Adjustments are being made to reservation bookings and maximum stays for provincial campgrounds, the province of Manitoba said Friday. (Mostovyi Sergii I/Shutterstock)
The province of Manitoba is changing how campground reservations are made, in an effort to avoid the long waits for booking online that frustrated many last spring, according to the CBC.
But one advocacy group says the solution to the problem of high demand isn’t tweaks to the booking system, but the creation of more spaces.
Eric Reder, the wilderness and water campaign director with the Wilderness Committee’s Manitoba branch, thinks the changes to the system announced Friday (Jan. 14) are long overdue.
“It could hardly get worse than it is — you know, people waiting for hours and not being able to get on,” he said in a phone interview with CBC News.
“The big problem isn’t the registration system. That is a major problem, but the biggest problem is that we don’t have enough parks. So, the answer to the park reservation problem in Manitoba is to grow parks. It’s as simple as that.”
Reder looks to British Columbia as an example of what can be done. In 2021, that province invested $83 million into the B.C. Parks budget over three years in response to record demand for camping spots.
“No matter how they change the park system … there are going to be Manitobans unhappy that they weren’t able to go and experience the nature and wilderness that we have because we don’t have enough space for them,” Reder said.
