What the heck is Sierra Club BC doing in Northern Alberta!?
UNESCO is considering de-listing one of Canada's World Heritage Sites
Indigenous peoples are defending their territories and cultures from impacts to one of the world's largest inland freshwater deltas. This video from The Narwhal shines a spotlight on threats to Wood Buffalo National Park from the Site C dam and tarsands development. Take action to stop Site C and protect Canada's largest national park: https://sierraclub.bc.ca/stop-site-cRead more about this unique landscape and the threats it faces: http://bit.ly/WoodBuffaloPark
Posted by Sierra Club BC on Monday, July 30, 2018
By Galen Armstrong, Peace Valley Campaigner
June 2018
When we started working on the Site C dam, it was for mostly BC-centric reasons. BC Hydro ratepayers would have to foot the multi-billion dollar bill for an unnecessary megadam. BC residents would be essentially losing the Peace River Valley, and losing the benefit of the food grown there. As Canadians, we would be violating Treaty 8, which guarantees the rights of Treaty 8 First Nations to use the land – rights which can’t be exercised when the land is flooded.
The list of problems with Site C goes on and on – and like the mighty Peace River, it doesn’t stop in BC. The Peace’s headwaters are in BC’s Rocky Mountains, fed by the Finlay River, Halfway River, Parsnip River and other tributaries as it flows eastward and northward into Alberta.
Having worked with the Mikisew Cree First Nation to initiate a UNESCO mission to Wood Buffalo National Park and the Peace-Athabasca Delta within it, our campaign to protect BC’s Peace River inevitably moved beyond the BC border.
With Canada refusing to assess Site C’s impact on the Delta, we decided to return – this time with photographer Louis Bockner – to capture photographs of this huge, internationally significant delta.
The Narwhal also sent reporter Judith Lavoie along on the mission to report on the story. We met with Indigenous elders in and around the delta. Watch the video above to find out more.
Judith also put together a rich series with these stunning photos and video footage to draw attention to Canada’s failure to protect its largest national park. Please check it out here:
Wood Buffalo: Canada’s largest national park and its people in peril – June 26, 2018
Where is the action to save Wood Buffalo National Park? – June 27, 2018
‘Nowhere else to turn’: First Nations inundated by oilsands projects face impossible choices – June 30, 2018
You can also find and share Louis’ stunning photos on our Facebook album.
In addition, here are a few snapshots I took along the way:
Here is a relatively quiet section of the Slave River, just North of Wood Buffalo National Park. We visited with locals fishing from the banks. The Slave drains the Peace-Athabasca Delta and flows into Great Slave Lake, which is drained by the Mackenzie into the Arctic Ocean.
A wilder section of the Slave River, where migrating American white pelicans feed on fish in the rapids.
A view out of the window on our flyover of Wood Buffalo National Park and the Peace-Athabasca Delta, where the boreal forest meets the boreal plains. Later in the trip, we did a flyover of the Tar Sands and the proposed site of Teck’s Frontier Oil Sands Mine Project, which would be the largest Tar Sands mine ever built.
After driving through the Park, we met a boat and were taken down the Peace River to Fort Chipewyan. This small community is accessible by boat and plane only except for a few months when it’s cold enough to open the frozen winter road – a window of time growing shorter each year. Reporter Judith Lavoie interviews the boat’s captain.
Feature image by Louis Bockner
