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On a cloudy evening in early September, fisherman Darren Porter pulls an aluminum boat up to shore on Lake Pisiquid, a small body of water bordering the Nova Scotia community of Windsor. Two fish scientists aboard his boat hop out and begin dragging a seine net through the long grass poking out of the shallows, looking for juvenile fish.

For seven years, a monitoring team made up of the Mi’kmaw Conservation Group, Acadia University and Porter has been testing this site, along with others on the Avon and on an unobstructed tidal river across the bay, to establish the relative abundance of fish.

It’s a windless evening, and as the team brings the net to the beach to check its contents, the water mirrors the pastel sky above.

But Porter knows the situation on this lake is anything but calm.

“I got my car hit by a baseball bat a month ago, I got my truck keyed three weeks ago — it’s insane,” Porter says.

“This is very political now. It started out different.”

Lake Pisiquid is an artificial reservoir created by the construction of a causeway across the Avon River more than 50 years ago.

For much of its existence, the causeway — and the tidal gate, or aboiteau, built into the causeway to allow the Avon to flow out to the Bay of Fundy — has maintained the lake and protected land upstream. But because that protection has required the gate to be almost constantly closed, it’s come at the expense of the fish travelling upriver to spawn. 

In 2017, when the Nova Scotia government began the process to twin the highway running across the causeway, it convened an expert panel to find ways to improve fish passage at the aboiteau — work that included engaging Porter, the Mi’kmaw Conservation Group and Acadia University on monitoring. Then, in 2021, a ministerial order from Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) ordered the lake be drained and the aboiteau opened so fish could pass through.

Yet seven years later, fish passage remains obstructed, while the lake has been maintained by a provincial emergency order for over a year. Politically, the situation is at a stalemate, while the continued existence of the lake divides residents, places governments at a standoff and overrides the objections of the Mi’kmaq, who say their Treaty Rights are being violated.

At the centre of all of this is an ecosystem and a community that have been thrown out of balance. And both have reached a breaking point. 

Avon River becomes political wedge between lake community and environmental advocates

The Avon is one of the rivers flowing into the Bay of Fundy, an ecosystem that pulses with the rhythm of the world’s highest tides, sending saltwater and nutrients upriver and creating a shifting coastline downstream. 

For millennia, the tidal ecosystem sustained fish such as Atlantic sturgeon, Atlantic salmon and gaspereau (a kind of river herring), as well as Mi’kmaq communities who travelled the river and established settlements along its banks. In the 1600s, Windsor — an area originally known as Pesaquid or Pisiquid, a Mi’kmaq name meaning “junction of the waters” — was settled by Europeans. Two centuries later, a causeway was built across the mouth of the Avon to protect the community and surrounding agricultural lands from coastal flooding.

Work on the causeway began in 1968; even before it was finished, there were changes to the ecosystem. Sediment began accumulating on the seaward side, forming what is now an extensive saltmarsh that continues to expand. “We haven’t reached a new balance — the system is still adjusting,” Tony Bowron, CEO of a wetland restoration firm that has done work in the area, says. The Windsor saltmarsh is incredibly productive, Bowron says, but on the upstream side, saltmarshes disappeared as the river transitioned to a freshwater ecosystem. “What was one of our major tidal rivers is now essentially an impoundment,” he says.

Over time, different groups came to depend on that impoundment, including farmers, a ski hill, a canoe club and property owners and developers in Windsor and upstream.

Yet by 2017, it was clear something had to change. The highway had become dangerous and needed to be twinned, and the aboiteau had reached the end of its useful life, especially given climate change projections. But for the causeway highway project to proceed with federal funding, it had to have Fisheries Act authorization. Following Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s recommendation, the province put together a group of provincial and federal officials, fishers and Mi’kmaq to develop ideas for how to meet Fisheries Act requirements. The group members proposed an option that would have restored tidal flow, improving fish passage and flood protection, though with lower lake levels. 

But at a municipal council meeting for the area on Sept. 27, 2017, provincial officials explained the community had pushed back against the idea of changing lake levels and introduced a new option — option D — which would maintain the status quo but add additional fishways (structures to help fish navigate an obstacle). 

Paul LaFleche, who at the time was the deputy minister of transportation and infrastructure renewal (now the department of public works), told those gathered that the option could mean a future constitutional challenge. While LaFleche didn’t specify who that challenge might come from, constitutional challenges have been used by the Mi’kmaq to address violations of Treaty Rights.

Still, LaFleche said for his department, there were only two options at the time: option D, or leaving the aboiteau in place. 

For Porter, this marked the moment the process became political. 

“It’s simple: they were told what to do, then they had this meeting on the 27 of September, and they reversed it,” Porter says.

Mi’kmaq say Treaty Right to fish is being violated: ‘That, to me, is not reconciliation’

On the banks of the Avon River, on the opposite side of Lake Pisiquid from Windsor, two small buildings sit amid the marsh grass and the gravel of the stalled highway project.

In 2020, Nikki-Marie Lloyd, a member of Annapolis Valley First Nation, and other Mi’kmaq water protectors built a protest camp at this site. Llloyd called the site Treaty Truck House #2, a reference to the names used for trading posts between Europeans and Mi’kmaq that evokes the historic Mi’kmaq use of the river. “We wanted to bring a little bit of that back here.”

For months, Lloyd stayed at the site in protest of the aboiteau. On hot days, when there was very little water left on the downstream side of the barrier, she says she watched as thousands of migrating gaspereau struggled and died in the muddy water.

Even when the gates are open, passage is limited. And when they’re closed — as they are for more than 23 hours a day and for months at a time in the summer — the effects are clear. “It’s quite noticeable when the gate is not open,” Trevor Avery, a professor at Acadia University who’s working on the monitoring project, says. “The fish do not make it through.”

Meanwhile, at low tide, the water below the barrier is too warm and low in oxygen for fish to survive. Correspondence between Fisheries and Oceans Canada staff in June 2023 observed “large numbers of fish” dying as a result.

It’s too early to say whether there are any population level-effects for those species, as there are other rivers in the area where fish can spawn; that’s why long-term monitoring is important, Avery says. Yet the obstruction of one river can still have consequences for biodiversity. Research suggests some species of fish found in the river, like gaspereau, largely return to their birthplace to spawn, giving each river a unique genetic signature. If that site is lost, those genetics are lost too. 

Avery is wary of wading into politics — it’s not science, he notes — and the fate of the Avon has become very political. But on a personal level, he thinks the obstruction of the river is the wrong decision. “There’s just good advice that’s being ignored, in this case.” 

For Lloyd, the situation was especially infuriating; without fish being able to pass the barrier, there was no meaningful exercise of the Treaty Right to fish. “We hear a lot of talk about reconciliation, but then when you come here and you see everything that’s going on, especially politically, and you realize that a lake and a gated structure currently are trumping our rights — that, to me, is not reconciliation.”

Then, in March 2021, after Mi’kmaq groups raised concerns — and, according to a briefing note, after Mi’kmaq chiefs passed a resolution to pursue legal action if Fisheries and Oceans didn’t act — the department issued a ministerial order requiring the gate be opened for fish passage (which the department then renewed every two weeks). The lake quickly became a dry, and then dusty, plain.

For many Windsor residents, the resulting dust storms were miserable. To mitigate the problem, a coalition of environmental groups, government officials and the Mi’kmaq planted vegetation on the dry lake bed. For a minute, everyone was working together, Lloyd says. The saltmarsh began regenerating, and fish not seen in the river for decades appeared. Travelling the river on a bright green pool floaty in August 2021, seeing the diversity of fish and the marsh grass “was my all-time favorite moment,” Lloyd says.

In March 2023, West Hants municipal council — which encompasses the community of Windsor — wrote a letter to the federal fisheries minister acknowledging the lake may not return and expressing interest in reimagining the Windsor waterfront and surrounding area to realign with the new operating scenario of the aboiteau.

Then wildfire season started.

Minister claims lake necessary for fighting wildfire, but fire chief says that’s ‘ridiculous’

In May 2023, wildfires tore across Nova Scotia, including one that burned 23,525 hectares, the largest in the province’s history.

On June 1, 2023, the province declared a state of emergency for the area around Windsor. The only action associated with the state of emergency was to order the gates at the aboiteau closed, overriding the federal order that had opened them. The provincial order came just two weeks after Premier Tim Houston released a video with area MLA Melissa Sheehy-Richard describing the dry lake as “appalling” and calling for it to be refilled. 

The provincial minister responsible for the emergency management office, whose deputy was LaFleche, formerly of the Department of Transportation and Infrastructure Renewal, said in a statement that the dry lake posed a “significant risk during this wildfire season.” (The province did not respond to a question about what role LaFleche, or staff from his former department, played in the decision to issue the emergency order.)

In an interview with CBC, the provincial minister responsible for the office of emergency management , John Lohr, said the request had come at the request of local fire chiefs.

Others have disputed that statement. 

In response to the state of emergency, Porter launched a lawsuit, attempting to stay the order and reopen the gate. In an affidavit provided for that lawsuit, Windsor fire chief Jamie Juteau said neither he nor anyone he was aware of in the department had made “any request to Minister Lohr or his department or anyone else for water resources in Lake Pisiquid or to ‘reinstate’ Lake Pisiquid.”

Since then, the province has renewed the emergency order every 30 days, even after historic rain and flooding, including in Windsor.

Brett Tetanish is the fire chief for Brooklyn, another community in the same municipality as Windsor. He says fire suppression appeared to be an excuse to close the gates.

“I just thought how ridiculous that was,” he says. “There’s actually no need.”

Tetanish is an experienced wildland firefighter, and when parts of Nova Scotia were burning in 2023, his department was dispatched to those fires.

If there were a need for water, Tetanish points out there are many other sources a helicopter could draw from. What’s more, because the presence of the causeway has caused silt to built up, much of the lake is only a little more than a meter deep — too shallow for fixed wing aircraft to use, Tetanish says. 

The existence of alternatives was also outlined in a July 2023 report by the municipality’s emergency management office. The report noted if lake levels dropped again, the Windsor fire department would go back to its previous plan for water, and that the department “is confident operating in both scenarios.”

“[The minister] is using the fire service to get what they want,” Tetanish says. “It’s very disheartening that the government would do that.”

Advocates say the existence of alternatives for fire safety suggests the preservation of the lake serves interests beyond fire safety. 

‘LEAVE LAKE ALONE’: Rift in community grows deeper as mayor pleads for unity

Developer Mitch Brison, brother of former Liberal MP Scott Brison, has a house on the lake, and his company, Brison Developments, has residential projects in Windsor and the surrounding area. He wants the lake full.

“Is the town better off to have a body of water in front of your town, or is the town better off to have something that smells and has no water — I prefer the water,” Brison says. “I don’t see the benefit of taking it out, I really don’t.”

Brison says the municipal council now supports the lake, “so we got that reversed.” (Abraham Zebian, the mayor of West Hants, says the council has no official position on the lake.) And while he acknowledges there was movement toward reconciliation, he and most people he knows are tired “with the stuff that’s going on and the money that’s being thrown around in that direction.” 

“It’s time for us all to live and cooperate.”

Ultimately, he says resolving the situation will take a change in the federal government. 

Zebian says his personal position is that the lake is an asset for recreation, firefighting and community well-being. 

Yet he’s acknowledged has divided the town, including last July, when bristol board signs appeared in the community reading “F*CK DARREN PORTER,”and “LEAVE LAKE ALONE.” 

In the aftermath, Zebian took to Facebook to make an impassioned plea for unity. “I’m so disappointed in our community for the things that are being said in regards to the Avon River and Lake Pisiquid,” he wrote. “United we can do anything. Divided we all lose. WEST HANTS… I KNOW YOU ARE BETTER! NOW LET ME SEE IT!”

Over a year later, Zebian says it’s unfortunate the town is still caught in the middle of a fight between the province and the federal government.

Avon River situation at a standstill, as provincial and federal governments fail to find a solution

Documents shed light on the dynamics in the standoff over that fight. At issue is which directive takes precedence — the federal order to open the gate, or the provincial emergency order to keep the gate closed and the lake full — and at whose feet blame for the delay in a resolution can be laid.

The federal department has a legal mandate to protect fish and fish habitat, but it has yet to reissue the ministerial order, which it let lapse after the provincial state of emergency was declared. Documents obtained through access to information requests suggest the department has struggled to get information from the province. 

In an email sent on Aug. 31, 2023, Fisheries and Oceans Canada officials said they were still waiting to receive results of a Nova Scotia emergency management office assessment supporting the emergency order. 

Two months later, in an email regarding a Mi’kmaq proposal to address fire safety while improving fish passage, Fisheries and Oceans Canada regional director general Doug Wentzell wrote, “Bottom line is that this letter presents what seems to [be]reasonable solutions to be able to draw water from the Avon river to support emergency response — which was the stated objective of the province in issuing their continued states of emergency. The key piece of the puzzle for our purposes will be to obtain the province’s assessment around whether these, or other options, have been considered.”

The following spring, an April 2024 letter from Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier to provincial ministers asked the province to take measures to ensure proper fish passage, and to communicate with her ministry about efforts to reconcile that with fire safety. 

In response to a question from The Narwhal about the information it provided to the federal government, Nova Scotia’s department of public works said information requested by the federal government was submitted in January 2024, and that this was “one of a series of requests we have responded to from [Fisheries and Oceans Canada] over several years.”

But an August letter to Public Works from Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s department of Ecosystem Management (which Porter provided), shows that in January, what the province proposed was to maintain the lake — a proposal that, as the letter noted, the province had already been told would not pass fish (or the Fisheries Act) — and that the information included with the application was ‘incomplete or inadequate.”

In other words, the situation is gridlocked, with the province proposing an option Fisheries and Oceans Canada can’t approve. 

For Porter, these documents raise questions of why Fisheries and Oceans Canada is hesitating to enforce its own legislation, in the meantime. 

In a 2023 internal presentation, a slide describes Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s intention to continue reissuing ministerial orders until the aboiteau is replaced, but the department let the last order expire after the state of emergency was declared in June 2023.

In a statement, Fisheries and Oceans Canada spokesperson Christine Lyons did not directly answer a question about whether the emergency order takes precedence, instead saying questions about the order and its duration should be directed to the province. Gary Andrea, spokesperson for the department of public works, said the state of emergency will be renewed as long as it is needed for public safety. 

Fisheries and Oceans Canada said it’s working proactively with the Nova Scotia department of public works on the proposed aboiteau, and that it remains committed to consultation with the Mi’kmaq. After the emergency order was first issued, the Assembly of Mi’kmaq chiefs sent a letter to the province, stating the lake contravened Mi’kmaq rights and title. (The Assembly of Mi’kmaq chiefs did not respond to a request for an interview.)

The department also said the province has a legal requirement to operate the aboiteau to allow the passage of fish, and that voluntary compliance is the expected and preferred approach. 

To advocates, this looks like the federal department is avoiding a fight in advance of an election. 

“They don’t want to give the province a wedge issue,” Porter says. “So they backed off, and nature suffers, the fish suffer, there’s a whole bunch of things that suffer because of those decisions — and they’re simply political.”

Emergency order remains in place, with no clear path forward for resolution

In September, members of the monitoring team on Lake Pisiquid finish noting the fish they’ve caught in gill nets and minnow traps— one striped bass, a couple of tomcod — and then head back upriver, to turn in for the night.

For now, the situation is at a stalemate. While Porter has a court date in November for his lawsuit against the emergency order, he’s not optimistic that it will bring any change. 

With a municipal election approaching on Oct. 19, current mayor Zebian said the uncertainty around the causeway continues to pit “neighbor against neighbor and family member against family member, and I think unfairly so, for my community.” The project was supposed to be completed in 2022, he notes; two years later, there’s no clear indication of a way forward.

Yet in other contexts, communities have found solutions. 

Three hundred kilometres from the Avon, water flows under a bridge over the tidal Petitcodiac River in New Brunswick. In 2021, the bridge was completed to replace a causeway built in 1968, despite the opposition of some homeowners, and biologists are already reporting greater numbers of fish. 

To the south, Peskotomuhkati Nation was instrumental in removing an aging hydroelectric dam on the St Croix/Skutik River this year, which runs between Maine and New Brunswick, and restoring fish passage. 

By comparison, advocates say the current situation with the Avon River aboiteau is a missed opportunity, where new infrastructure is needed anyway, to fix a problem.

That problem is a system out of balance — and not just on the Avon. For 400 years, people have been building structures to hold back the Bay of Fundy’s tides. Asking people to imagine a different relationship with this system is challenging. Yet in the 21st century, the costs of drawing hard lines across the landscape have become clear, severing ties between animals, people and the environment in which they all live. 

Whether work on the Avon will ever restore those links is far from clear. But for better or for worse in this dynamic, shifting ecosystem, there’s no going back to the past.

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When the Ford government announced its massive overhaul of Ontario housing policy last week, one particular aspect of the plan flew under the radar.

No, not the gutting of conservation authorities, the agencies that oversee important watersheds. Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives also snuck in a swipe at the rules that protect wetlands — swamps, bogs and marshes that are both crucial and quickly disappearing. 

This gets nerdy, but stick with me. Ontario’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry uses a manual to evaluate which wetlands are eligible for “provincially significant” status. The Ford government wants to rewrite that manual. Provincially significant status is granted to wetlands that experts deem so valuable, they should be protected from development. That’s on top of the importance all wetlands carry: they naturally prevent floods, acting like a sponge during heavy rains. They also sequester carbon, provide habitat for species at risk and filter water to keep it clean. 

This protection isn’t perfect, and it hasn’t stopped the Ford government from trying to push forward projects that would harm them or highways that would go on top of them. But the existing rules have also halted development, forced companies to revise their plans and given people an avenue to push for important places to be preserved.

How the new Ontario housing rules would impact wetlands

The proposed changes to wetland policy, introduced at the same time as Ford’s omnibus housing bill, would eliminate two major avenues by which wetlands can qualify for protection. The first would mean evaluators can no longer consider how species at risk use the habitat. The second would require swamps, bogs and marshes to be considered in isolation, not as part of “wetland complexes,” which are interconnected pockets of wetland in the same area. Think of these pockets like cell phone towers: on their own, they might not appear to be doing much, but together they create an important network that would fall apart without each piece. 

Many wetlands that have status as part of a complex wouldn’t qualify on their own, said Andrea Kirkwood, a professor of biological sciences at Ontario Tech University in Oshawa. The rule changes would also give the province new powers to remove protection for wetlands that now have the status of being provincially significant, but wouldn’t qualify under the rewritten requirements.

“My interpretation from that is, for provincially significant wetlands to be re-evaluated under this criteria, it’s very likely that they would have their provincially significant status removed,” Kirkwood said. 

This, from a government that already abandoned a strategy aimed at conserving wetlands and plans to further disempower the conservation authorities that, in some cases, are tasked with protecting them. It comes at a time when about three-quarters of the wetlands that were once present in heavily developed southern Ontario are already gone, and flooding is expected to become more and more of a problem as the climate crisis progresses. 

“We have very little wetland habitat left — and complexes, even fewer,” Kirkwood said. The more of them we lose, the more vulnerable Ontario will be to destructive flooding and worsening  water quality. Wetland loss also increases the risk of permanently losing endangered species that live there, and the roles such species play in maintaining full ecosystems.

The Ontario government didn’t answer The Narwhal’s questions about the new rules. But it has said it’s hoping to create a “net gain” for wetlands by allowing developers to “offset” the ones they build over — essentially, remake them somewhere else, but larger. 

The approach was supported by the non-profit Ducks Unlimited Canada, which declined to allow any of its staff to be interviewed about why, saying they “are not in a position to discuss.” 

“We are committed to working with the province to ensure that proposed changes do not result in increased wetland loss for Ontario,” Ducks Unlimited Canada said in a statement.

Even as it plans to reduce wetland protections, the Ontario government has also poured tens of millions into wetland restoration projects in the last few years, some of which went to Ducks Unlimited — for example, the organization received $6 million from the province in 2021.

“Here we are, recognizing the vital nature based solutions that wetlands provide on the one hand,” said Rebecca Rooney, an associate professor at the University of Waterloo who researches wetland ecology. “But then we’re going to simultaneously greenlight a lot of irrevocable wetland loss… Right now I’m just reeling from the juxtaposition.”  

Experts say replacement wetlands cannot fully replace the ecological functions of natural ones. 

The Ontario government’s proposal is “death by a thousand cuts,” Rooney said.

“If we only look at each loss in isolation and we don’t ever add them all up, that incremental loss seems negligible,” she said. “But from the broader perspective of cumulative effects, it’s enormous.”

Building housing on Ontario wetlands would be ‘rushing ahead in an unsustainable direction’

That’s not to say Ontario isn’t in a housing crisis. It is. More housing is definitely needed, and increasing population density — one of the premier’s stated goals for his new plan — can be better for the environment, leading to fewer emissions from the cars needed to traverse sprawling suburbs. 

But we don’t need to sacrifice the environment to address Ontario’s housing crisis, we need to take the time needed to make better decisions, Rooney said: “This is really rushing ahead in an unsustainable direction.” Time and time again, environmentalists have argued that there’s more than enough land already designated for housing construction in southern Ontario to accommodate all the growth the region anticipates. 

And we already have examples of what happens when we get this wrong to look to as a warning.

Take, for example, the mouth of the Don River in Toronto. Settlers who colonized the area also filled in the great wetland that was once there, leaving the land around it more vulnerable to floods. Now, various levels of government are contributing huge sums of money to rebuild what was destroyed, a massive undertaking that will cost over a billion dollars. 

Another thing Ontario’s own history teaches us is that houses vulnerable to floods are unreliable as homes. A stone’s throw from Ford’s longtime family home in west Toronto lies Raymore Drive, a floodplain where over 30 were killed by the rising waters of the Humber River when Hurricane Hazel struck in 1954. The storm left thousands of people without homes.

Part of Raymore Drive was expropriated and turned into a park after the disaster, never to be developed again. 

The government may indeed get “more homes built faster” as it claims it will do in the title of its new legislation. But if it doesn’t learn from the mistakes of past urban development, there’s no guarantee any of those new homes will be permanent or safe. 

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Just off the rugged coastline of Georgian Bay lies a private island where Ontario has made a big exception to the hunting rules followed just about everywhere else in the province.

Most places in Ontario have an open season on deer that lasts about two weeks. Up until recently, it lasted 11 weeks on Griffith Island, just north of Owen Sound, where the luxurious Griffith Island Club serves an exclusive clientele of North American elites. And earlier this year, the Doug Ford government quietly extended the deer hunting season again for Griffith Island and neighbouring Hay Island, which is also privately owned — hunters in both places can now hunt deer with rifles there for 13 weeks, the longest season in the province. 

Griffith Island Club doesn’t list its current membership fees on its website, but in 1975 it charged $20,000 to join plus annual dues, according to a Maclean’s article published that year. Members and guests over the past half-century include MPPs and MPs from various parties, along with professional sports executives and plenty of Bay Street types. When the province proposed the idea for an extended season on Ontario’s environmental registry last November, it said the change would allow the Griffith Island Club to “better manage the islands [sic] deer populations and increase opportunity for clients and club members.”

The office of Natural Resources and Forestry Minister Graydon Smith didn’t respond to multiple emails and calls from The Narwhal asking why it has such an interest in expanding the hunting privileges enjoyed by members of the private club. The office of Premier Doug Ford also didn’t answer when asked whether he or any MPPs in the Progressive Conservative caucus have ever been there. 

The Narwhal also asked Griffith Island Club management questions about its price of admission, membership list and how exactly it ended up as the beneficiary of the policy change. In an email, club chairman Marc Dumont didn’t answer most of the questions, including whether the club had asked the government for the extension — Ontario’s lobbying registry shows no record of contact between the Ford government and the club. 

“Hunting regulations are set by the Province of Ontario, and the club has no influence over the establishment of seasons, or any other legislation relevant to our operations or how these are publicly communicated by the minister,” Dumont wrote.

“The club, like any other business and employer in Ontario, fully complies with all provincial and federal legislation to legally operate. The club does not release any information that is considered personal or confidential in relation to our members and their activities.” Dumont also didn’t answer questions about why the club’s site advertises wild turkey hunting even though Ontario’s publicly-posted regulations don’t allow the bird to be harvested there. 

While the dates for Ontario’s hunting seasons in most areas are posted in an online provincial guide, that site contains no such information for Griffith Island and Hay Island, saying only that each has a “unique season” and that the public can call for more information (two other areas in Ontario have the same disclaimer, but those exceptions seem unrelated to the islands). This opacity has drawn criticism, especially about whether it’s fair for the 70 or so members of the club to enjoy a longer hunting season than everywhere else. 

Lawrence Kowal is from the Kawartha Lakes region, northeast of Toronto, and has hunted for years near Haliburton, Ont. He heard about the changes to the hunting season on Griffith Island when a friend forwarded him the environmental registry posting, in which the idea was lumped in with a series of other adjustments to Ontario hunting regulations.

“Why would you have to add two more weeks to a hunt season?” he recalls thinking. “That seems excessive.”

The more he looked into it, he said, the more he saw red flags.

“It was an absolute absence of information,” he said. “There should be more transparency.” 

The Ontario Federation of Hunters and Anglers, which represents over 100,000 members in the province, formally opposed the extended season when the government proposed it. The federation’s manager of policy, Mark Ryckman, said in an interview that some members were concerned, and that the organization generally doesn’t support landowners getting preferential access to hunting opportunities.

“Ultimately these are public wildlife resources or natural resources, managed on behalf of all Ontarians by the provincial government, so we don’t want to see hunting or fishing for that matter… become a pastime that only the wealthy can afford,” Ryckman said. 

Griffith Island has been a playground for the rich and powerful for decades

Griffith Island is about 2,300 acres, though reports of its exact size vary. The federal government maintains a historic lighthouse on one side. The rest is owned exclusively by the Griffith Island Club.

The modern-day club can sleep 22 guests at a time. They’re fed gourmet meals by a private chef and treated with access to a games room and sauna. Photos on the club’s website show cushy bedrooms and a woodsy guest lounge, adorned with glossy leather chairs, a pool table and a stag’s head mounted on the wall.

An airstrip on the island allows some to fly in on chartered aircraft (no jets, though — those use the nearby airport in Wiarton, Ont.). Many cross over on the club’s ferry, Islander II. Guests can also fish, swim in the turquoise water or shoot clay targets on about a dozen courses. 

“The Griffith Island Club has a limited number of membership opportunities available to suitable candidates,” its website says. “All candidates are subject to a review process by the Club Board, with circulation to all members.”

On Facebook and Instagram, visitors have listed the island as their location when posting photos of their time there. The pictures show ladies in billowing white dresses at the steps of a private plane, a hunter green napkin embroidered with the club’s logo and people with guns and neon orange vests posing by the deer and heaps of birds they’ve bagged. One photo taken in front of a gun rack shows a teenage boy in a fur coat wielding a wad of cash the size of his head in one hand and an even larger bottle of brown liquid in the other.

Personalities like NHL executive Brian Burke and Chip and Pepper clothing line cofounder Chip Foster have made appearances at the club, as have former Progressive Conservative MPP Michael Harris and the former Conservative MP for the area, Larry Miller. 

The club’s website boasts of the island’s history stretching back to “the landing there of Samuel de Champlain,” but the Saugeen Ojibway Nation traces its history there much further back. The nation didn’t respond to a request for an interview, but has said the Bruce Peninsula, which Griffith Island sits next to, and the surrounding area of Georgian Bay was stolen from them by the Crown in the 1800s. In an 1899 newspaper ad, the Department of Indian Affairs announced that it would accept bids for Griffith Island and its timber. 

The island passed through various hands in the 20th century, including late Toronto Maple Leafs owner Jack Bickell, also a member of the Canadian Mining Hall of Fame, and a group of his businessman buddies. It later became the property of Frigidaire, then owned by General Motors. The company used it for the “schooling and recreation of GM executives from all over the continent,” The Globe and Mail wrote in 1957.

It was about that time when Griffith Island started appearing to be subject to different set of rules. 

At the time, no deer hunting was allowed in the rest of Grey County, which Griffith Island is a part of, but it happened year round on the island, the paper reported. The Liberal MPP who represented the Bruce Peninsula at the time, Ross Whicher, raised the issue in the legislature, arguing that it was an injustice for deer hunting to be allowed so freely on the island when his constituents on the mainland would be fined for doing the same thing, even if they were trying to feed their family. 

The company hung onto the island for about 13 years before selling it: “GM’s interest in it declined after one of its senior executives was killed in a hunting accident several years ago,” said a 1975 article in The Globe and Mail.

By then, Griffith Island was owned by the group of wealthy businessmen who started the nonprofit Griffith Island Club. Its ties to Queen’s Park go back to its founding: the club’s first president was former Ontario premier John Robarts, a Progressive Conservative. Other early members included Frederik Eaton, president of Eaton’s of Canada, and a corporate director of the company that owned the Labatt brewery. 

In 1975, a Windsor Star reporter who visited the island found that hunters there were allowed to shoot pheasants for seven months, though the season elsewhere in the province was just two weeks long. Deer seasons lasted a few days on the mainland, but two months on Griffith Island. The same year, the club’s manager paid a $100 fine for hunting without a license. Members of Ontario’s cabinet hunted there at the time — a former club manager gave the Windsor Star blunt assessments of their abilities in 1976, saying natural resources minister Leo Bernier was a “good hunter,” but transportation minister James Snow “doesn’t know a cockbird from a hen pheasant and can’t hit a barn door.”

After the Windsor Star began publishing stories about the club, an MPP questioned then-Ontario premier Bill Davis about it at the legislature, referencing reports of armed guards on the island, and the club serving alcohol without a liquor licence.

“I have been there for dinner on one occasion,” Davis said, redirecting questions about it to another minister. “I have never hunted at Griffith Island. In fact I have never hunted anywhere.”

According to media reports, Griffith Island’s lax rules and mystique persisted: by 1983, the Toronto Star — which investigated reports that club staff were making just $45 per day for 16 hours of work — said that former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had been spotted there. The younger Trudeau has never visited Griffith Island, with or without his father, the Prime Minister’s Office said in an email.

“Don’t we have any rights?” the club president at the time, William Doherty, said to a Star reporter. “You’re going to write about us whether we want you to or not, is that quite cricket?”

The desire for privacy was a theme then, too: amid a 1978 controversy over a planned and subsequently cancelled foxhunt at Griffith Island, the secretary for the club said he didn’t “think it’s anyone’s business… It’s a private club, we pay our taxes, we’re within the law.”

In 2004, The Globe and Mail reported on a trip to the island taken in fall 2002 by then-Hydro One chair Glen Wright, who expensed a trip to Griffith Island to the utility provider in the years before it was privatized. Wright’s bill to the Crown corporation was over $5,000 for a group trip: his guests included a Progressive Conservative cabinet minister, Tory political advisors and two Hydro One union leaders. The paper reported it cost $750 per night, and that Wright’s expenses included $297 for shotgun shells and $178 for 17 pheasant pies. Wright reimbursed Hydro One after he learned The Globe planned to report on the expenses.

By 2003 — the earliest year for which Ontario’s hunting regulations are online — the deer hunting season on Griffith Island had become an expansive 11 weeks. It stayed that way until being lengthened this year. 

There isn’t much out there about what happens at the Griffith Island Club today. The club has no public membership list, and the list of directors on its corporate registration appears outdated — for example, it includes current Porter Airlines CEO and president Robert J. Deluce, who told The Narwhal that he hasn’t been involved with the club for at least a dozen years and can’t remember much about the membership process. “Basically I lost interest because I was far too busy at Porter,” he said in an email. 

Others listed on the registration include a variety of Bay Street executives, big names in the road construction industry, a former CFL player,  and Niagara Region Coun. Vince Kerrio — who is seeking re-election this fall and didn’t respond to an email sent through his campaign website. Other listed members who have mentioned visits to the island publicly include corporate leaders of trucking and mining companies.

Along with social media, other snippets of information can be found in job postings. The club is staffed year-round, though members can only visit from April until December. A recent posting for a receptionist describes managing the club’s membership list as a task that requires “absolute discretion and confidentiality.” Another for a head gamekeeper says candidates should be able to raise over 25,000 gamebirds, duties which include breeding and incubating eggs. Other workers who manage game on the island make $43,000 per year, according to a third posting, and pay $100 bimonthly to live onsite.

Other Ontario deer hunters object to what seems like special treatment for Griffith Island

Across most of the province, hunters have voluntarily reported how many deer they harvest every year, with numbers online going back to 2008. Hunters on Griffith Island did not report any until the practice was made mandatory in 2019. The same is true on nearby Hay Island, which is also private and enjoys an equally long season: there, only one or two deer have been bagged each year for which there are records.

On Griffith, hunters have reported bagging roughly 70 deer per year, about the same as the number of licenced hunters active on the island, according to provincial data. Kowal, who hunts in Haliburton, said that’s a lot — a young deer would weigh at least 100 pounds, and big bucks can be four times that. 

“What they do with it is up to them,” Kowal said. “But that’s an awful lot of people getting a very large serving of venison.”

Usually, the Ontario government decides the length, timing and other specifics of local deer hunting seasons by considering how many of the animals live in an area and consulting with stakeholders, including experts in wildlife management. Rifle hunting is most tightly controlled — hunters using less powerful weapons, like crossbows, can hunt for longer, in part because they tend to bag fewer deer. 

Ryckman, of the hunters and anglers federation, said there could be a biological reason why Griffith Island needs a longer deer hunting season. The balance between predators and prey can easily be thrown off on islands, resulting in either too many deer — which could necessitate a longer hunting season — or too few. 

But if that’s why the Ontario government has given Griffith Island an extended season for so many years, the province hasn’t said so: along with the current Progressive Conservative government, the Ontario Liberal Party didn’t answer questions from The Narwhal about why it allowed an 11-week hunting season on Griffith Island during the most recent 15 years it was in power. The party also didn’t answer when asked whether any of the party’s current MPPs or staff had ever visited the island or been a member of the Griffith Island Club. The Ontario NDP and Green Party, likewise, did not agree to an interview about Griffith Island. 

And if biological concerns are a problem, it may be odd that the longer deer season does apply to Griffith Island and neighbouring Hay Island — which sold to a new owner last year for $14 million, after being advertised as an “idyllic retreat” with an “extended hunting season” —  but not White Cloud Island, which is just a stone’s throw away. On the province’s online proposal to add two weeks to the season on Griffith and Hay, one comment is a complaint that the extended season doesn’t apply on White Cloud, where landowners are “not huge corporations but private people who own land on a private island.” The comment, which was anonymized, said the move amounts to “nothing but someone catering to big money and ignoring others who have spent their own money. It is a biased and blatant example of favouritism.” 

Ryckman said that while the federation is “opposed to the exclusive access and the very long season provided to the owners of Griffith Island… we don’t really have any population health or sustainability concerns about the deer population on the island.” For that reason, his organization is unlikely to push the issue much further: “The primary focus of the OFAH is the conservation of the resource,” he added.

Kowal said it’s unfair that Griffith Island gets preferential treatment. He gets exactly 13 days to hunt deer, rain or shine — he usually spends them in the bush with friends, and if the weather’s bad, they don’t have the luxury of going again. They limit what they hunt and eat what they harvest, always thinking about conserving the deer so they’ll be around next year.

‘It’s something that you have to be mindful of and protect,” he said. “It’s not mine to take without some form of rules.”

To him, that’s not the spirit of what’s happening on Griffith Island.

“Everyone should have to play under the same rules. They don’t. They’ve been given privilege, and done a very good job of keeping it out of the public view.” 

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.

Matthew Mitchell receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Canada has an extensive system of protected areas that, when added together, would cover an area slightly larger than Ontario. That’s larger than France and Spain combined, and more than three times the size of Germany.

But Canada also has a new conservation goal called 30 by 30, which aims to conserve at least 30 per cent of the nation’s lands and waters by 2030. Meeting this ambitious goal would mean roughly doubling Canada’s protected area. Doing this right means that new protected areas must conserve biodiversity and safeguard areas that store carbon, provide freshwater or are key areas for nature-based recreation.

Yet many of the key areas that provide these benefits overlap with competing land uses like agriculture, forestry and natural resource extraction. My colleagues and I recently published research that highlights this challenge in Canada. Our results indicate that traditional conservation approaches won’t likely be enough to meet Canada’s 30 by 30 goal, and that new and innovative conservation approaches will be required.

30 per cent by 2030

The 30 per cent by 2030 target comes from the High Ambition Coalition for People and Nature, a United Nations initiative that aims for aspirational action to address the global climate crisis. These targets are non-binding, but the hope is that they will spur new conservation actions around the world.

Fifty-five member nations, including Canada, the European Union, Japan and Mexico have pledged to meet the 30 by 30 target. Other countries like the United States, which is not a formal member of the coalition, have recently made similar pledges.

The reasoning behind the 30 per cent goal is clear: we must ensure that the natural areas that provide essential benefits to humanity, such as food, clean water, clean air and a stable climate, are protected. These are called “ecosystem services” and are the collection of benefits that natural environments provide humans.

Humans have significantly altered around 75 per cent of the Earth’s lands and have had strong negative effects on at least 40 per cent of the ocean, resulting in estimates that roughly a quarter of all species are threatened with extinction. The scientific consensus is that these current rates of global biodiversity and natural area loss threaten the world’s natural life support system. Expanding protected land globally is a key action that will help reverse these trends, protect biodiversity — and benefit human well-being.

Innovative conservation

Canada’s protected areas cover 12 per cent of the country, an area that was expected to increase to 17 per cent by the end of 2020 as new parks and conservation areas were finalized across the country. Expanding to 30 per cent from 12 per cent means adding an area roughly equivalent to Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined.

Our study found that about two-thirds of the key areas that provide freshwater and recreational opportunities to Canadians overlap with agriculture and resource tenures (oil and gas, minerals and timber). This highlights the need for innovative conservation approaches, especially those that focus on working landscapes. While natural areas are often prioritized for conservation, farms, forests and rangelands will also be key to achieving the 30 per cent target.

Conservation in working landscapes requires new and versatile approaches. In agricultural landscapes it might include restoration and stewardship of land by landowners, adding pollinator wildflower strips to fields or improving soil and water management to safeguard water quality. In forests, it might involve safeguarding old-growth trees and their carbon stores by prioritizing forest ecosystem health and biodiversity over economic returns, maintaining complex forest structure by preserving large trees or encouraging canopy gaps, and planting diverse forest plantations to conserve biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Many of these techniques are not new, but including them in the same conservation toolbox as other conventional techniques would be novel. Conservation approaches in the past have largely focused on area-based approaches like protected areas. It would also be novel for governments to actively collaborate with communities, Indigenous peoples and conservation groups to implement conservation.

Understanding how to combine these approaches effectively to reach the goals of 30 by 30 is critical. Luckily, we have some templates for how to do this.

Biosphere reserves combine strictly protected and working lands and offer a key example of how to designate, manage and govern diverse types of conservation and human use. Indigenous protected and conserved areas are another example that can enable First Nations to govern, use and protect traditional lands according to their knowledge systems, laws and cultures, and are increasingly being implemented in Canada. Finally, urban parks, like Rouge National Urban Park in Toronto, provide key benefits to urban residents and help connect people living in cities to nature.

Challenges and benefits

Major obstacles exist for using these types of new conservation approaches to meet 30 by 30. First, meeting 30 by 30 requires strict evaluation of the area that a conservation action covers, whether it is effective or not. Many of the approaches mentioned above do not fit easily into this type of accounting.

Second, the primary goal of 30 by 30 is biodiversity conservation, while some of the approaches above focus on ecosystem services first and biodiversity second. How should we decide between these different approaches? Where should the line be drawn as to what counts or not? There are no easy answers here.

Finally, these new approaches are complex, require greater political capital and co-operation between governments and the public, and can be difficult to enforce or monitor once established. This can lead to unexpected complications and delays, and push conservation towards easy rather then effective decisions, especially when a deadline like 30 by 30 is involved.

Despite these challenges, new conservation approaches have the real potential to conserve some of the most threatened species and ecosystem services in the places that they are most at risk. This will ensure that meeting 30 by 30 conserves nature and the essential benefits it provides people.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Robert Bateman turns 90 today, and it will be a day like any other. He will wake up at 6:45 a.m., turn on CBC Radio and look out the window at the birds brunching at the feeders while he enjoys breakfast in bed (four scoops of yogurt, seeds and fruit, in case you were wondering). He will then reach for the binoculars his wife, photographer Birgit Freybe Bateman, tossed in the middle of their bed and see if there’s anything of interest in or around Ford Lake, which his Saltspring Island, B.C., property overlooks. By 10 a.m., he’ll be at his easel.

“Every day is the same as every other day,” he says from his studio the week before his birthday. “I virtually never get bored.”

Above the Rapids – Gulls & Grizzly, 30 x 48, acrylic on canvas, 2004“Pacific salmon form an important part of the many bounties of North America’s wild west coast. Although I have not shown a salmon in this painting, you know that they are there. Some are in the quiet water above the falls and others are still fighting their way upstream. It is a far-ranging crime against nature and against ourselves to jeopardize the spectacular wild salmon.”

How could he? The iconic Canadian artist and naturalist has five to 10 paintings on the go and a long list of requests. Every year, he does between 10 and 15 major works, adding to the approximately 700 he’s completed in his career. He’s a member of nearly 50 naturalist clubs and conservation organizations and has been bestowed umpteen honours, including more than a dozen honorary doctorates. He donates his artwork and limited edition prints for fundraising efforts that have provided millions of dollars for environmental and social causes over the decades. The Bateman Foundation, a non-profit that connects people to nature through art, operates the Gallery of Nature, a permanent home for the artist’s work in Victoria’s Inner Harbour. The foundation also runs several programs and events in which Bateman is involved. Retiring has never crossed his mind. 

Robert Bateman gets his wife’s opinion on a work in progress in 1997. “I’m lucky I’m married to an artist, Birgit, who has a good sense of taste. I like lots of opinions on my paintings. I’m not private about it. Part of family gatherings is coming to look at what grandpa’s working on. And then I’m interested in everybody’s opinions on it — even the grandkids.”

“I don’t know of any creative people that retire because their life is their art. It sounds a bit simplified, but that’s it,” he says as he sits at his easel, the morning light pouring in through the high windows of the cathedral-ceiling studio that was purpose built for him and Birgit. “My default position is to be sitting here with a brush in my hand.”

Today, that brush is painting a scene in Biddulph, a town in Staffordshire, England. It’s twilight, and a barn owl is cruising past a crumbling stone wall — all that’s left of a Catholic home that was pummelled with cannonballs during the English Civil War. The story behind the painting is perhaps as evocative as the work itself.

Robert Bateman spent four years working in Algonquin Park in Ontario in his late teens and early 20s. In his spare time, he painted en plein air like the Group of Seven. “All artists worth their salt paint what is in their heart, and what’s deepest in my heart is nature, especially mammals and birds.”

Robert Bateman is currently working on a piece inspired by a Victorian artist by the same name. “I work from photography — five to 50 photos for every painting. I record nature shows on TV and then sometimes for reference, which I’ve done in this case, I’ll play the show and freeze frame it. So, this is a freeze-frame TV barn owl flying by this old wall in northern England. The barn owl signifies wisdom.” Photo: Birgit Freybe Bateman

Several years ago, Bateman’s assistant, Kate Brotchie, was searching online for references to Bateman and came across a book entitled The Lost Pre-Raphaelite: The Secret Life and Loves of Robert Bateman, published in 2014. The book traces author and house restorer Nigel Daly’s attempts to uncover information about the scandalous life of Victorian artist Robert Bateman, who lived on Daly’s property. Birgit ordered her husband the book as a gift, and he devoured it. Today’s Robert Bateman had been aware of yesterday’s Robert Bateman and had even seen one of his pieces — a dead knight in a meadow at dusk with his faithful dog lying at his head — but had filed it away in the back of his mind.

“In the book, there’s a paragraph where Nigel Daly says they searched high and low for anything about this Robert Bateman, even to the furthest reaches of the internet, and they kept coming up with this irrelevant Canadian artist of the same name,” Bateman says with a laugh. “I read the book and enjoyed it so much, I wrote a fan letter to Nigel Daly: ‘I am the irrelevant Canadian artist and I absolutely loved your book. Could we come and visit sometime?’ So, we did, and that’s the setting of this painting.”

Robert Bateman has travelled around the world to see the species he paints in real life. Here, he hangs out with a friendly penguin in Antarctica. “To me, great art should have verisimilitude. It can be very loose and abstract, like Picasso, but it should still have the ring of truth to it and not look cooked up like a cartoon. When I teach workshops, I discourage doing art out of one’s mind. I believe in doing it out of one’s eye.” Photo: Birgit Freybe Bateman

The painting, entitled Barn Owl at Biddulph Old Hall, is destined for the Birds in Art exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, Wisconsin, an annual showing of the world’s foremost avian artists. Even prior to the pandemic, Bateman was planning to skip this year’s gathering but send a piece.

“I like to show the flag and show that I’m still alive and support the cause,” he says. “I also like to do it for the stimulation of doing something that is fresh and perhaps surprising — something other than a commission. I particularly like the way this one is going, so I’ll be happy to share it.”

Robert Bateman was a high school teacher for two decades before his art took off in the mid-1970s, and he decided to pursue it full time. “I’ve always been a teacher. One of the reasons I went into teaching was to share knowledge, excitement and joy. My art is a branch of that.”

Robert Bateman works on Chief, a six-by-eight-foot canvas, in 1997. It was too large for his studio, so he set it up in an outbuilding. “We need to pay attention to the particularity of the planet. This is not just to save it. Paying attention to nature is a joy in itself and has measurable benefits for a person’s body, mind and spirit. Of course, nature art does not have to be detailed. It can inspire wonderful paintings in a variety of styles, flat or three dimensional, bold or detailed.” Photo: Birgit Freybe Bateman

The Return – Bald Eagle, Pair, 36 x 48, acrylic on canvas, 2001“I started birding in the 1940s. At that time, we had certain bald eagle nests and sites to visit. By the late 1950s and ’60s, these disappeared due to the effects of DDT. In fact, the eagle was wiped out over most of its eastern range. Since DDT use in North America was banned in 1972, the bald eagle has become a hopeful symbol because the populations are springing back. There are, however, troubling signs for the future, once again due to human activities. This is one reason why I showed the male eagle returning to the nest without a fish. Industrial fishing is mopping up populations of herring, salmon and even less commercially interesting fish.”

If Bateman reaches an impasse on the barn owl painting today, he will likely move on to one of his other “front-burner” pieces. Perhaps the painting of 100 sandhill cranes on the Platte River in Nebraska or the scene of the winding Li River, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in China, with a fisherman in a dugout boat using a captive cormorant with a ring around its throat to catch fish, a practice that continues today.

He might glance at that long list of requests — a raven or a warbler, a crane sketch, a downy woodpecker, a pair of evening grosbeaks, a bald eagle’s nest with two bald eagles coming into it, a raccoon, a rabbit — and smile at the Leonard Cohen quote he jotted down while listening to the radio, albeit slightly inaccurately: “I’ve dealt a lot in various religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.”

Bateman always has several pieces on the go so he can pivot when artist’s block hits.

“I think of the muse up on top of Mount Olympus in Greece. She decides, ‘Well, Bateman’s been tortured enough. I guess I’ll reach out and touch him with my finger and give him a thought that he can carry on.’ Then the thought comes to me and I carry on for a while, and then kind of get stuck in the snow like I used to do in Ontario, so I start another painting.”

If the muse doesn’t reach out, he will likely stare out his window at the blooming heritage apple trees in hopes of a visitor showing up at one of his bird feeders to distract him, which, in fact, has just happened.

“A very rare and drab little bird has just arrived on the scene,” he says. “It’s a tit. I’ve only ever seen them once or twice in my life before this year. It’s a little grey job, a bit bigger than a wren.”

Queen Anne’s Lace & American Goldfinch, 11 x 16, acrylic on board, 1982“The goldfinch is found all over North America in open country, particularly where there are weedy meadows and small trees. In a sense, the main subject of the painting is the meadow. It is an undistinguished little piece of the world, which we all too readily take for granted. In fact, meadows with their multitude of plants are often considered “wasteland” and are cut, or even worse, sprayed with poisons. My aim is to give a feeling of life, movement and air to this bit of nature. In a sense, I am glorifying a neglected corner of our planet.”

Bateman has been birdwatching since he was a teenager and welcomes the news that more people are trying it out during the pandemic. “If people change their behaviour and actually get out in nature and go for a walk in a park and go and sit in the harbour and look at the ocean, I think that that will make them better when this is all over,” he says, adding that he and Birgit get out for a hike on their property every day after lunch. “Just take some deep breaths — your cells rejoice.”

While he’s strolling through the bucolic land that surrounds his property, he’s taking note of the species he sees — and doesn’t see. “What I do myself and recommend other people do is get to know your neighbours of other species, and particularly get to know their names,” he says. “I think it’s insulting to say, ‘I love birds, they’re so sweet and cute, but I don’t want to know their names. It’s sort of like being a teacher and saying, ‘I love young people, but I don’t want to know their names.’ It’s superficial and it’s not engaging.”

Learning species’ names leads us down the path of learning more about them, Bateman says, and noticing troubling changes. “You can say to yourself, ‘How come I haven’t been seeing any fox sparrows for the last two years? What’s going on? Is there something going on in British Columbia or is there something going on where they migrate? And is it something I could get involved with by helping with a conservation cause?’ ”

Red-winged Blackbirds & Rail Fence, 36 x 48, acrylic on board, 1978“In the early spring, the red-winged blackbirds move north to their nesting territory. I did field sketches of the birds and rendered plasticine models based on the sketches. Then I did paintings from the models on bits of card to the scale of the picture which had been roughed in. I tried the cutout birds in various positions using masking tape. This particular arrangement pleased me most, artistically. The fluffed-up bird on the left is the dominant one. The sleek bird in the upper right is the fleeing loser. After I had finished the painting an ornithologist friend informed me that the dominant bird would not normally allow himself to get below the subdominant bird. This scientific flaw bothers me, but not enough to change the composition. I always try to reconcile art and nature in my paintings, but if I had to choose between them, I would choose art.”

Departing Bonaparte’s, 36 x 48, acrylic on canvas, 2018“One of our joys in life is vacation time with the family at our cottage on Hornby Island. This will most likely be the gathering place for our family for many years to come. Our boat is an inflatable zodiac. With it we take little expeditions to areas that are good for snorkelling. Returning from one of these trips we encountered a flock of Bonaparte’s gulls and tried to get close enough for photography. Often wildlife photos are of the back side of the creature getting away. I thought that this image made a good composition, capturing that moment of departure.”

Wildebeest, 30 x 40, acrylic on board, 1964“The wildebeest is an odd creature. It has the face of a mule, the horns of a cow, the beard of a goat and the body of a horse. The rather freaky appearance is augmented by the fact that they will suddenly break into unexplained gambolling, almost like a bucking bronco. These animals occur in vast herds in East Africa. I have stood on a hill in Kenya and seen tens of thousands stretching to the horizon in all directions. Another evidently senseless bit of behaviour I have observed is that a procession of hundreds of animals will be walking single file following some unknown leader. The line, however, will wind in all directions, even going back on itself.”

That spirit of getting involved and helping out is another promising sign Bateman has seen in the wake of the pandemic. “There are thousands and thousands of inspiring examples of people tackling tough jobs and going in to help people and make the world a better place,” Bateman says, adding that we can do the same for nature.

The pandemic has postponed the birthday bash Bateman had planned with his family, which includes five children and 10 grandchildren, but he’s hoping to reschedule for the fall. “I’ve got to keep living and keep upright at least until that happens,” he jokes.

So, tonight will be a quiet one with his wife. “Birgit is one to make things special for occasions, so I’m not sure if we’ll have shrimp or crab or something more exotic.”

“You asked for roast chicken,” she calls from the other room.

Roast chicken it is. Followed by strawberry shortcake, one of Bateman’s favourite treats (with whipped cream and a couple of scoops of ice cream, in case you were wondering). 

Self-portrait, 12 x 9, oil on board, 2015“I love painting people. I’ve done more Homo sapiens than any other mammal.”

Robert Bateman canoes on Ford Lake, which is right next to his property on Saltspring Island, B.C., in 2013. “Becoming engaged with one’s place not only has personal benefits for body and mind, it has important benefits for the future of the place.” Photo: Birgit Freybe Bateman

After digesting over a British crime drama, it’s back to the studio until 10 p.m., just like any other evening. “I have a routine and I really like routine because I feel like I accomplish more.”

And for 90-year-old Robert Bateman, there’s still much to accomplish.

The new nonagenarian laughs when asked his secrets to a long, healthy, meaningful life before sharing this: “Find a piece of nature — could be a tree, could even be a dandelion — take a deep breath, smile and say thank you.”

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.

People have spent most of the past month indoors as communities attempt to flatten the curve to limit the spread of COVID-19. For many of us, small doses of nature have helped provide solace in stressful times. In my Edmonton neighbourhood, we are keeping company with large flocks of Bohemian waxwings, urban jackrabbits and sometimes their coyote predators.

Across much of North America, the tendrils of human activity are ubiquitous outside of national, provincial and state parks. In Alberta, where I conduct ecological research, roads, pipelines and cut lines for seismic exploration crisscross the landscape. For some species — most notably caribou — we have strong evidence that the activities of modern society can cause their numbers to decline and threaten their survival.

Conservation areas can help protect species and ecosystems, but they are still relatively few and far between. We must figure out where new protected areas will be most effective, especially given the increasing influence of climate change.

Part of my work as a conservation biologist aims to do just this. My colleagues and I have produced a model-based map, covering most of Canada and the United States, that identifies broad areas where species and ecosystems may take refuge as the climate changes.

Global targets for protected areas

Ten years ago, as part of the global Convention on Biological Diversity, member countries agreed to 20 biodiversity targets (read: aspirations) for 2020. The most specific and achievable of these Aichi targets was the conservation of 17 per cent of Earth’s lands and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas in parks and other protected areas.

Now it is 2020, and unfortunately we are not there yet. With 12.1 per cent of land protected as of December 2019, Canada has made good progress. Much of this has been due to work by Indigenous communities, aided by government funding, to protect vast swaths of northern wilderness under Indigenous stewardship.

Meanwhile, the loss and degradation of natural ecosystems globally continues at an unprecedented rate, and an estimated one million species are threatened with extinction. Scientists and conservationists widely agree that more ambitious targets are needed.

Considering climate change

The enormity of climate change is also becoming increasingly apparent. (Remember that other global crisis?) As the world warms, some parks will dramatically change character, often beyond recognition.

For example, the climate conditions in parts of Wood Buffalo National Park in 2100 will closely resemble the warmer and drier region of Peace River, Alta., about 300 kilometres southwest. As a result, species will need more space to accommodate their shifts in distribution across the landscape and to compensate for the habitat loss due to wildfires that are increasing due to climate change.

Intact ecosystems can also serve as first lines of defence against climate change. Protected areas can also help slow greenhouse warming by sequestering carbon in forests, grasslands and ancient peat-laden wetlands. But this means thinking big.

In advance of a series of now-postponed meetings planned for 2020, members of the Convention on Biological Diversity drafted a proposal calling for the protection of 30 per cent of land by 2030, and 50 per cent by 2050. Clearly these numbers are not based on complex math, but they are bold and memorable. The Canadian government followed with targets of 25 per cent by 2025 and 30 per cent by 2030.

Ambitious targets are not enough. It’s important to figure out where new protected areas should be located to maximize their value as conservation investments for biodiversity.

Climate-informed conservation

As conservation biologists who study the effects of climate change on biodiversity, my colleagues and I used maps, based on models of future climates, to identify refugia — areas where plants and animals are most likely to persist in a warmer world — as well as climate corridors that species can use to move along with changes in suitable environments more easily. A number of these maps of climate exposure have been compiled by the AdaptWest research project and can be used by biologists and planners to map conservation priorities.

As an illustration, we used a core subset of these maps (focusing on trees and songbirds) to produce what we term climate-informed conservation priorities for most of Canada and the United States.

Climate-informed conservation ranks from 0 (lowest) to 1 (highest), with current protected areas overlaid (transparent orange). Biome boundaries are indicated in black. (D. Stralberg et al., Conservation Letters)

These model-based maps don’t give us the answer, but they can help land planners — who are already equipped with other key information, like land costs, societal values and locations of threatened species — make more informed decisions when it comes to climate change.

Although we found that the highest-priority refugia and corridors are better protected than Canada as a whole (20 per cent versus 12 per cent protected), that still means that 80 per cent lack formal protection. Boreal and grassland regions contain the largest areas of unprotected high-priority lands, totalling one million square kilometres combined.

This year was set to be a super year for nature and biodiversity. Despite obvious setbacks, we have an opportunity now to address both the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis head on.

Compared to battling the coronavirus, conserving biodiversity is arguably cheaper, simpler and, in many cases, good for the economy. With sustained energy, we can learn from the current health crisis the value of swift, model-based and coordinated action.

Diana Stralberg thanks collaborators Carlos Carroll at the Klamath Center for Conservation Research and Scott Nielsen at the University of Alberta.

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.

Even when governments have good intentions — like promoting conservation — they don’t necessarily move forward with plans for Indigenous territories in a productive or helpful way, according to Kelly Brown, director of the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Integrated Resource Management Department. 

“A lot of work that takes place around management planning with the province or the federal government — they get all the work done, and then they come to us,” Brown told The Narwhal. 

“They don’t realize that, in the community here, we’re already working towards putting our own plans together.”

Brown is a co-author of a recent academic paper that demonstrates how a resurgence in Indigenous governance can lead to more effective conservation.

The paper, “Supporting resurgent Indigenous-led governance: A nascent mechanism for just and effective conservation,” concludes that, worldwide, “increases in conservation in some of the most globally significant areas of conservation interest will increasingly not only be unjust, but also impossible without Indigenous consent and leadership.”

‘Serengeti of the north’: the Kaska Dena’s visionary plan to protect a huge swath of B.C. wilderness

Brown pointed out that conservation techniques are often prescribed from offices in Ottawa, far removed from places where research and direct experience with the landscape are unfolding.

In one instance, Brown said he found inaccurate government data about areas of high and low grizzly bear populations that contradicted the findings of Haíɫzaqv research, which includes detailed bear monitoring. The research gives the Haíɫzaqv valuable insight into local grizzly populations. One study, for example, used grizzly hair samples to find a lower salmon run coincided with higher population levels of cortisol, the chemical associated with stress.

Indigenous people have the right to consultation when it comes to natural resource extraction but also when it comes to natural resource conservation and land use plans, Brown noted. 

It’s time for Indigenous communities to be given the power and authority to lead conservation on their own lands, which they live upon and know well, he said. 

Members of the Coastal Guardian Watchmen inspect their crab traps near Bella Bella, B.C. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

Indigenous-led conservation a social, ecological and economic win

Empowering Indigenous communities to lead conservation efforts comes with other significant benefits beyond respecting Indigenous rights and confronting the legacy of settler colonialism, found the paper, co-authored by Kyle Artelle, Melanie Zurba, Jonaki Bhattacharyya, Diana E.Chan, Jess Housty and Faisal Moola.

For example, Indigenous Guardians programs on British Columbia’s coast have delivered a social return on investment in ranges between 10:1 and 20:1, according to one study (which measured social, economic, cultural, and economic value). 

The authors cite another study that found biodiversity within Indigenous-managed areas is often higher than, or at least equal to, biodiversity in colonial or state-run parks at the provincial or federal level in Canada. 

Meet the Kaska land guardians

The recent creation of new protected areas within Indigenous territories and alongside Indigenous governments has led to sizeable conservation gains, the authors point out. 

The paper points to the newly created 14,250 square kilometre Edéhzhíe Dehcho Indigenous Protected Area in the Northwest Territories and the 14,000 square kilometre Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve along the Great Slave Lake, established in partnership by the Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation, the Northwest Territories government, Parks Canada, Northwest Territory Métis Nation and other Indigenous groups.

The paper also notes a recent proposal among the federal government, Nunavut and the Qikiqtani Inuit Association to create Tallurutiup Imanga, which, at 109,000 square kilometres, is set to become the largest protected area in Canada.

Moving beyond ‘fortress conservation’

Lead author Kyle Artelle chuckled when he said the paper’s conclusions will not “blow folks’ minds” who are in Indigenous governance and communities, or even surprise people working in conservation who take part in these kinds of conversations.

“A lot of folks really get this, it seems obvious,” said Artelle, a biologist and adjunct professor with the geography department at the University of Victoria. “But when you leave the bubble, into some mainstream conservation groups, for example, there’s still what they call ‘fortress conservation.’ ”

Artelle said the idea of fortress conservation means aiming to conserve as many hectares as possible — and without any humans

“Some of the original national parks were very colonial. Banff has a horrible history of forcing folks out,” he said. “A lot of the original parks had this mentality that to protect nature you have to get rid of people … in a country where none of these ecosystems have existed since the last ice age without people, or longer.”

Bow River, Banff National Park. Photo: Janusz Sliwinski / Flickr

Conservation failures come with high costs

Other examples, such as weakened salmon populations, show even when governments do implement some restrictions with the goal of conservation, it doesn’t always lead to effective practices.

This year, for example, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) implemented rolling closures of commercial and recreational fisheries. But many First Nations said the closures weren’t enough. 

Some First Nations, including the Haíɫzaqv, decided against fishing, even though recreational fishing was still permitted by DFO.

Many First Nations said the government’s approach to dwindling stocks infringed on their constitutional rights of first access to fish and endangered already vulnerable salmon.

Life after Chinook: a West Coast fishing community looks to reinvent itself

The Haíɫzaqv wanted to take a “strong stance” and shut down certain areas to all types of fishing, including recreational fishing, Brown said. In 2015, the Haíɫzaqv famously occupied a DFO field office and pushed the commercial herring fishery out of their territory following a devastating population collapse. They continue to assert control over herring management, and worked with the DFO to suspend the commercial fishery in 2018.

Going forward, the Haíɫzaqv will enforce their own laws “rather than asking permission,” Brown said, recalling the Haíɫzaqv term Káxḷáya Ǧviḷás: “the ones who uphold the laws of our ancestors.”

While the DFO is relying more on traditional knowledge, change is incremental, Brown noted.

“Both the provincial and the federal government know that we aren’t going to sit back. We say something — we’re actually going to do it,” he said. 

“We don’t like to threaten that way, but sometimes we need to get to that point.”

Using tools ‘our ancestors never would have imagined’

Jess Housty, another Haíɫzaqv co-author, said writing an academic-style paper was a new way to share the ancestral knowledge she’s inherited, even though she’s not an academic.

Jess Housty, acting executive director of Qqs Projects Society on a Guardian Watchmen vessel in Heiltsuk territory. Photo: Louise Whitehouse / The Narwhal

“Transmission of that ancestral knowledge is important work and sometimes we’re called to use tools our ancestors never would have imagined to do it,” she said in an interview.

Housty sees value in putting out these ideas in a new way.

“The crises we collectively face due to colonialism, capitalism, and climate change are too urgent for us to work in silos and I think this paper represents an opportunity to break our silos down.” Artelle hopes that the paper will make its way into the hands of decision-makers who lack information about Indigenous stewardship. Including Indigenous leadership in a national conservation strategy could help the federal government reach its target to protect 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland water, and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020, he said.

Groups call on B.C. to fund Indigenous monitoring of mines in traditional territories

Indigenous peoples have also recently demonstrated the government will face legal challenges if it makes major land decisions without consent, as illustrated by First Nations opposition to the Trans Mountain pipeline and the Tsilhqot’in Nation stopping Taseko Mines from operating on their territory.

Housty said if the government wants to protect the environment, handing over jurisdiction shouldn’t be complicated.

“When it comes to stewardship and thriving lands and waters, no one can do that work better in Haíɫzaqv territory than the Haíɫzaqv people,” she said. 

“Anyone who purports to share our goal of thriving lands and waters should be asking themselves how they can support us or make space for us to do what we need to do  — not trying to do the work for us.”

Update November 28, 1:15pm pst: This article was updated to clarify the 2015 decline in herring populations led to the Haíɫzaqv occupying a DFO field office. The Haíɫzaqv worked with the DFO to suspend the herring commercial fishery in 2018.

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.

Łutsel K’e, N.W.T. — Our nine-passenger Cessna drops 2,000 feet out of the sky as pilot Andy Brock descends into the East Arm of Great Slave Lake. 

Seen up close, the blurry and distant landscape resolves itself into full relief.

What had been a low, rolling landscape of bogs and Canadian Shield rock as we left Yellowknife to the west now pops up like braille: imposing cliffs drop off into the world’s deepest freshwater outside of Siberia. Wind blows up the East Arm, catching the waves and pulling them over into whitecaps and swaying the tiny plane’s wings as it buzzes overhead. 

Jutting out from the shoreline in the distance is the small community of Łutsel K’e, population 303.

With me on board is a group of conservationists from Nature United making their way to Łutsel K’e to celebrate Canada’s newest national park: Thaidene Nëné (pronounced THIGH-den-nay NEN-ay), The Land of the Ancestors. 

The park — part wildlife conservation area, part territorial park and part national park reserve — makes up 26,525 square kilometres of lakes, old-growth spruce forests, rivers and wildlife. 

It straddles the tree line, a fuzzy border between the boreal forest and the barren lands to the north. In that way it can act as a buffer against climate change, providing a refuge for the species that live on the edge, such as caribou, relieving those animals of the stress development brings.

The community of Łutsel K’e at sunset. Photo: Pat Kane

“If you think of an intact, unimpeded watershed — and how many of those are left on the planet, really? — I mean, that’s an incredible opportunity that Thaidene Nëné has,” says Kris Brekke, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society for the Northwest Territories.

The smooth ceremony heralding the park’s inauguration belies the rough, incremental negotiations that have brought it there. 

Like the landscape itself, the process looks cleaner from afar.

Thaidene Nëné was first proposed in the 1960s, and now after five decades and a fundamental inversion of the power structure between the federal government and the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation, the park is becoming a reality. 

Its creation speaks to a rebalancing of Parks Canada’s relationship with Indigenous communities and a rethinking of the colonial mentality of creating parks by removing people from the land.

“It’s almost a complete flip,” says Rob Prosper, a retired VP of parks establishment and conservation for Parks Canada.

James Marlowe meets the group in his ancient blue pickup truck moments after the plane kisses the gravel landing strip. The East Arm is legendary among anglers for its enormous lake trout, but, remote and lacking in infrastructure, it has been mostly left out of Yellowknife’s tourism boom. Marlowe started River’s East Arm Tours in the last year, with some government support for equipment and licensing, in anticipation of a spike in tourism. 

“I know that it’s a good business and since I have the equipment on hand, I’ve decided to see if I can take people out on fishing tours,” he says. 

Marlowe’s truck bounces into an empty lot next to his house on the edge of Łutsel K’e. The makeshift camp is a collection of canvas wall tents — the preferred bush lodging, lined with spruce boughs and fitted with a small wood stove — a lean-to over a picnic table, an outhouse and a small wash station. 

“Welcome to The Ritz,” he says.

James Marlowe reclines by the fire at “The Ritz.” Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

‘This is our highway’

There are no hotel rooms available in Łutsel K’e the week of the Thaidene Nëné announcement. On a quiet day, there might be as many as 10 rooms available, but this is among the busiest days the community has had in years.

Łutsel K’e’s handful of meandering and nameless dirt roads are surrounded on three sides by water, making up a vaguely rectangular community that was only established in any permanent form a generation or two ago. But the community is strong, with an enduring connection to its lands and waters; more people here own boats than cars, Chief Darryl Marlowe explains. There are no roads connecting Łutsel K’e to the rest of the territory. 

“This is our highway,” he says as we cruise out on the lake in the boat he inherited from his grandfather. 

There are no highways connecting Łutsel K’e to the rest of the Northwest Territories. Photo: Pat Kane

The community of Lutsel K’e, as seen from the water. Photo: Pat Kane

The water, now calm after its mid-afternoon bluster, reflects the evening light as Marlowe’s boat skims along. Across the water from Łutsel K’e is the Frontier Fishing Lodge. The community is buying the high-end business; it will form one cornerstone of its strategy for growing the tourism industry, from its current three independent startup operators to a more centralized system complete with bookings, promotional materials, accommodations and networking. As it is now, none of the tourism businesses in town has a website or booking system.

With or without the fishing lodge, the community expects the financial returns from Thaidene Nëné to be substantial. A $30 million trust fund — established by a $15 million federally matched donation from Nature United — will generate dividends for the community. The fund is expected to roll off at least $1 million per year, which can pay for guardians, training, planning, research partnerships and youth engagement: “Anything that’s about taking care of this land,” explains Jenny Brown, the director of conservation for Nature United.

“It’s critically important,” she says of the trust fund. “The park is three different governments working together to manage it, and without a source of revenue for Łutsel K’e to perform that role, it would be difficult for them to do that.”

Jenny Brown, the director of conservation for Nature United, sits on the back of Marlowe’s truck at “The Ritz.” Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

That money and the activities it enables could make the difference between the community being able to take meaningful part in managing Thaidene Nëné National Park Reserve and sitting on the sidelines. Without that capacity, several people told The Narwhal, the community would not have agreed to accept the park — but it did, with 88 per cent support in a February vote.

Cruising alongside Marlowe’s boat is a crowded vessel carrying Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna, surrounded by aides and Parks Canada officials (though without the personal security she recently took on amid ongoing harassment. “You’re safe here,” Marlowe assures her). 

The camp the community has prepared for McKenna includes a second group of canvas wall tents and a fire. Two trout, fresh from the lake, are roasting on the fire. The peaceful setting is a welcome reprieve from the ramp-up to the federal election, her aides say, a lull before the storm of campaigning.

McKenna’s hosts for the night are the Ni Hat’ni Dene Rangers, the Watchers of the Land. As the “moccasins on the ground,” guardians are the embodiment of the First Nation’s relationship with its land. Crews made up of paired adults and youth monitor, patrol and conduct sampling operations across the territory. They interact with tourists and other users of the area, gently reminding them whose territory they’re visiting.

The Ni Hat’ni Dene Rangers transport Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to their camp. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Ni Hat’ni Dene rangers on patrol near Łutsel K’e. Photo: Pat Kane

“The importance [of the guardians] for me and the community is just knowing that we have our own people out there, monitoring the waters that we know,” explains Prairie Desjarlais, who heads up the program. “No one’s disrespecting it.”

The guardians are expanding into year-round operations now, and expect to add new teams and new responsibilities such as monitoring caribou. 

Ashton Catholique is 15 years old, and has seldom been out on the land. But he knows he wants to be a guardian. It’s not just a chance at a job, though the opportunities are set to grow in the coming years. He says it’s a chance to learn the traditional skills and “to pass them down to the next generation.” 

Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna meets with youth, including Ashton Catholique (right front) and members of the Ni Hat’ni Dene guardians. Photo: Pat Kane

A 2016 study of the Ni Hat’ni Dene Rangers program found a $4.5 million investment in the program had returned $11.1 million in social, environmental, economic and cultural benefits. It decreased crime. It strengthened language retention. It increased the availability of traditional foods. The study suggested that a sustained, long-term investment by the government would increase those benefits. 

“This renewed responsibility for territory is going to bring a mentality in a community that’s going to encourage people to stay in school, to participate in traditional territory management and the pride associated with playing that role,” explains the now-retired Prosper, who, aside from his work for Parks Canada, is a member of the Acadia First Nation

Accordingly, that basic premise — having the local people on the land, monitoring their own waters — has been baked into the park. 

Standing by the water of the East Arm, McKenna explains that she expects the concept to be a central part of most new park negotiations in the future.

“This is part of reconciliation,” she says. “When you talk about reconciliation, often it’s an abstract concept, but in the context of protected areas, land, water, air, animals, ice ⁠— that’s really everything for Indigenous peoples.”

A musk ox mother and calf appear on the hill above the camp where McKenna stayed the night. Musk oxen have become increasingly common near Łutsel K’e. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Suddenly, yells from up the beach interrupt McKenna’s train of thought. A pair of CBC reporters have spotted a mother musk ox and her calf, on a ridge overlooking the campsite. McKenna, never having seen a musk ox, tears off to get a look. It’s explained to her that the animals have become ubiquitous near the community lately, even verging on an annoyance (indeed, that night, the animals would have to be chased away from the minister’s campsite after wandering in amongst the tents). 

But to the outsiders watching the exotic northern animals amble across the horizon, it’s a small taste of what the park will be protecting.

Changing parks

‘Protecting’ may be too strong a word here — and that, explains McKenna, is a long overdue approach.

“Could you imagine establishing a park where the Łutsel K’e Dene weren’t allowed to hunt or fish?” McKenna marvels in her speech at the following day’s ceremony, witnessed by a room packed with First Nation members and guests. The musk oxen spotted by McKenna’s camp will be fair game for Indigenous hunters within the park.

That’s in line with what some conservation organizations have been saying for years. “Economic diversification has to be part of conservation,” says Tracey Williams, Northwest Territories lead for Nature United. “You have to have revenue,” she says, if the community is going to have a diversity of opportunity for its people.

A circle dance forms around the sacred fire prior to the signing ceremony. Photo: Pat Kane

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna makes an offering of tobacco to the fire at a ceremony before the signing. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Parks Canada, it seems, would agree. 

The agency will create “opportunities to advance the socio-economic well-being of Indigenous partners,” reads a Parks Canada document released in July. The document commits the agency to working with Indigenous communities to maximize local economic benefits — not just cultural benefits — from parks.

Long before the current era of reconciliation-driven conservation, however, and far from McKenna’s disbelief at a park without Indigenous harvesting, a previous generation of government officials could scarcely have imagined the current park.

“There’s some horrific stories by Indigenous people,” says Steven Nitah, a former chief who acted as chief negotiator for the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation during the planning process. 

Wood Buffalo National Park looms large in the minds of northern Indigenous peoples, especially the Métis. It was established in 1922, and “all Aboriginal rights were considered extinguished,” a Parks Canada webpage reads. Some Indigenous harvesting was allowed, but only in arbitrary ways dictated by government officials. Métis were excluded entirely for more than 80 years.

Nitah says the policies were violently enforced.

Steven Nitah, Lutsel K’e Dene First Nation’s lead negotiator for Thaidene Nene National Park. Photo: Pat Kane

“I know of a story where a family was forced out at gunpoint — and after walking to a community that they’d never lived in before, they burned their home,” he says.

Kevin McNamee, director of protected areas establishment for Parks Canada, says that while he isn’t aware of those exact events, the history of Wood Buffalo is a troubling one for the agency. 

“The history of that park certainly hung over some communities, particularly the Northwest Territories Métis Nation,” he says. 

That kind of relationship was by design: the government wanted control of the land.

“Parks were established, almost by definition, by removing Indigenous people, disconnecting them from their traditional territory, taking away any responsibility for management of their traditional territory,” explains Prosper. “It has taken 130 years to rebuild that trust.” 

Those stories, or ones like them, were known by the Łutsel K’e Dene when Parks Canada first approached them in the late 1960s to establish a park in the East Arm.

The government’s expectation would have been similar to its expectations in places like Wood Buffalo — that the park would be a place of wilderness carefully managed by Ottawa bureaucrats, not by the people on whose doorstep it would be established, the people who had stewarded and depended upon that land since time immemorial.

“In those days, a national park would not allow them to continue their traditional ways of life: no hunting, no trapping, no fishing,” explains McNamee.

Then-chief Pierre Catholique was taken across the country from park to park by the government officials in a charm offensive. He wasn’t swayed.

If the plan was intended to exert pressure to make a decision, it backfired spectacularly. “He says, ‘I’ve got to talk to my people first,’ ” says Nitah. A subsequent meeting of Dene chiefs, to discuss these dealings with Ottawa, would form the beginnings of what became the powerful Dene Nation.

The chiefs together decided to reject the proposal. “We said no — then thought about it for 35 years,” Nitah cracks. He says a second overture, in 1982, was met by a demand by hereditary Chief Joe Lockhart that they “Pack up [their] maps and go.” 

It wasn’t until the helicopters arrived that the community started seriously considering the idea. 

Warding off a mining boom

The same year that Parks Canada was first approaching the Łutsel K’e Dene, a geologist named Chuck Fipke got stuck on the side of a mountain on the other side of the Northwest Territories. A week into his ordeal, a helicopter landed to rescue him, at the behest of Stewart Blusson. The two became friends, then business partners and then they altered the course of Northwest Territories history.

The fortunes of the territory were beginning to sink during the 1980s. The price of gold, which had driven the economy of Yellowknife and powered mines around the territory since the 1940s, dropped by more than 60 per cent throughout the decade. Exploration was down, and the mines were beginning to close. 

But then, for the industry, a miracle: in November of 1991, Fipke and Blusson found 81 small diamonds at a site 300 km northeast of Yellowknife. The discovery made both men fabulously wealthy, and set off an unprecedented staking boom across the territory. The Northwest Territories became known overnight as one of the world’s great diamond mining districts, and everyone wanted in on the action. By 2004, an area bigger than New Zealand had been staked in the territory.

“Helicopters were hovering in people’s yards, and putting stakes into their yards,” Nitah says. “That’s when the elders said, you know, it was getting a little out of hand; we need to protect the core of our homeland.” 

The people of Łutsel K’e decided that using the federal government’s laws would be a way of warding off the danger of a mining boom in its backyard. And things had changed on the Parks Canada side: a new designation, the “national park reserve,” had been created, which recognized Indigenous harvesting rights and in some ways acted as a placeholder for land claims. 

Following the ratification of the Constitution in 1982 — which included Section 35 and its hunting and gathering provisions — the community also felt confident the park could not take away their rights. 

Other parks had been established in the interim; most significantly, northern parks like Kluane, which allowed harvesting, and Gwaii Hanaas National Park in Haida Gwaii, which is co-managed by the Haida and monitored by their Watchmen.

Armed with these new possibilities, Łutsel K’e Dene chief Felix Lockhart approached Parks Canada in 2000, and the proposal went ahead. Thaidene Nëné started down the long road toward establishment in 2004. The details began to trickle out: it would be co-managed between Parks Canada, the Łutsel K’e Dene and the territorial government. It would be open to First Nations and Métis fishing, hunting and travel throughout the region. There would be an administrative and welcome centre built in the community, creating and sustaining local jobs.

The negotiations went on, led by a few negotiators. But Dene cultures, until just a few generations ago, relied on oral history and a set of broadly applicable Dene laws to make decisions — and a network of chiefs that would usually be appointed for set purposes, for set periods of time. 

“We never really had a centralized leadership in the Denesołine culture,” Nitah explains.

For the Łutsel K’e Dene to now be put in a position of articulating those traditions on paper, as dictated by representatives behind closed doors, to a government that, historically, had acted in bad faith too many times to count, was a leap of faith.

A major sticking point in negotiations, according to negotiator Steve Ellis, was deciding who had what powers between the Indigenous communities and the governments. 

Steve Ellis acted as a negotiator for Lutsel K’e during the park negotiations. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

“How do you preserve a minister’s discretion while also recognizing the inherent authorities and jurisdictions of the First Nation?” he asks. “So that was, by far, the hardest piece: who’s the boss?”

There were competing claims by other northern First Nations to resolve. The Yellowknives Dene First Nation, with a land claim in progress that overlaps with the territorially managed part of the park, would later go so far as to boycott the signing ceremony.

“We want it, as per our original area we selected,” says Yellowknives Dene Chief Ernest Betsina. “We want it for us.”

Debating these sticky issues of competing jurisdictions and rights would take up the next 15 years — plenty of time for the mining industry to find as many ways as it could to keep a share of its own.

Mining for controversy

A backgrounder from the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation from 2013, ten years into the planning process, lauds the ongoing work to create a 33,000 square kilometre reserve. At the same time, work was underway to cut the limbs off the park.

A 2013 mineral and energy resources assessment ⁠— a normal, required part of the park establishment process ⁠— shows where the conflicts between mining and conservation were going to occur: the area surrounding the Gacho Kue diamond mine to the northwest, a set of prospecting permits to the northeast, gold-copper-iron deposits in the southwest and uranium deposits in two separate areas on the southern end of the park.

Those would all be hacked off like the branches of an unruly tree. 

“We reduced the size of the area of interest by over 7,000 square kilometres to address [the mining industry’s] concerns,” says Nitah. “And we even cut off a big chunk on the southern side where there’s very little to no geological information.”

In its final form, including the territorial protected area and national park, Thaidene Nëné would be 26,525 square kilometres.

Despite the concession of more than 20 per cent of the park, the vocal Northwest Territories mining lobby was not happy to have a park in its backyard — an area it has always had free access to. Nitah dismisses their concerns.

“For them it’s all about having access to land in the spirit of colonialism,” Nitah says. He maintains that the community is not anti-mining — and that in fact mining companies would be welcome to work with the community to explore their territory — but that development needs to be on their terms. The original 33,000 square kilometre area, he says, is still an Indigenous Protected Area in the sense that it remains under the jurisdiction of the community.

As the plan progressed, op-eds, open letters and press releases bashed the park for closing off some of the Northwest Territories to development. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines complained that the minerals assessment had “glossed over” areas with high potential for mines, and not done as thorough a job as a mining company would have done in looking for minerals.

Alan Latourelle, the CEO of Parks Canada at the time, disagrees. 

“I think that we’ve done our homework,” he says. “We, the federal government, when I was there, invested a significant, significant amount in terms of the Mineral and Energy Resource Assessment.”

One letter from the Chamber of Mines to the territorial government’s Standing Committee on Economic Development, dated May 1, 2019, asked that the government change the legislation to allow pipelines and transmission lines through the park, limit the size of protected areas and redefine a park as a “development” so that it would require the same level of environmental scrutiny as a new mine would.

A Chamber of Mines submission to Parks Canada in July of 2019 complained that the park was withdrawing too much land from development. That included the Lockhart River, what it characterized as “the Northwest Territories’ third most attractive and natural hydropower development opportunity.” 

The Lockhart River is home to the Ts’ankui Theda, the Old Lady of the Falls, and an important spiritual gathering place for the Łutsel K’e Dene First Nation. Since the 1970s, the site has been repeatedly considered as a potential hydropower site, and each time, the plan has been rebuffed by people familiar with Ts’ankui Theda’s significance to the Dene. 

In a final bid to prevent the park from becoming a reality, the lobby complained that “cumulative effects of land closures” — i.e. areas not open to mining — had not been considered, and also demanded an environmental assessment of the park. 

Proponents of the park, meanwhile, were doing their own analysis, and they liked what they saw. One study, Nitah says, found that the economic benefits of the park that would accrue directly to Łutsel K’e were about the same as would come from a diamond mine, in terms of the amount of employment each would generate.

Peter Lockhart works at the Diavik mine. He says he would rather work in ecotourism. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

Derek Sanderson and his children in Lutsel K’e. Many families are hoping the economic opportunities of Thaidene Nene will benefit their children and future generations. Photo: Pat Kane

“There’s nothing you can do that’s going to appease the mining community, for the simple fact that exploration activity is not allowed in a national park,” Nitah says.

As he emcees the signing ceremony in the Łutsel K’e community hall, Nitah declares victory.  

“We’ll never have to defend our homeland within Thaidene Nëné from industrial development again,” he announces. “We can live free from that stress.” 

Peter Lockhart is among the crowd at the ceremony. He works at the Diavik mine, but says he’s glad the park is coming.

“The mines will close,” he says. Diavik Mine is set to close around 2025, with the other two following suit soon thereafter. There are no new diamond mines on the horizon, and just a handful of smaller metal mines in progress. Regardless, Lockhart would rather work as an ecotourism guide — an industry with an unlimited future, or so the community hopes.

‘A little less remote’

“I hope my kids come here,” McKenna says, as she closes out her speech, before she and the other dignitaries sign the documents that would formally establish Thaidene Nëné. “I hope they meet the young people here, who will be the leaders one day — that they’ll have good jobs here in your own community, on your land, protecting your land.”

There’s a long way to go before that vision, one shared by the people of Łutsel K’e, is ready to be implemented. 

The 45-minute flight back to Yellowknife can feel like a vast gulf separating the northern hub from the tiny community. That short trip, $500 return on scheduled flights, means that just a tiny fraction of the 75,000 tourists visiting Yellowknife each year ever make it as far as Łutsel K’e. 

“This place is remote,” says Williams, who lived in Łutsel K’e for 12 years. “It just became a little less remote.” 

A document from the territorial government, which lays out the challenges of growing the tourism industry, points to a lack of trained guides and operators, little marketing, a lack of accommodation and food service and the high cost of airfare. 

Ray Griffith, originally an outsider who has worked for the band in different capacities for decades, was recently tasked with bringing would-be tourism operators like James Marlowe up to code and helping them grow their businesses. So far there are three tourism businesses in Łutsel K’e — a small start for a community hoping to grow an ecotourism-based economy. But Griffith remains optimistic.

Ray Griffith, originally an outsider, has been living in the community for decades. He has been tasked with getting the tourism industry in Lutsel K’e off the ground. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

“I’m expecting that we can develop a pretty vibrant economy that could make a huge difference to the community,” he says, “because it’s long-term, and it’s the kind of jobs that people enjoy: getting them out on the land, making money from their own land and their own cultural experiences.”

Tourism may have unintended consequences for the community as well. The sacred falls of Ts’ankui Theda, for instance, are part of the park, having been included to avoid their disruption by a hydropower development. They are not, however, a place that the Dene visit lightly but only in times of “great need,” Williams explains. Tourists may not share that view, so the park’s managers will have to decide who can visit, and when.

Rain pours down on Marlowe’s canvas tents at “The Ritz” the morning after the announcement, pausing just long enough for the visitors to pack up the tents and eat some breakfast in the lean-to. 

Sitting in the drizzle by his campfire, Marlowe contemplates the possibilities for his business and his community. For young people like Ashton Catholique and Peter Lockhart there will be jobs on the land. For leaders like Steven Nitah and Darryl Marlowe, there will be decisions to be made about how to use the park and the proceeds of the $30 million trust fund for the benefit of their people. For Prairie Desjarlais’ guardians, and for the conservationists, there will be data to gather, waterways to study and fisheries and hunts to monitor. 

And for James Marlowe and his fellow guides, there will be visitors.

A small propeller plane waits for passengers on the gravel Łutsel K’e airstrip. Photo: Jimmy Thomson / The Narwhal

The entire Nature United crew piles into the back of the blue pickup for the short ride to the airport, but they’re met with bad news: the charter flight is cancelled due to weather, and they will have to find another way back. The place may be a little less remote now than it was before, but there are more hurdles to visiting here than the vast majority of tourists are willing to cross.

Northern parks are well known to be under-utilized relative to their southern counterparts. Aside from Kluane in Yukon, all eight national parks in the north last year saw a total of 6,338 visitors — and more than half of those were visiting Wood Buffalo. Aulavik, on Banks Island, had 18 visitors; Tuktut Nogait, in the northeast part of the Northwest Territories, recorded zero.

What the northern parks have that the southern ones do not always have is living Indigenous culture: they are mostly on the traditional territories of First Nations and Inuit communities that are actively practicing the activities that keep their cultures alive. In these new parks that encourage traditional activities to continue rather than limiting or eliminating them as before, visitors can experience something truly unique and authentic. 

“They advertise geography, but invariably the most powerful experience people have is a cultural one,” Prosper says. 

If Griffith and his small cadre of guides are hoping to cash in on an immediate boom in tourists now that the park has become a reality, they’re probably setting themselves up for disappointment. But Marlowe says he’s busy enough already. He spent all of August hosting and guiding, and new opportunities are arising from unexpected places: a group of survivalists has already booked him for a winter camping excursion, testing their mettle against the harsh elements of the Northwest Territories.

“There’s going to be an influx of people from all over the world,” he says, certain of himself, and of the draw of Thaidene Nëné’s wilderness and culture. “I’m ready.” 

Editor’s note: The Narwhal was invited to join Nature United’s charter flight to Łutsel K’e, as well as their camp at “The Ritz.” As per The Narwhal’s editorial independence policy, the organization did not have any input into the writing of this article.

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.

Environmental issues are top-of-mind for more Canadians than ever before in this year’s election. It’s an important issue to Canadians in every riding — and the parties know it.

In a Forum Research poll in July, 26 per cent of respondents said the environment was their top concern, leapfrogging the economy as the number one issue. In the 2015 election, the economy was by far the most important issue to voters. 

It’s also only the second election in which all four major parties openly accept the reality of climate change as something that demands our attention. Strategies vary on how to reduce carbon emissions, but at least federally, it’s no longer a question of debating the science. 

Climate change policy isn’t the only way the parties are flexing their environmental bona fides, however: conservation, transportation, and energy are on the platforms, as are lower impact but still high-profile issues like plastic pollution and green jobs. 

It all makes for a lot of platforms to scroll through. So we bring you a rundown on what environmental policies the federal parties are offering Canadians in the 2019 election.

A raging wildfire consumes the forest next to Highway 63 south of Fort McMurray. Photo: Chris Schwarz / Government of Alberta

Climate Change

Canada is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet; its northern reaches are warming even more quickly. That has consequences for polar bears, sure, but it’s also a threat to northern roads and communities. It’s exacerbating wildfires and a biodiversity crisis. So it’s not surprising to see the issue being taken on by the federal parties. 

Justin Trudeau won on a platform in 2015 that heavily referenced climate change while promising specific solutions to that and other environmental problems. Andrew Scheer appears eager to shed the Conservative party’s reputation for environmental backwardness, while sticking to its expected business-friendly approach. Elizabeth May’s Greens are advocating for radical overhauls to the economy. And the NDP under Jagmeet Singh is advocating for more ambitious measures than the Liberals while maintaining many of the broad strokes of their plan. 

(Note: we’ve decided that Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada, not to be confused with the other Maxime Bernier’s Rhinoceros Party, won’t be evaluated in this story. That might be because they are devout climate deniers and therefore irrelevant to this conversation, or it could just be because they have never cracked five per cent in the polls. We’ll keep you updated if they come up with any innovative environmental policy…)

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The Liberals so far have not released their platform in full but have instead spent the summer touting and reinforcing the 50 or so specific actions they’ve taken since 2015. Chief among those is the carbon tax, which kicked in in April at $20 a tonne and will rise each year up to $50 a tonne by 2022. (Update: The Liberal Party of Canada released their climate plan on September 24).

United Nations economists say that to be effective, a carbon price will have to come much higher by 2030 — to at least $135 per tonne. The Liberals have no such plan. The carbon tax has also been criticized for being overly cautious with respect to industry, allowing for too much pollution in the name of not harming competitiveness (I wrote a whole separate explainer about that, here).

The Liberals have done other work to curb emissions, however. They’ve set a target of 30 per cent of light-duty vehicles being electric by 2030, and brought in a new fuel standard to limit the carbon content in fuels used in transportation, heating and industry. 

They’ve invested billions in public transit in order to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation, but appear to have abandoned a promise to “rapidly expand” the federal fleet of electric vehicles. In their last budget, they brought in a $5,000 subsidy for new electric vehicle purchases.

The Conservatives have come late to the climate party, but they have shown up at last. The title of Andrew Scheer’s environment and climate platform, “A Real Plan,” seems to be intended as a dig at the Liberals but comes across as a marvellous self-own. Regardless, the plan is indeed real and acknowledges the reality of man-made climate change in its third paragraph. 

The party has said it supports the Paris Accord, but stopped short of committing to meeting Canada’s targets.

In contrast to the carbon tax, which the Conservatives have long branded as a “tax grab” and which they plan to repeal, the Conservatives’ climate plan is intended to be consumer-friendly, depending on new technology rather than a reduction in consumption or expensive overhauls. It would require big polluters to pay into an investment fund that would then be spent on green tech. However, it’s not clear exactly how that investment would actually meet the planned reductions.

The Conservatives do not mention transit in their climate plan, but do promise to “provide regulatory support” for an LNG facility on the West Coast that they say could lower the emissions of marine transportation. They also say they will work on developing electric vehicle technology, but make no promises on that front.

A big part of the Conservatives’ plan is to help other countries lower their own emissions, which they argue can be done for cheaper in developing countries, where more emissions-intensive industries like coal-fired power plants are more common. The Conservatives have promised to scrap the Liberals’ fuel standard. The party is also pushing capture and storage, which has been developed with some success in Saskatchewan and Alberta but not rolled out yet in any large-scale way.

The Green Party has presented the most radical plan for climate change of any party. It is symbolically heavy on urgency — for instance, establishing a non-partisan “survival cabinet” that would have the same grave mandate as a wartime cabinet — and includes the most ambitious measures to cut emissions seen yet on the federal level. The party proposes doubling Canada’s emissions reduction targets, and would raise the carbon tax as high as the United Nations says it needs to be, to $130 a tonne by 2030.

The Greens promise to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, ban fracking and oil imports and eliminate coal and natural gas by 2030. The latter has been criticized, along with their plan to retrofit every building in Canada to be carbon neutral, as not feasible within that timeline. Currently fossil fuels make up 20 per cent of Canada’s electricity generation, with huge regional disparities, and vacating every home in the country for retrofits would entail a scale of displacement without precedent in Canada. (Party leader Elizabeth May likened the retrofits to a WWII-level challenge but it’s also a major part of the Greens’ energy strategy — see below.)

The Greens are also planning mitigation measures, to “prepare for those levels of climate crisis we can no longer avoid,” according to the party’s platform. Those include fortifying dykes and dams against flooding, buying water bombers and assisting those who work in sectors that will be first affected by climate change. 

The Greens are the only party so far to mention rail, which they say would get new investment. The Green Party would require that all new cars sold in Canada be electric by 2030. They would increase bus service to rural areas, purchase electric buses, make employer-provided bus passes tax free and add to low-emissions transportation in cities such as bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure. The party would also oppose expansion of infrastructure that enables urban sprawl.

The New Democratic Party plans to maintain the carbon price set out by the Liberals until 2022, with a few tweaks. The party would remove the additional exemptions the Liberals added to their carbon price for heavy polluters, making them work harder to remain competitive internationally. Rebates on the carbon tax would be changed; rather than being sent out to all Canadians, the rebates would no longer be sent to the wealthiest.

The NDP also promises a Canadian Climate Bank, which would provide $3 billion for low-carbon innovation. Low-interest loans would be offered for renovations, on a longer timeline than the Greens, with plans to have all housing retrofitted by 2050.

On transportation, the NDP says it will increase funding, particularly to low-emissions transit projects. It would maintain the $5,000 incentive for electric vehicle purchases while eliminating federal sales tax on them. For electric vehicles made in Canada, the NDP says it would eventually raise that incentive to $15,000. It expands on the Liberals’ seemingly broken promise to increase the federal fleet of electric vehicles, saying all government vehicles, which includes things like Canada Post trucks, will all be electric by 2025.

Site C dam construction along the Peace River, B.C., in the summer of 2018. Photo: Garth Lenz / The Narwhal

Energy

Energy is the root of the climate crisis: from coal-fired electrical plants to gasoline-driven cars to bunker oil-burning ships, Canadians pump a lot of carbon into the air. But our energy system causes other problems too, like the deterioration of air quality and pollution of waterways, oil spills on land and sea, and the destruction of land for hydroelectricity.

Some of the most heated political battles in recent memory in Canada are based on energy. The Trans Mountain pipeline has pitted First Nations, the federal government, two provincial governments as well as municipalities against one another, and has divided public opinion. Likewise for the now-defunct Energy East and Northern Gateway projects. And it’s not just fossil fuels: the Site C dam is an ongoing saga that is tearing apart northern B.C. (if you’re not up to date, seriously, check out the award-winning reporting by The Narwhal’s Sarah Cox on this. It’s the best around.)

Given these struggles, the parties all have their own promises to reform Canada’s energy grid — or, in the case of the Conservatives, return it to the way it was. 

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The NDP has set a target of powering Canada with zero-carbon electricity by 2050. The interim goal is “net carbon-free electricity” by 2030. So what’s the difference there? Net carbon-free usually refers to electricity generation that includes carbon offsets (think carbon capture, planting trees or subsidizing clean energy) — whereas zero-carbon energy would mean no carbon is produced during generation. Hope that helps.

The party would abandon the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which the Liberals bought in as-is condition for $4.5 billion but which will eventually cost nearly double that to build. In the same vein, the party would stop fossil fuel subsidies, which, Environmental Defence estimates, total $3.3 billion a year. 

A final, major element of the NDP energy platform is centred around manufacturing: building components for green energy in Canada, building an interconnected smart energy grid and developing locally-owned energy projects.

The Green Party would likewise eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, and go further by divesting from fossil fuels at the federal level — an example they hope other jurisdictions would follow. The Greens would also abandon Trans Mountain, along with all other pipeline expansion, ban oil imports and support the existing tanker ban on the north coast of B.C.

The Greens oppose nuclear energy, saying it’s too costly and too risky. They plan to develop a national electricity grid plan, and transition the current electrical grid to a more efficient system. The party wants wind to make up 20 per cent of national electricity production by 2025 — a fourfold increase — as well as ramping up geothermal and solar to each bring 25 new gigawatts of electricity online. The ban on oil imports the party has suggested would switch Canada’s oil supply to one entirely dependent on Alberta, which is in line with what the Conservatives have promised for 2030.

Its boldest claim is that through retrofits and efficiency improvements, “Canada could easily reduce energy demand by 50 per cent.” 

The Greens see demand for oil and gas declining, and its policies would accelerate that decline. To soften the blow to workers in the oil and gas industry, the Greens would bring in a retraining program to teach them how to work in renewables — for example, drilling wells for geothermal.

The Liberal Party, as mentioned, hasn’t released their platform. We’ll have to wait and see what they propose to do about energy next, but so far it’s been a mix of buying a pipeline, powering a natural gas production and transportation boom with “clean” energy, and not developing an energy strategy. 

In 2017 the government introduced legislation to ban oil tankers off the north coast of B.C.

In January Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced federal support for Canada’s first geothermal electrical plant, in Saskatchewan.

The Conservatives propose, well, the opposite of whatever Trudeau has proposed. They would undo the tanker ban and repeal the Liberals’ Bill C-69. That controversial bill brought in new requirements for environmental assessments of major projects but is highly unpopular with certain industries, which have lobbied extensively to get rid of it.

Also on the topic of regulatory burden, the Conservatives would provide “certainty on approval timelines and schedules,” and “end foreign-funded interference in regulatory hearings.” It’s unclear if that would include silencing oil and gas companies that are foreign-owned.

Expect more opposition when the Liberal platform is out.

Mount Edziza Provincial Park, B.C. Photo: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Land, water, wildlife and ocean conservation

The balance of protecting wildlife and its habitat from human incursion while also allowing for economic activity is a delicate one. More often than not, the needle has gone toward development in Canada, to the detriment of species at risk like Southern Resident Killer Whales, most caribou herds, as well as plant species like the whitebark pine.

The Trudeau government has made significant progress toward meeting its so-called Aichi Biodiversity targets: it pledged to protect 17 per cent of terrestrial area and inland waters, and 10 per cent of its oceans, by 2020. A flurry of big new protected areas has moved that along. But meanwhile it has continued to advance some projects, like the Trans Mountain pipeline and a new road to the Arctic coast, that would interfere with sensitive habitat.

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The Conservatives included in their plan “a comprehensive update of Canada’s strategy to protect our fisheries, forests, agricultural lands, [and] tourist areas.” That would include a focus on invasive species, which can threaten native ecosystems, and controlling pests “that

pose a substantial threat to forest and aquatic health,” as well as conducting a $15 million inventory of wetlands.

As during the Harper years, the language in the Conservative plan favours species and habitats of economic importance over a more holistic approach. It promises to review how land is set aside for protection, and whether communities have enough input.

The Conservatives continue to support the Aichi targets (that calls, among other things, for 17 per cent of terrestrial areas and inland water and 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas to be conserved by 2020), which were first agreed to by the Harper government. They also supported the passage of a Liberal fisheries bill that restored habitat protections gutted by the Harper government, with minor revisions. 

The centrepiece of the NDP conservation plan is to enshrine the right to a healthy environment in law through what they’re calling the Environmental Bill of Rights. It will guarantee the right to clean land, air and water, and bring in a national freshwater strategy.

They are also upping the ante on land protection: whereas the Aichi targets only extend up to 2020, the NDP wants to accelerate the protection of land and protect 30 per cent of land, freshwater and oceans by 2030. That’s nearly double the land and freshwater, and triple the amount of ocean protection that the current targets call for.

The NDP promises to use “all the tools available” under the Species At Risk Act, though not to make any changes to it. They say they will work with provinces and territories to “protect waterways under international agreements,” presumably referring to rivers like the trans-border Elk River, contaminated on the Canadian side by selenium from coal mining.

Part of the Greens’ conservation plan focuses on restoring ecosystems that have been damaged already — they would conduct an inventory of contaminated water bodies and groundwater, and work on figuring out how to clean them up, while empowering their own departments and agencies to restore aquatic ecosystems. 

The Greens would also increase funding to Parks Canada and accelerate the creation of new marine protected areas and parks, with a $500 million “completion budget” intended to have the entire parks system in place by 2030. They would also end trophy hunting across Canada, while supporting other types of hunting such as Indigenous subsistence hunting and hunts of other non-threatened species.

Selection of Species at Risk would no longer be subject to cabinet but rather by the recommendation of scientists, increase funding for endangered species, and increase penalties for killing them.

Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Extras

Each party has taken up their own causes that are related to the environment but that don’t have direct bearing on any one of the topics above. We’ve reported on some of these big issues, from environmental law to corporate accountability to ocean plastics, but expect to hear more of these sexy, sexy issues arise throughout the election.

Among the Liberal Party’s side-projects has been plastics: a plan to start banning single-use plastics starting around 2021, committing $100 million to reducing plastic waste in developing countries, and banning microbeads in cosmetics and other products. 

The NDP wants to intensify the Liberals’ approach to plastics, by banning single-use plastics by 2022. They also want to provide training and re-training for people affected by climate action and encourage “local food hubs” while reducing food waste and protecting pollinator health.

The Conservatives, sticking to their push for private solutions to environmental issues, want to issue a “green patent credit” for eco-friendly technologies. They would modernize air quality regulations. They would also re-establish a policy advisory panel made up of hunters, fishers and conservation groups.

The Greens have a plan to bring in a youth-driven “Community and Environment Service Corps,” which would create 160,000 minimum wage jobs for young people to work in climate mitigation, environmental rehabilitation, and other similar projects across the country. They would also develop laws to will allow non-Canadians to sue Canadian corporations over violations of “basic human, environmental, or labour rights in their own countries.” 

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So there you have it. The environment is a major part of this year’s election, and the parties are all going to be jockeying for your vote on this issue. Whether it’s the Conservatives’ industry-led approach, the Liberals’ record of restoring protections and establishing new protected areas, the New Democrats’ promises to take the Liberal plan ever further, or the Greens’ promises to make drastic changes, one of these strategies will have to win out. 

Watch for splashy new environmental announcements as the election goes on — and watch this space for analysis.

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.

After two years of advocacy and 70,000 letters sent, conservation organizations across Canada are celebrating the federal government’s decision to prohibit all oil and gas activities in marine protected areas.

“The public played a really big role in this change,” said Stephanie Hewson, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, in an interview with The Narwhal.

Marine protected areas — known as MPAs — are effectively national parks of the oceans, establishing strict guidelines about what kind of activities can occur in the ecologically sensitive regions. In 2010, Canada signed onto the Aichi Convention to protect biodiversity and the world’s ecosystems, committing to protect 10 per cent of coastal and marine areas by 2020.

The new rules will apply to all marine protected areas in Canada, including marine conservation and marine national wildlife areas, but the greatest effect will be felt in Marine Protected Areas managed under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans — most especially in the Laurentian Channel.

Proposed regulations published in June 2017 for the Laurentian Channel MPA — located between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland — allowed for extensive oil and gas exploration and production.

An access to information request filed by The Narwhal revealed that a close relationship between the oil industry and federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans may have contributed to that proposal.

But on Tuesday, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Jonathan Wilkinson announced that four industrial activities — oil and gas, mining, waste dumping and bottom trawling — would be banned in all new marine protected areas, starting with the Laurentian Channel.

This fulfilled recommendations made by a national advisory panel that filed its final report in September 2018.

“I’m just greatly relieved that this trial balloon came down with a crash and the oil industry saw that they had pushed too far — and we’re actually going to have real marine protected areas,” Gretchen Fitzgerald, director of the Atlantic Canada chapter of the Sierra Club Canada Foundation, told The Narwhal.

“That’s wonderful news.”

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) declined comment for this article.

Canada’s current and proposed Marine Protected Areas. Source: Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Map: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Series of offshore near-misses raised alarm

The federal Liberals pledged in their last election platform to increase the amount of Canada’s oceans that are protected to 10 per cent in 2020, up from a mere 1.3 per cent in 2015.

Thursday’s announcement increases the amount of existing protection to 8.2 per cent.

Prior to the federal announcement, it was unclear what protection even meant.

The proposed permitting of activities such as seismic testing for oil and gas, which can have devastating impacts on nearby marine species that rely on sound to communicate, was viewed by many conservationists and wildlife experts as a serious compromise to the government’s vision for ocean protections.

Concerns only increased since 2017 with repeated offshore incidents. A BP Canada drilling unit off the coast of Nova Scotia spilled 136,000 litres of drilling mud in June 2018. Only five months later, an estimated 250,000 litres of oil spilled into the ocean from a Husky drilling platform, making it the largest spill in Newfoundland and Labrador’s history.

Those followed arguably the most dangerous recent near-miss, in 2016 when a heavy pipe from a Shell Canada rig landed within 12 metres of an exploration well — which could have caused a blowout if contacted.

“It’s sheer madness in our opinion that they’re drilling off our shores where they are,” Marilyn Keddy of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia, said.

“But particularly in marine protected areas? My goodness.”

Existing oil and gas licences won’t be cancelled

While the new regulations will prohibit industrial activities in new marine protected areas, including the Laurentian Channel, they won’t result in the immediate cancellation of oil and gas discovery licences in two protected areas where they have already been granted: the Tarium Niryutait MPA in the Mackenzie River Delta and Gully MPA near Nova Scotia.

There is currently no active exploration efforts in the regions, and Wilkinson said the licences will be reviewed again in the future.

The new regulations also don’t prohibit industrial activities in the more common “marine refuge,” which will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis via the impact assessment process. However, marine refuges that do allow such activities won’t be counted towards the 10 per cent commitment.

Nevertheless, representatives of environmental organizations view Thursday’s announcement as a strong and necessary first step.

“There’s a lot of research that’s very well documented that having this type of strongly protected area is essential for restoring ocean health,” Hewson said.

“Sometimes it’s talked about as an insurance policy for the oceans. Oceans are fluid and there aren’t real boundaries besides those drawn on the map but it’s still really important to have those types of protections established in concrete areas.”

Advocates call for stricter rules on offshore activities

Environmental advocates remain concerned about other aspects of ocean protection.

Fitzgerald of Sierra Club Canada said that recent Senate committee hearings concerning the new environmental impact assessment legislation (Bill C-69) demonstrates that it is “very clear that the offshore boards and oil-friendly people in provincial governments are trying to get deregulation in the rest of the ocean.”

An ongoing call for bids near Sable Island, a national park reserve, adds to her fears that the oil industry still holds disproportionate power in the region.

Members of the fishing industry have repeatedly expressed concerns about the potential impacts of a Deepwater Horizon-like oil spill on their livelihoods.

“We will always have to be vigilante,” Fitzgerald said.

Similarly, Keddy of the Campaign to Protect Offshore Nova Scotia said that her organization is actively calling for a full independent inquiry into offshore oil and gas development.

“Our feeling is that decisions have been made by the industry based on their so-called science and we think that there has to be a be a much, much fuller investigation of this,” she said.

“And communities have to have a say. We’re not letting up until they stop.”

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.

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.

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.