contemplates the closure of even more surrounding lands to human access, commercial recreation, and hunting as an attempt to manage the direct damage to grizzly bears caused by the resort and its users.

“The introduction of 6000 bed units, ski lifts and increased vehicular access will have a significant longer-term impact on the natural environment. The development of the resort will encourage private ownership which could impact public access, use and enjoyment of the area.”

- 2005 District of Invermere Development Services Report to Council

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“For the people who live here the glacier is clearly something they value, so why should an exploitative developer take it over -- it is absolutely absurd.”

- David Schindler, Canada’s pre-eminent expert on climate change

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“ ...off-site mitigation could consist of access management including public consultation and planning, road deactivation, constructing physical obstructions such as gates on roads and undertaking other access management measures to reduce the impacts of motorized access on grizzly bears."

“Another offsite mitigation measure that is described in the Grizzly Bear Management Plan is to establish a process to ensure that applications for commercial recreation tenures that are likely to have detrimental effect on grizzly bears or grizzly bear habitat that can not be mitigated are not approved..."

“In addition, if human-caused mortalities do occur as a result of the project, the provincial government will need to reduce hunting opportunities to offset this impact."

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“There is substantial opposition to access management for the purpose of mitigating the impacts of this project on grizzly bears which gives rise to concerns about the level of compliance with access restrictions if government chooses to establish them."

- Matt Austin, Large Carnivore Specialist, Ministry of Environment