the larger subrange of the Pacific Ranges known as the Chilcotin Ranges, the area was partially protected in the 1990s after 60 years of debate and controversy. First Nations history Historically this region was the hunting territory of Chief Hunter Jack of the Lakes Lillooet, whose big-game hunting business shared the region with hunters of the Tsilhqot'in people. The shared use of the area north of the Bridge River and Gun Creek was part of the settlement of an early 19th-century peace which had ended a long and bloody war between Hunter Jack's people and the Tsilhqot'in. Trails from the Bridge River Country led over the region to Taseko Lake and Chilko Lake in the Chilcotin Country, and also east across the Camelsfoot Range to the Fraser River near Big Bar. Controversy The area was the object of a protracted quarrel between preservationists and resource development which first began in the 1930s when prospectors and guide-outfitters dedicated to its natural beauty proposed it for preservation status. Charlie Cunningham, whose career as a wildlife filmmaker began in this area, was a driving force in the original movement for preservation. The Charlie Cunningham Wilderness proposal was revised in the 1970s as the Spruce Lake-Eldorado park proposal, and also as the Spruce Lake Management Planning Unit, but as land-use plans impinged on the proposed park area these names were abandoned. The area's unique and distinct landscape and ecology, different from the rest of the Chilcotin Ranges or the Bridge River Country, made it stand out for protection amid a region already wild and extremely beautiful before logging and hydroelectric development transformed the valley to the south. Many environmentalists hope that the creation of Tsʼilʔos and Big Creek Provincial Parks will help shore up the protection of the South Chilcotin Provincial Park which remained vulnerable to government review. Hunting guide Ted (Chilco) Choate of Gaspard Lake, on the Chilcotin Plateau, has joined in the call to combine all three parks, plus the Churn Creek Protected Area to the northeast, as well as some of the surrounding country and the deep, much higher heart of the Pacific Ranges, into a National Park. Industry and government remain publicly committed to shared use and sustainable planning. Notes External links BC Parks - Spruce Lake Protected Area Chilcotin Ranges entry in the Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia Aerial view of Spruce Lake and (R) Eldorado Mountain from Randall & Kat's