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Canada’s failure to protect Wood Buffalo National Park to be raised at UNESCO meeting in Bahrain

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

June 26,2018

FORT MCMURRAY— As UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee convenes this week for its annual meeting in Manama, Bahrain, Indigenous and environmental groups are calling on Canada to do more to protect its largest park, Wood Buffalo National Park.

Members of Mikisew Cree First Nation are in Bahrain to present to World Heritage Committee members. They will urge Canada to implement all seventeen of the Committee’s recommendations to ensure protection of Wood Buffalo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The presentation highlights images from Wood Buffalo National Park—including the globally important Peace-Athabasca Delta—taken recently from the air, land and water by photographer Louis Bockner, as well as photographs of Indigenous elders in the area.

This meeting marks the one year anniversary of a formal UNESCO World Heritage Committee decision calling on Canada to take steps to protect the park. If sufficient progress is not made to heed this call, Wood Buffalo National Park could be added to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger. Assignment to this status would mean Wood Buffalo National Park could lose its World Heritage status.

Canada has until December 1, 2018 to submit its full action plan to protect the park.

The situation facing Wood Buffalo National Park is dire. In 2017, experts from UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature concluded that impacts on the park from development are “far more complex and severe than previously thought.” Since then, the park has been identified by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature as having the worst conservation outlook for a Natural World Heritage Site in Canada.

Canada’s response over the past year continues to fall short.

“When our community heard Minister McKenna tell us that the mission report was a ‘call to action,’ we were hopeful,” said Melody Lepine, Director of Government and Industry Relations for Mikisew Cree First Nation. “A year later, there is little concrete action to report to our elders except that we keep trying to get government to honour its commitment. So much more needs to be done, and done fast.”

“Canada has an international obligation to ensure protection of its World Heritage Sites,” said Galen Armstrong, Peace Valley Campaigner at Sierra Club BC. “By refusing to do an assessment of the downstream impacts from the Site C dam on the Peace-Athabasca Delta, as requested by UNESCO, we are putting an international treasure at risk.”

Canada has about five months to finalize an action plan to present to the World Heritage Committee. Meanwhile, other large industrial projects such as the Teck Frontier Oil Sands Mine are being considered that could amplify the negative impacts on the park.

“The submission deadline for filing information for the hearing on the Teck Frontier mine is set for August 17, and the hearing is expected to take place in September,” said Adean Alessandrini, Boreal Program Manager for CPAWS Northern Alberta, “Approval of this and other industrial projects before Canada has even completed its action plan is irresponsible.”

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Editors: Photographs of Wood Buffalo National Park, including the Peace-Athabacsa Delta and Indigenous elders in the area, are available at: flic.kr/s/aHsmncfFMY
Credit to Louis Bockner/Sierra Club BC.

For background, visit mikisewgir.com/projects

Supported by:

Mikisew Cree First Nation
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS)
Sierra Club BC
Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Alberta Wilderness Association

Media contacts:

Melody Lepine | Mikisew Cree First Nation, Director, Government and Industry Relations
780-792-8736 | melody.lepine@mcfngir.ca

Galen Armstrong | Peace Valley Campaigner, Sierra Club BC
778-679-3191 | galen@sierraclub.bc.ca

Adean Alessandrini | Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Northern Alberta
780-297-3394 | borealnab@cpaws.org

Candace Batycki | Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
250-352-3830 | candace@y2y.net

What the heck is Sierra Club BC doing in Northern Alberta!?

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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.

Explore scenes from Wood Buffalo

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

 

 

Site C is not a done deal

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March 2018

Farmers Ken and Arlene Boon. Photo by Louis Bockner

This month, Peace Valley farmers Ken and Arlene Boon have been touring southern BC with a message: Site C is not a done deal.

While some of their land has been expropriated to accommodate the re-routing of Highway 29, they have not been forced out of their historic farmhouse, and they are not packing their bags.

The list of reasons that the Site C dam project on the Peace River never should have been started is long. And so is the list of reasons why now, more than two years into construction, it still makes sense to scrap the project and restore the Peace River Valley.

The farmland in the valley is uniquely productive, including the land Arlene Boon’s family has farmed for generations. The cost of the project is ever-rising, having gone from $9 billion to $10.7 billion in just the past year. The electricity is expected to be used to power the LNG industry, an industry that – at best – shouldn’t need BC Hydro to subsidize it, and – at worst – threatens to tip us over the climate change edge.

And there’s another huge reason bigger than any megadam: treaty rights. West Moberly and Prophet River First Nations, both Treaty 8 signatories, will finally have a chance to make arguments in court this summer. These BC Supreme Court hearings on their injunction application will last 10 days and are scheduled to take place sometime between July 23 and September 10.

Another Treaty 8 Nation, Blueberry River First Nation, has a major case heading for the courts in Vancouver on April 9. This case will look at the cumulative impacts of industrial development in their territory, which includes major dams on the Peace like Site C.

Downstream of the Site C dam site, the Mikisew Cree First Nation is fighting to protect the Peace-Athabasca Delta (the PAD) from industrial encroachments such as tarsands development and major dams on the Peace River including Site C.

Yvonne Tupper. Photo by Louis Bockner.

We continue to stand with Treaty 8 First Nations against the Site C dam, which threatens their treaty rights and their ways of life.

On the Peace-Athabasca Delta file in particular, the world is watching. Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada’s largest national park and a globally significant World Heritage Site. It protects the Peace-Athabasca Delta, home to fish, moose, bison, endangered migratory birds and a landscape the Mikisew Cree have depended on for millennia. But Trudeau’s inaction on assessing the potential impacts of Site C could put this globally significant region on the List of World Heritage in Danger. After Sierra Club BC raised the issue with UNESCO, the international body strongly criticized Canada for failing to protect Wood Buffalo National Park.

Please call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to halt Site C construction immediately and keep his promise to honour Indigenous rights!

Send your letter now

An update about the Boons’ tour

Site C fundraiser on Salt Spring Island

Crowd gathered at Salt Spring Island Library

We participated in a 7-stop tour organized with Ken and Arlene Boon, organizing events on Salt Spring Island and helping out in Sooke. Over $13,000 was raised across the tour to support West Moberly & Prophet River First Nations legal challenges, as well as the Peace Valley Landowner Association.

Sierra Club BC’s Quadra Island Local Group had a terrific success at their coffee house with musician Luke Wallace as part of the tour. They raised $3,500 in 2 hours!

“We are a community of 2,500 men, women and children…informed and committed to stopping Site C. Since January we have raised $4,500 for the PVLA and for the court challenges. All it took was a phone call to two friends, a hundred hours of work and a committed community.”
-Geraldine Kenney, Quadra Island Local Group and Sierra Club BC board member

Thank you to everyone that came out to participate in conversations on where we go from here, and for their generous contributions to keep this fight alive!

Feature image: Wood Buffalo National Park, courtesy of MCFN GIR.

Site C dam decision a litmus test of government’s commitment to Indigenous reconciliation and rights

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

November 30, 2017

With a decision on whether to complete or cancel the Site C dam imminent, Sierra Club BC calls for the provincial cabinet to consider its impacts on downstream Indigenous communities.

Responding to an open letter from downstream Indigenous communities calling on Premier John Horgan to cancel the project, Peace Valley campaigner Galen Armstrong said, “If the provincial government’s commitment to reconciliation and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is to mean anything, this government must cancel the Site C dam.”

The government was elected on promises of reconciliation and implementation of the principles of the UN Declaration.

“Site C threatens the land, waters and resources of downstream Indigenous communities with permanent, extensive and irreversible harm,” said Armstrong. “It’s easy to spout the rhetoric of reconciliation and rights, but now those words are being tested by a very real choice.

“This government cannot simply push title and rights aside when they are inconvenient. If it is serious about its commitment, there is no choice but to cancel Site C.

“Sierra Club BC stands with Treaty 8 First Nations and all downstream Indigenous communities who would be negatively impacted by this dam,” said Armstrong. “The people of this region are already facing negative impacts from existing dam development and to make this problem worse by building yet another mega-dam would be a terrible injustice. British Columbia needs to move forward in its relationship with Indigenous peoples, not backward.”

Site C would impact hundreds of culturally significant sites and important hunting and fishing grounds in the Peace River Valley and would threaten water flows downstream in the Peace-Athabasca Delta (protected by Wood Buffalo National Park) upon which the Mikisew Cree depend. UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee has called upon Canada to conduct an assessment of Site C’s impact on Wood Buffalo National Park, a World Heritage Site.

When the need for reconciliation with Indigenous communities is combined with the threats posed by the dam to vital farmland, the impact on wildlife and ecosystems, the horrendous cost to Hydro ratepayers and the dramatic reductions we have seen in the cost of renewable alternatives, the balance is decisively tipped in favour of cancelling Site C.

Ninety-four per cent of the province is designated public Crown land; much of this is unceded territory, subject to Indigenous title and rights. Reconciliation for historical wrongs is necessary and important and any plan for our common future must recognize and address the province’s painful shared history.

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Contact:
Galen Armstrong
Sierra Club BC
C: 778-679-3191
galen@sierraclub.bc.ca

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