The Narwhal’s investigation into the muzzling of Parks Canada staff has created quite the stir in the month since it was published.

The article — based on nearly a year of research, interviews with 10 Canadian journalists and several sources within Parks Canada — revealed that despite promises by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to unmuzzle government staff, Parks Canada employees continue to be limited in their freedom to speak to the press.

Journalists reported lengthy wait times for interviews, advanced e-mail approval of questions, limited access to experts and denial of field requests. Parks Canada scientists, too, expressed their frustrations with being so heavily managed by media relations staff, confirming they were unable to speak openly about their work.

The story raised such serious concerns that a week after publication, the Society of Environmental Journalists and Canadian Association of Journalists sent a letter to Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna and Parks Canada’s incoming interim CEO Michael Nadler.

The letter called for transparency and greater public accountability from Parks Canada, and insisted that journalists be able to speak freely and openly with Parks Canada staff and scientists in a timely manner, whether that be on the phone, in person or in the field.

In response, Nadler agreed to set up a conference call between Parks Canada and members of the Society of Environmental Journalists. A month after the investigation, he also issued a four-page letter in response to the concerns expressed by Canadian journalists.

Nadler’s response largely failed to take responsibility, choosing to refute the investigation rather than acknowledge a problem within Parks Canada.

In the follow-up, on-the-record conference call on October 18, which was intended to be a two-way dialogue with Parks Canada media relations staff, journalists posed a number of questions and commented on their own experiences.

Asked how Parks Canada intended to improve the relationship between Parks Canada and journalists, Nadler responded:

“I think we have a good relationship with journalists. Our level of responsiveness is very, very high. We’ve got a very collegial, positive and constructive relationship with journalists at the local and national level. Over the last two years, under a new government we’ve had the ability to be even more open on science than we were in the past.”

Contrast that with comments from a Parks Canada scientist who described the agency’s media protocol as “embarrassing” and “tragic.” Or with the comments of Ed Struzik, an award-winning environmental journalist and author who’s been covering the Arctic for more than three decades.

“It’s absolutely clear to me that Parks Canada scientists are not free to speak to the press,” Struzik told The Narwhal for the original article.

Parks in the dark

With few constructive remedies being proposed, Emma Gilchrist, editor-in-chief of The Narwhal and member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, stepped in:

“We have lots of environmental issues we need to report on — far more than we ever possibly could. I assure you we are not using our limited resources to write on non-issues. There are more than 10 environmental journalists quoted in this piece. We also have spoken with several scientists from within Parks Canada who can not go on the record, even anonymously, for fear of reprisals about speaking about their work. These are scientists who want to speak about their work and who are continually blocked from doing so. The first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge it exists, and right now I’m not hearing any acknowledgement that a problem exists within Parks Canada.”

Nadler responded that he didn’t think the data supports what journalists are asserting and added that he suspects Parks Canada media relations numbers are probably better than the other departments.

When asked to address the issues raised by journalists, Nadler said, “I want to underscore that four out of five interviews are interviews with experts or scientists. They aren’t a written response. An interview has been facilitated with an expert at hand. I hope that’s clear.”

This runs counter to the direct testimony of journalists covering Parks Canada, and still doesn’t address whether those questions had to be screened in advance.

Nadler pointed out that Parks Canada scientists are working in applied science, which may make them less accessible than scientists in other departments.

“They aren’t working on bench science. These scientists are often literally on the backside of a mountain introducing new species to an ecological area, or dealing with a survey, or gathering data, or even working with our firefighters to manage the risk to ecology. They are not as accessible as a bench scientist will be in some other federal institutions.”

However, journalists’ experience indicate that logistics are often not the barrier to gaining access to Parks Canada scientists. For instance, while in the Banff townsite in 2017, I ran into a Parks Canada staff member who said they would have been more than happy to provide a ride-along, but that the higher-ups would not allow it. My request for access was denied.

Ultimately, The Narwhal stands by its investigation, and the journalists and scientists who shared their experiences with us. A number of scientists have reached out to us in the past few weeks, and we would love to speak to more Parks Canada staff for a follow-up article.

We recommend reaching out to us from a personal device, using a personal e-mail address. Your comments are extremely valuable, even if you appear anonymous in our coverage. We treat all contact with sources who wish to remain anonymous as confidential.

You can contact us at editor@thenarwhal.ca to share your experiences and perspectives. Hopefully you’re not on the backside of a mountain.

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The world is currently facing down what scientists are calling the Sixth Extinction Event — a dramatic decline of the world’s living species, driven in part by habitat loss.

To help combat this, in 2010, 195 countries (including Canada) signed on to an international conservation treaty designed to slow the pace of biodiversity loss by protecting more of the world’s ecosystems.

Last week’s announcement of a new 14,000 square-kilometre Indigenous Protected Area in the Northwest Territories is just the beginning of Canada’s efforts to meet the Convention of Biological Diversity’s 20 Aichi Biodiversity targets.  

As a signatory of the Aichi Biodiversity targets, Canada has developed its own in-house conservation plan that folds Aichi’s targets into 19 specific goals.

One of Canada’s goals — called Target 1 — calls for 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland water and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas to be conserved by 2020.

So, with the latest announcement in mind, how is Canada’s progress coming along?

All eyes on Target 1

Canada contains more than 9.9 million square kilometres. Seventeen per cent of that amounts to roughly 1.7 million square kilometres.

At this point, Canada has protected around 10.5 per cent of terrestrial areas, and 7.75 per cent of marine areas, making it one of the targets with the most progress — but Canada still lags behind other nations.

Tanzania, for example, has set aside more than 33 per cent of land for protected areas.

Canada needs to make a big push — roughly the size of Alberta by land area, over 650,000 square kilometres — in the next year and a half to make it to the finish line.

Canada’s next update on the progress of meeting these biodiversity conservation targets is due in December, but meaningfully and systematically protecting land is harder to do than one might think.

“Most of our population is along the southern border, and that’s also where we have the highest density of species-at-risk,” Laura Coristine, a researcher at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan Biodiversity Research Centre who has studied Canada’s progress on Target 1, told The Narwhal.

“The biggest challenges relate to where people are on the land versus where biodiversity needs protection.”

The collision of population density with biodiversity needs makes conservation efforts that set aside land as “off-limits” more difficult to implement.

Overlapping ranges of Canada’s species at risk. The red area, showing high numbers of species at risk, also overlaps with Canada’s most densely populated areas. Map: Coristine et al. 

Researchers also recognize that protecting species-at-risk is just one facet of what federal, provincial and Indigenous governments should be aiming to achieve with setting land aside.

Beyond the needs of at-risk wildlife, key conservation areas can also help beef up ecosystem diversity, create connectivity by protecting the corridors migratory species use, conserve remaining wilderness and preserve climate refugia — safe havens for species that cannot adapt at the pace climate change is altering their habitat.

“What we really need across Canada is a combination of approaches,” Aerin Jacob, a conservation scientist with the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, told The Narwhal, agreeing that protection for species-at-risk needs to occur in the southern part of the country. But protection for large, intact wilderness areas needs to occur in the north, she said.

“What works in southern Ontario is not going to be what works in Northwest Territories.”

In early 2018 Coristine and Jacob published research that established five key scientific principles for identifying Canada’s high-value conservation areas: considering species-at-risk, diverse ecoregions, preserving wilderness, connectivity and climate change resilience.

The research pinpointed Canada’s conservation ‘hotspots’ and cross-referenced those with other considerations like natural resource extraction, urbanization and existing wilderness areas.

Hotspots for Canadian protected areas identified in the research of Justine Coristine, Aerin Jacob and their colleagues. This map identifies hotspots in relation to Canada’s historic land uses of urbanization, resource extraction and wilderness areas. The researchers use warm colours to “represent areas with the potential to make a greater contribution to reversing biodiversity decline and preserving biodiversity for future generations.” Map: Coristine et al.

Canada should prioritize land conservation in high-priority regions and if low-priority regions are protected, Canada should provide scientific justification for doing so, Coristine and Jacob and their co-authors wrote.

Jacob told The Narwhal that some aspects of conservation are politicized rather than scientifically founded.

No scientific research suggests aiming for specifically 17 per cent — that number, Jacob explains, is a political one.

Numerous studies have shown that in order to conserve biodiversity for future generations, 25 to 75 per cent of global land area should be protected.

While 17 per cent of terrestrial areas locked away in protected areas is a “huge step forward,” Coristine said, from a scientific perspective it’s not going to be sufficient in the long run to reduce species extinction.

Conservation progress? Who’s counting?

Another complicating factor is that some of these targets can be difficult to measure.

And progress isn’t always progress.

Earlier this year, The Narwhal reported that Canada’s big leap forward on Marine Protected Areas, from less than one per cent in 2016 to 7.75 per cent by January 2018 was actually due to a change in accounting, not new area set aside.

Rather than establishing huge protected areas, the government was counting seasonal fisheries closures as protected spaces.

Creating sustained progress, in other words, can be more challenging than the plain numbers reveal.

Politics and public perception go a long way to directing conservation goals. In order to improve Canadians engagement with and stewardship of nature, one of Canada’s four goals, is to get more Canadians out into nature.

Kelly Torck, manager of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s national biodiversity policy, told The Narwhal efforts to get more Canadians out into parks has so far been successful.

“We’ve seen a positive trend in terms of number of Canadians spending more time in nature,” Torck said. “The Canada 150 free parks pass exposed a lot more people to that.”

But that effort was one-and-done.

In the years to come, more work is needed to create lasting changes.

What about that $1.3 billion for conservation?

One of the main sources of support for this will be The Nature Fund.

In the 2018 federal budget, the government earmarked an unprecedented $1.3 billion over the next five years for the protection and conservation of nature, with $500 million committed to saving species-at-risk and establishing protected areas, as well as creating opportunities for Indigenous-led conservation efforts.

Canada’s new Indigenous Protected Area heralds new era of conservation

The problem with targets

The Aichi targets resemble climate targets signed onto under the Paris Accord in that both are non-binding agreements meant to fend off global catastrophe and both contain signatory countries that are way, way off track.

Such problems have led people like Shannon Hagerman, a social scientist at the University of British Columbia, to question targets-based approaches for conservation in general.

In 2016 Hagerman co-authored a case study looking at Canada’s implementation of the Aichi Targets over the five years between 2011 and 2016 and found only 28 per cent of Canada’s responses to Aichi were implemented.

Most were merely aspirational.

For Hagerman, this only led to more questions about the fundamental challenge of using targets.

“Mid-term assessments and more recent assessment confirm that almost all elements of all the targets will not be met by the achievement date,” she says.

Canada is not alone. As of December 2016, 20 per cent of reporting signatory countries had made no progress at all.

Higher income countries, however, have set weaker goals than lower-income nations and, resultantly, have reported slightly more progress.

And yet, there is an allure to announcing targets — even if they remain unmet.

“Despite these difficulties, there is still this enduring appeal of targets for environmental governance — in terms of measuring progress, enhancing accountability and promoting awareness,” Hagerman told The Narwhal.

What leaders and planners need to be careful of is replacing meaningful conservation action on the ground with too heavy of a preoccupation of global measurements.

Protected areas, for example, don’t mean much if they don’t promote connectivity between them.

“The challenge is how to solve these shortcomings,” Hagerman says.

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When Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government assumed office in November 2015, it came with promises of overturning Stephen Harper’s regressive, nine-year media regime which prevented many of the nation’s scientists from speaking with the press, often regarding hot-button environmental issues like climate change.

Some of the hardest hit by Harper’s policies had seemingly been Parks Canada employees.

In 2012, staff received letters warning they were not allowed to criticize the agency or the federal government amid job cuts. In 2014, a new policy forbade Parks Canada employees from speaking to the media without approval and required all requests for information to go through the national office.

And in the months leading up to the federal election, Parks Canada employees were even muzzled on operational issues, such as bear deaths, rescue operations or wolves in the townsite of Banff National Park.

On November 6, 2015, two days after the Trudeau government took office, Navdeep Bains, minister of innovation, science and economic development, openly stated that “government scientists and experts will be able to speak freely about their work to the media and the public.”

But nearly three years later, Parks Canada staff and scientists report significant freedom of information issues remain under Trudeau’s government.

Journalists say they continue to experience absurdly long wait times for media requests; are required to e-mail interview questions ahead of time for prior approval; and are frequently denied access to accompany employees on field operations. Many of these factors have ultimately led to media outlets killing stories about Parks Canada due to their non-compliance.

After Harper, Parks Canada staff thought things could only get better. But “if anything, it’s gotten worse,” one Banff National Park employee told me.

The Narwhal spoke with 10 environmental journalists across Canada for this investigation. Every journalist reported facing significant challenges with Parks Canada since Trudeau’s Liberal government came to power.

Requests for field access denied

Last summer, I arrived at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity to work on a feature regarding grizzly bear deaths on the railroad, and the efforts of Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway to address the issue. This was meant to be a follow-up to some reporting I had done back in fall 2014, under the Harper government, when Banff and Lake Louise-Yoho-Kootenay media relations staff facilitated the opportunity to shadow scientists, engineers and human-wildlife conflict specialists on how they were addressing issues with bears in the parks. But this time, my requests for field access were denied.

First, media relations responded that staff were too busy. When I pressed further, I received another reason. “Thanks for your interest in bear/human management in Banff National Park. Unfortunately, at this time we are unable to accommodate shadowing of our resource conservation staff for the safety of wildlife, staff and media,” wrote Christie Thomson, the public relations officer for Banff Field Unit, after several e-mails in which I explained the work I had done prior and what I was looking for.

This was in marked contrast to my previous experience. Something felt off.

As a science and environmental journalist, I routinely report on environmental issues in the United States and Canada. This requires dealing with several federal agencies on both sides of the border, including the U.S. Department of Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and Environmental Protection Agency. In Canada, I report on the work done by Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Department of Ocean and Fisheries. It’s fair to say that Parks Canada has been far and above the most difficult agency to access.

After my own troubling experience, I began asking around the town of Banff where I heard the same thing again and again from local reporters. It quickly became clear that this was now the status-quo for the mountain parks of Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay.

Colette Derworiz, who spent four years working as the environment reporter for the Calgary Herald, departed the paper a year into Trudeau’s administration, but recalled still facing issues as of November 2016.

“[Press access] has improved on some fronts, but there are still challenges with speaking to Parks Canada scientists in a timely manner,” Derworiz said.

“I can’t do my job. It’s really frustrating.”

“Journalists mostly work on daily deadlines and it’s never helpful to wait several weeks to speak with someone who knows the subject area. Parks Canada scientists are often experts in their field, and they have to wait weeks to speak. If a new study is published, the news value is instantly diminished.”

A reporter who asked to remain anonymous cited repeated issues since the Trudeau government moved in.

“Interviews are highly scripted and can take a lot of time to organize,” she said. “We often have to go to sources outside of Parks Canada, so we don’t actually have the full picture.”

“I can’t do my job,” she said. “It’s really frustrating.”

Lack of access a ‘terrible disservice to the public’

After my field access requests were turned down by Parks Canada, I was directed to speak with Colleen Cassady St. Clair, an unaffiliated University of Alberta researcher who had worked with Parks Canada and Canadian Pacific Railway on their five-year joint action plan to investigate why grizzly bears were dying on the rail corridor between Banff and Yoho. St. Clair was one of three representatives at a press conference in January 2017, accompanied by Rick Kubian, acting superintendent of Lake Louise, Yoho and Kootenay, and Joe Van Humbeck of CP Rail.

Since then, St. Clair had been doing the majority of media relations on behalf of muzzled Parks Canada scientists, picking up the slack. When I met her on a June day in Tunnel Mountain Campground, our visit was sandwiched between two press trips with CBC.

“We have so many great stories to tell — hopeful and inspiring stories…It’s tragic.”

“No one can speak more knowledgeably and effectively about many of the things that matter to Canadians than their own publicly funded scientists,” she said. “That’s especially true of the Parks Canada agency ecologists, who have been tremendously tightly managed, even sanctioned for speaking out. Muzzling those voices and replacing them with generic statements by upper managers is a terrible disservice to the public, as well as science. Sometimes, it also causes lasting harm to the very resources those scientists were hired to steward and protect.”

And, she added, Parks Canada scientists and media relations staff in the field units are frustrated, too.

A Parks Canada biologist who spoke to The Narwhal on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals said he’s “painfully aware” of Parks Canada’s restrictive treatment of media, which he called “embarrassing.” “There is often a pretty big disconnect between the managers I deal with and what the minister actually wants to happen,” he said. If scientists speak out of turn, he says it could be a “career-limiting move” and they’d be stripped of their ability to speak with the media in the future. “We have so many great stories to tell — hopeful and inspiring stories — but the risk management prevents us from sharing many of them. It’s tragic.”

Eventually, I began to wonder, was this issue only happening with Parks Canada staff working in the mountain parks? Or was it bigger than that?

“Banff was always a highly political park,” former Banff superintendent Kevin Van Tighem told The Narwhal. “Anything that happens in Banff can make national headlines.”

It stands to reason, then, that staff might be under tighter control here. But as I would uncover in the months to come, the issue was hardly limited to the Rocky Mountains.

‘This shouldn’t happen in a democracy’

Ed Struzik is a Canadian environmental journalist who has been writing on the Arctic for more than three decades. He’s the author of Future Arctic: Field Notes from a World on the Edge and the 2017 non-fiction book Firestorm: How Wildfire Will Shape Our Future.

While flipping through an advanced copy of Firestorm last year, one paragraph regarding Struzik’s experience in Yukon’s Kluane National Park stuck out to me:

“We didn’t stop to see how the spruce bark beetle had ravaged the park’s forests because the Parks Canada fire and vegetation specialist wasn’t allowed to take us on a tour. (I had made the request six weeks beforehand.) The muzzling of Canadian scientists that occurred in the years when Stephen Harper’s climate-change denying Conservative government was in power still lingered in the first year of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s administration.”

And into his third, apparently.

I called up Struzik to talk more about his experience with Parks Canada.

“In spite of what the Trudeau government has said about liberating scientists from the gag orders they had under the Harper administration, Parks Canada, in particular, seems to be stuck in that mentality. It’s not entirely clear to me why, but it’s absolutely clear to me that Parks Canada scientists are not free to speak to the press.”

His story about Kluane, he noted, was not particularly incendiary (the same thing I had said about my human-bear conflict reporting) and yet he was told he would not be able to go out into the field, though could get an office interview.

“I’ve had this problem in other cases — I was working on a story for Arctic Deeply a couple years ago right at the beginning of the Trudeau government about the future of tourism in the Arctic. I wanted to go to one of the western Arctic parks — I’ve already been to all of them and written many stories with the cooperation of Parks Canada prior to Harper — and could not get them to talk at all about what they were doing for tourism. They did absolutely nothing to encourage me on that story.”

Eventually, even with funding secured, Struzik gave up and didn’t write the story.

“It’s absolutely clear to me that Parks Canada scientists are not free to speak to the press.”

“This business of writing down all the questions beforehand — they treat every enquiry from a journalist as though it’s a bomb that’s about to blow up.”

Though Struzik noted he did get some cooperation from the mountain parks on the book, where he had previously built up relationships, he thinks it’s still a nationwide issue.

“I kind of stay away from Parks Canada now. It’s a crazy mentality. This just shouldn’t happen in a democracy.”

Judith Lavoie told me she had a similar chilling experience when working on a feature story on Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories for The Narwhal.

During the Harper years, Lavoie worked on the environment beat at Victoria’s local newspaper, the Times Colonist, frequently reporting on Gulf Islands National Park Reserve, Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve.

“I dealt with Parks Canada on a routine basis. They were always great. Every time you phoned, they usually persuaded you to come out on a trip. I never anticipated this,” Lavoie said.

Lavoie hadn’t covered Parks Canada since she semi-retired, up until The Narwhal sent her on assignment to cover diminishing water flows and pollution in the Peace-Athabasca Delta this June. UNESCO is considering adding Wood Buffalo to the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger because of threats such as oilsands development and hydro dams.

The experience left her flabbergasted.

Lavoie had intended to hitch a ride in an empty airplane seat with Sierra Club B.C., which was visiting the area. (The entirety of Lavoie’s trip was paid for by The Narwhal.) But when Parks Canada found out that Sierra Club would be bringing a journalist with them to report independently on Wood Buffalo, their tone swiftly changed.

“We can’t speak to you as a journalist without knowing the topic and without going through our process. We want to be open and helpful but we cannot take shortcuts with that process. We can talk further when you arrive in town,” wrote Parks Canada Southwest NWT Field Unit media relations officer Tim Gauthier in an e-mail on May 31. The trip was still five days out — ample time to receive such unnecessary press permissions from Ottawa. Gauthier indicated this would be impossible.

When Lavoie arrived with Sierra Club at the Parks Canada office in Fort Smith on June 1 she was immediately separated from the Sierra Club representative and taken to a separate room. “Divide and conquer,” she surmised. “They sat us down and said, ‘You know, we’re not going to be able to talk to you.’ ” The park’s resource conservation manager, Stuart Macmillan, she recalled, stood there looking sheepish.

Over the next two days in Fort Smith, while Lavoie visited sites with Parks Canada and Sierra Club, Parks Canada staff stayed entirely silent. After the trip, she was told if she e-mailed her questions — a subversive tactic for the government to be able to review questions from the media before responding — she could get a response that way. The final results were, expectedly, generic.

Eventually Lavoie was able to cobble the story together using about 10 sources besides Parks Canada. But the experience left her angry. “Parks Canada, which is supposed to be in control, is not giving us any useful information at all.”

Illustration: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Who is responsible for muzzling Parks Canada?

So where is this Parks Canada gag order coming from?

Kevin Van Tighem, who retired as Banff National Park superintendent in 2011, thinks it ties closely to a bureaucratic problem within the agency. (It’s worth noting that Van Tighem also writes books and articles about nature, and the parks. He says he has had similar challenges with lengthy wait times as a writer).

“The philosophy during most of my years at Parks Canada was that media relations was about managing the relationship and facilitating communication. Now it’s moved very much into gatekeeping and risk management and that persists to this day.”

This, he says, is bizarre and controlling given Parks Canada’s strong mandate for public education. “There’s a million stories to be told and they’re sitting on them. They’re surrounding them with firewalls instead of enabling people to be informed by it.”

“You’re not respecting the media for what the media is.”

At the start of July 2018, I  reached out to Parks Canada’s national communications office. I wrote:  

“It’s become apparent that this is not a hearsay problem, and that journalists around the country are struggling to adequately report on Parks Canada issues (….)

I think it would be appropriate that Parks Canada issue a response to these concerns, and the public’s right to know about PC operations. If your policy does indeed state that ‘Parks Canada is wholeheartedly committed to working proactively with the media to promote public awareness and understanding of government policies, programs, services and initiatives’ then how are you going to improve upon access and relations with Canadian media given the number of complaints from working journalists?”

After nearly a month, a Parks Canada spokesperson responded:

Parks Canada is committed to providing Canadians with timely, accurate and clear information. The Agency adheres to the principles of open and transparent communications of the Government of Canada. As it relates to media relations, Parks Canada follows the Government of Canada’s Directive on the Management of Communications to ensure that communications activities are effectively managed, well coordinated and responsive to the diverse information needs of the public.

Parks Canada researchers and experts are available to share their research and speak freely about their work with the media and the public. The Agency regularly communicates the work of Parks Canada researchers through media interviews as well as speaking engagements and other activities, including open houses and public forums as well as through the Parks Canada website or other digital channels. Parks Canada also delivers large media events and announcements, some of these relating to science and conservation. Due to the high volume of media requests following these events and announcements, written responses are often provided to media to enable more rapid handling of requests for general information and to help media outlets meet their publication deadlines.

As an Agency that directly serves the Canadian public, Parks Canada actively seeks opportunities to share information and engage Canadians on the research happening at national parks, historic sites and marine conservation areas. Parks Canada promotes scientific research and conservation through proactive media outreach, on the Agency website, over social media, and on other digital channels, such as the Agency’s Youtube presence. Parks Canada’s commitment to open and transparent communications is evidenced by the high rate of responses to media requests in the chart below, which includes details on the number of media interviews provided on subjects related to science and conservation. Information for all of Parks Canada and for the Mountain National Parks are provided below.

Suffice to say, this was not the response I had hoped for, but one I was definitely expecting.

Attached were the numbers of press enquiries and responses received nationally and by the mountain parks division in 2017. Parks Canada received 482 media enquiries on science and conservation last year, 78 per cent of which resulted in interviews. However, such raw numbers don’t reveal the timeliness or quality of information, whether it was delivered in person, via telephone or e-mail, nor the number of journalists, who like Struzik, Lavoie and I, were requesting field access and offered e-mail or phone interviews instead.

“I’m aghast. All of this is very disquieting.”

For example, while wrapping up this story, The Narwhal contacted Parks Canada media relations staff for a separate story, asking for usage of stock photos from the Banff bison reintroduction. One week later, we received a nine-question “proposal form” to fill out. Most notably, Parks Canada asked how this project would benefit Parks Canada and the bison reintroduction program. (It is not the media’s job to benefit the government nor the topics we cover.)

Canadian restrictions worse than those under Trump administration in many cases

Finally, I spoke with Nikita Lopoukhine, who served as director general of national parks from 2000 to 2005 and continues to be involved with the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. He also serves on Environment Minister Catherine McKenna’s national advisory panel on Canada’s Conservation 2020 initiative.

“It’s really fascinating to hear this,” he told me after I filled him in on my experience and those of others. “I’ve had some contact with [Environment and Climate Change Canada] Minister Catherine McKenna who adamantly says there is no concern about scientists talking about science. I’m aghast. All of this is very disquieting.”

Though Parks Canada scientists aren’t under a topic-wide gag order, problems with response times, reviewing of questions and field access pose a long-term and more insidious problem.

In a June 2017 poll by the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which was sent to more than 15,000 federal scientists, 53 per cent of respondents disagreed that they were able to speak freely and without constraints to the media about their work. How many of those scientists, I wondered, work at Parks Canada?

“Canadians are generally complacent,” said author Ed Struzik. “We haven’t cared that the government hasn’t responded to the media as they have in the past. But look south of the border, at the Trump Administration, and you can see where that leads you. You can end up having an autocratic regime because they know they can get away with it.”

Indeed, many Canadians are quick to criticize press freedoms in the United States with little inward reflection. I serve on the board of directors of the U.S.-based Society of Environmental Journalists, including their Freedom of Information task force. Over the past year, we’ve written several letters to the Department of Interior and Environmental Protection Agency condemning new restrictions on the press in the United States. But, it occurred to me as I contemplated the Canadian side, that many of these restrictions were exactly how Parks Canada has been operating for years under Trudeau and Harper, unchallenged.

“You can end up having an autocratic regime because they know they can get away with it.”

“There’s this assumption that the Trudeau government have changed things, and no doubt they have, but we still have this hangover from a bureaucracy that got its start with the Harper administration,” said Struzik. “Don’t think big. Don’t get into the newspapers. Don’t promote your agenda. Just maintain the status quo and we’ll get along. That’s not what we need to build a country.”

— With files from Emma Gilchrist

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

There’s a surprising number of people who don’t believe in narwhals.

Not that a narwhal is a creature that can or can’t be believed in. But rather, somewhere along the way, the marine cetacean got lumped into the popular mind as a being on par with dragons, Bigfoot, or, unsurprisingly, unicorns (thanks in no small part to the giant tusk that shoots straight out of its forehead). But no matter how impossible the narwhal way may seem, it is very much real. And though remote, these not-so-mythical beasts are gaining visibility, and thus believability: namely, because they like to spend their summers smack-dab in the middle of the increasingly ice-free Northwest Passage.

In a new study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of  the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that out of seven Arctic marine mammals, the narwhal is the most vulnerable to vessel traffic in the Arctic’s Northwest Passage and Northern Sea Route during the open water season. This is due to its high exposure and biological traits that make the narwhal sensitive to passing ships.

The polar bear, though often used as the poster child for climate change, was the least vulnerable as it spends much of the late summer on land.

Scientists hope that governments and industry can use this vulnerability assessment to better plan and implement regulations and protections for marine mammals.

Narwhals are a migratory animal that spend most of their time in the waters of the Eastern Arctic.

“At various points during the year, 90 per cent of the world’s narwhal can be found in Canadian waters,” says Brandon Laforest, senior Arctic specialist with World Wildlife Fund-Canada based in Iqaluit. “We have a really high responsibility for [them] in terms of proper management and conservation.”

Under the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, narwhals are identified as a species of special concern. That’s because, while their numbers are holding strong — between 80,000 and 100,000 worldwide — several red flags have been raised about their continued survival in the Arctic, given that narwhals have a fairly limited geographic extent and depend on sea ice for their life cycle.

September sea ice cover in the Arctic has retreated by 14 per cent per decade since 1979, lengthening the open-water season and increasing navigability for ships.

Previous studies have shown narwhals are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, “and now, with this study, you see another … in that they’re highly exposed to future shipping threats and they’re also the most vulnerable to those threats,” says LaForest of the study.

When researchers broke all the mammal species down further, into 80 subpopulations, they found that the Eclipse Sound narwhal subpopulation was the most vulnerable to vessel traffic.

“At various points during the year, 90 per cent of the world’s narwhal can be found in Canadian waters.”  — Brandon Laforest, World Wildlife Fund-Canada

Donna Hauser, lead author of the study, explained that they looked at each population’s distribution in September, the height of the Arctic’s open water season, and overlaid that with the main sea routes. Narwhals, more often than not, had the greatest overlap.

Ships can affect marine mammals in a number of ways. First, there are direct strikes — most commonly seen with large whales, which are less manoeuvrable and slow to get out of the way. Then there are behavioral disturbances, which might alter how or where an animal feeds or moves. And lastly, there are acoustic disturbances, which can throw off an animal’s communication, navigation or feeding. Toothed whales, like narwhals, rely on sound to identify objects and obstacles.

With routine vessel transits expected by 2050 through the Northern Sea Route and Northwest Passage, it’s critical to understand exactly how this will impact species and which ones are most vulnerable.

“Armed with that information, we can start planning some precautionary measures for protection,” Hauser, says. This has been done in the lower latitudes, re-routing vessels and adjusting speeds to minimize exposure and acoustic disturbance.

A few years ago, the Arctic Council tasked nations to identify areas of ecological importance and assess measures that would minimize the effects of a growing Arctic shipping industry. This led to the International Maritime Organization adopting and implementing a new Polar Code in early 2017. But so far, it’s been difficult to exercise on the ground as there’s been limited data on Arctic species that would inform how best to minimize negative environmental impacts. Hauser hopes this study is a step toward changing that.

Last year, the Canadian government established a National Marine Conservation Area around Tallurutiup Imanga, or Lancaster Sound, at the eastern entrance of the Northwest Passage. Around 75 per cent of the world’s narwhals spend their summer in the sound. This 131,000-square-kilometre protected area will help protect them by allowing the government to place restrictions on the number of ships that can pass through, and their speeds.

“But it’s quite tricky,” notes Marianne Marcoux, a research scientist with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “Ships make noise and quicker ships make louder noises, but slower ships stay longer in an area,” increasing exposure and the risk that a strike could occur.

As waters become increasingly ice-free, and the open water season lasts longer, Hauser’s vulnerability index could change. Though polar bears were determined to be least vulnerable in September, that’s not say to there won’t eventually be strong vessel impacts in other seasons. Already, the open water season has increased between five and ten weeks, and spring break-up is coming sooner. Icebreakers, too, are pushing inward during the winter. What marine mammals will have the best chance of survival in this new Arctic remains to be seen.

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On the surface, the water looks like glass, reflecting the fluffy clouds that roll above the cedar inlets of Bella Bella, on B.C.’s Central Coast. But looks can be deceiving.

In this part of the Great Bear Rainforest, carnage lingers under the sea: in 2016, the tugboat Nathan E. Stewart ran aground on Edge Reef, spilling more than 100,000 litres of diesel fuel into the Heiltsuk Nation’s waters. Powerful winds pushed the fuel across Seaforth Channel and into Gale Pass, a critical marine harvesting site. The event is something the nation’s members, many of whom served as first responders on the spill, are still struggling with, both emotionally and economically.

Nearly two years later, many marine species in these waters remain contaminated. The Heiltsuk’s manila clam fishery, which provided up to $200,000 of annual income for the remote community, has been unable to reopen. In response, the Heiltsuk and other First Nations who have borne witness to increasing marine traffic, have lobbied the federal government to give them a more proactive role, and the resources needed, in defending and managing their coastal territories.

Last week, while the world marked National Indigenous Peoples Day, the First Nations came one step closer to realizing their goals.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined First Nations leaders at the Prince Rupert Coast Guard Base to announce a partnership with 14 B.C. North Coast First Nations that will promote reconciliation alongside environmental management.

The accord, named the “Reconciliation Framework Agreement for Bioregional Oceans Management and Protection,” is the first of its kind to link the federal government’s mandate of reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous peoples to the objective of environmental protection.

The agreement will help protect Canada’s Northern Shelf bioregion, which includes the north and central coast of B.C., Haida Gwaii and northern Vancouver island, and will create a landscape of shared authority that recognizes the importance of Indigenous knowledge-based management.

“First Nations have a well thought out understanding of what the needs of this coast are, and through our millennia-old relationship with our territory and our intimate knowledge of our waterways, we are best suited to determine what is needed to protect our waters,” Heiltsuk Chief Councillor Marilyn Slett told The Narwhal.

A humpback whale surfaces in the Great Bear Rainforest. Photo: Gloria Dickie.

Though the exact details of the agreement have yet to be released, it’s intended that it will build off the government’s promised $1.5 billion investment into a national Oceans Protection Plan. That plan strives to improve marine safety and responsible shipping, as well as protect the marine environment — although it’s been met with considerable cynicism in B.C. where Trudeau has pushed for a seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic through Vancouver Harbour, as part of the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“When we announced the Plan, we envisioned Indigenous people as guides in managing Canada’s oceans,” Trudeau said at last week’s press conference. Together, he says, First Nations and the federal government will coordinate efforts on marine spatial planning along two-thirds of the B.C. coast and develop a network of Marine Protected Areas, as well as improve waterway management and boost the response capacity of First Nations.

The latter portion could come in the form of funding the Heiltsuk’s $111.5 million proposal for an Indigenous Marine Response Centre in their territory, to respond to disasters like the Nathan E. Stewart. Had the community been equipped with an oil spill response facility and fleet, the nation feels things would have turned out differently. In the months that followed, the Heiltsuk were highly critical of the federal government’s slow response to the spill, scoffing at Canada’s branding of a “world-leading” response.

But Chief Slett seemed cautiously optimistic at Thursday’s gathering that the Centre would come to fruition.

“[It’s a] major investment, but it’s required if we’re going to live up to the agreement that we signed and that we’re celebrating here today around truly protecting the ocean,” Slett said.

Though the government has made no final decision on the Heiltsuk proposal, a spokesperson said they will be delivering training in spill response and search and rescue, as well as collaborating with Indigenous peoples to develop an information system that provides real-time information on vessel traffic and marine conditions.

It’s likely the central and north coast of British Columbia will serve as a testing ground for how reconciliation can play out on the ground, with hopes that this model can then be replicated in other parts of Canada.

Increasingly, the government has been investing in Indigenous environmental stewardship, with $25 million allocated in last year’s budget for an Indigenous Guardians Program, which assists band members in becoming stewards of their ancestral lands and waters. Coastal First Nations have such a network of Coastal Guardian Watchmen who patrol their territories for illegal activity and facilitate environmental monitoring projects and conservation work.

Coastal Guardian Watchmen patrol their territories. Photo: Gloria Dickie.

A government spokesperson said that in the near term, Canada intends to initiate collaborative processes around the Bay of Fundy/Scotian Shelf, the Newfoundland/Labrador Shelves, the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Salish Sea. The latter will undoubtedly become a war of wills, given the federal government’s intention to expand the Trans Mountain pipeline, thereby increasing the volume of oilsands bitumen shipped through the Salish Sea.

“Our elders tell us, if we take care of the ocean, the ocean will take care of us,” Slett said. “This value will ensure our cultural survival.”

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