B.C. asked feds to use coal-rich land for conservation: internal docs

The B.C. government has asked Ottawa to transfer control of 200 square kilometres of potentially coal-rich land in the province’s southeast, saying it would instead use the land to help achieve conservation goals. The request was laid out in a letter sent by four provincial ministers last spring and obtained by The Narwhal through freedom of information legislation.

The two parcels of land the B.C. government requested, known as the Dominion coal blocks for their potential coal reserves, are in the Elk and Flathead valleys in Ktunaxa Nation territory, in an area of the Rocky Mountains that has been called North America’s most important wildlife corridor for grizzly bears, wolverines, lynx and other animals.

The smaller parcel, known as 73, is a 20-square-kilometre block in the Elk Valley, northeast of Fernie, B.C. 

To the south is the second, much larger parcel, known as 82. The 180-square-kilometre parcel includes the headwaters of the Flathead River, a cool, gravel-bottom river that flows south into Montana and supports bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout and numerous other species. 

The federal government has owned the two blocks since 1905, when it acquired the land from the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, according to a 2021 report for Parks Canada on conservation options for the Elk and Flathead valleys. In 2013, Ottawa considered selling the land, which could have opened the area up to mining for the first time in more than a century, according to a 2014 B.C. government infographic.

“B.C.’s interest in holding the two parcels is to work with the recognized rights-holders to develop a plan for conservation and for ‘healing of the land,’ ” B.C.’s former ministers of environment, Indigenous relations, lands and mining wrote in their letter to federal Minister of Energy and Natural Resources Canada Jonathan Wilkinson last June.

“Both parcels, but particularly parcel 82, are essential for realizing this critical habitat corridor and to achieving our conservation goals, including meeting our 30-by-30 commitments,” the letter says, referencing the provincial and federal goal to conserve 30 per cent of land and waters by 2030 to meet Canada’s global biodiversity commitments.

The provincial government wanted the land transfer to take place in 2025 and hoped a memorandum of understanding with the federal government would be finalized before the October 2024 provincial election, according to an internal government briefing document prepared in July for former B.C. environment minister George Heyman. The Narwhal received a redacted copy of the briefing document through the same freedom of information request. 

But a spokesperson for B.C.’s Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship said discussions are still in the early stages.

“The province is supporting Ottawa in dialogue with First Nations to define how more than 20,000 hectares of federal land can be used to the benefit of First Nations and all British Columbians, including conservation opportunities,” the spokesperson said in an emailed response to questions.

Carolyn Svonkin, Wilkinson’s director of issues management, said the federal government “is exploring all options for the future of the Dominion coal blocks, including conservation.”

She said Ottawa is engaging with First Nations and the province but no decisions have been made about the future of the two parcels.

Neither Ktunaxa Nation Council nor Nasuʔkin (Chief) Heidi Gravelle of Yaq̓it ʔa·knuqⱡi‘it, one of the four Ktunaxa First Nations in B.C., were available to comment before publication time. 

Flathead Valley home to ‘globally significant’ biodiversity

John Bergenske, a strategic advisor with the Kootenay-based conservation organization Wildsight, said he hopes to see the Dominion coal blocks transferred to Ktunaxa Nation as part of broader landscape planning for the Rocky Mountain wildlife corridor that includes the Elk and Flathead valleys.

“It’s extremely important that we see these kinds of conservation initiatives move forward in order to at least start to mitigate some of the enormous impacts that coal mining has had in the region,” he said.

Coal has been mined from the Rocky Mountains in the Elk Valley for more than a century and the industry remains foundational to the regional economy. It’s also had significant impacts on the environment through the destruction of high-elevation grasslands and the pollution of creeks and rivers. Extensive clearcut logging has also occurred in the Elk Valley, which is home to Fernie and other communities as well as a major highway notorious for vehicle collisions with grizzly bears and other wildlife. 

“The ongoing deterioration of the Elk Valley for wildlife connectivity and the decline of wildlife in the area has become a cause for alarm,” according to the 2021 Parks Canada report. “Warnings from 20 years [ago] have become a grim reality. It is now an urgent conservation problem,” the report says. 

Important high-elevation grasslands and other intact ecosystems supporting bighorn sheep, elk, mule deer, grizzly bears and numerous other species remain unprotected in the Elk Valley, the report notes.

The neighbouring Flathead Valley spans the Canada-U.S. border. “It is the only big valley in southern Canada that has no permanent dwellings, no highways and no railway and it abuts protected areas in Alberta and Montana,” the report says. “It has globally significant terrestrial and freshwater species diversity and abundance.” The Flathead River Valley abuts Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and has long been viewed by some conservationists as the missing piece of that park. 

Oil and gas extraction and mining have been banned in B.C.’s Flathead Valley since the provincial government passed the Flathead Watershed Area Conservation Act in 2010. But the legislation does not prohibit logging and it only applies to a portion of parcel 82 of the Dominion coal blocks. The federal government transferred responsibility for forestry in the coal blocks to B.C. in 1978. 

The Elk and Flathead watersheds form a vital link between the U.S. and Banff National Park for grizzly bears and other wildlife. “It has been called the most important wildlife corridor in all of North America and is a key component of the Yellowstone to Yukon initiative,” the report says. The report notes the valleys are key to efforts to protect interconnected wildlife habitat between Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and the Yukon.

In the face of climate change, conserving the Elk and Flathead valleys takes on even greater importance, the report says, noting the gravel bottom rivers that run north to south offer cooler habitat than other low-elevation areas. Protecting these areas would also preserve corridors for species to shift elevations.

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Bergenske said conserving intact areas in the Dominion coal blocks and rehabilitating areas affected by forestry would be a significant step towards mitigating some of the broader impacts from development in the region.

“We certainly hope that the federal, provincial and Ktunaxa governments can come together with a plan that will lead to a future for healthy water, landscape and wildlife populations in the area,” he said.

But with a federal election possible as early as this spring, Bergenske said he worries conservation efforts in the Elk and Flathead valleys could, yet again, be upended.

“The story with the Dominion coal blocks, like several of the issues in the southeast right now, has been progress and then things are stymied,” he said. “Each time we see some changes in government, we seem to have to start all over again with the initiatives in order to obtain the levels of protection that the area needs desperately.”