This is part two of a three-part series on Wood Buffalo National Park featuring photos by Louis Bockner, Sierra Club BC. Find the first story here and the third story here.

The old black bear, unconcernedly snuffling through the grass beside one of the unpaved roads that criss-cross Wood Buffalo National Park, poses for a classic vignette of Canada’s largest national park.

Further down the road, a lynx bounds across a ditch, then sits, watching from the cover of the trees, and, a few kilometres away, a herd of buffalo shuffle their calves into the bushes.

The four-legged examples of “outstanding, universal value” that helped put Wood Buffalo on the prestigious list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1983 are on full display, but, with time running out for Canada to meet 17 UNESCO recommendations to improve the park’s environmental health, many fear Wood Buffalo is heading for the list of World Heritage Sites in Danger.

A bull bison on one of Wood Buffalo National Park’s main roads.

A bear, seemingly unperturbed by a cloud of mosquitoes, eats foliage in Wood Buffalo National Park.

Syncrude operation pictured from the company’s wood bison recovery program lookout.

Syncrude operation in Alberta’s oilsands North of Fort McMurray.

Progress has been slow since UNESCO monitors visited the 44,807 square kilometre park at the invitation of the Mikisew Cree First Nation, resulting in a report last year that the park is under threat from unbridled oilsands development, dams on the Peace River and lack of cumulative impact studies on the Peace-Athabasca delta.

Map of threats to Wood Buffalo National Park from UNESCO report.

“The combination of climate change and massive hydrological alteration has resulted in ecological, socio-economic and cultural impacts. Simultaneously the delta is at significant risk from upstream industrial development along both the Peace and the Athabasca Rivers, most strikingly from the expanding Alberta oilsands,” says the report, adding that management of the park is inadequate given the potential for toxic spills and leakage or breaches of tailings ponds.

The World Heritage Committee wants an action plan to be submitted by December 1 this year. Parks Canada is working with 11 Indigenous groups within the park, other federal government departments and the Alberta and Northwest Territories governments to meet that deadline.

A progress report was submitted to the World Heritage Committee in February, but it is a cumbersome process and disagreements with First Nations are simmering.

Sunrise on Pine Lake in Wood Buffalo National Park.

Sunrise over Pine Lake in Wood Buffalo National Park.

“There’s a feeling that Parks is dictating to Indigenous groups, but Parks is saying they are fighting a timeline and we have to make it happen. It’s very paternalistic,” said Becky Kostka, Smith’s Landing First Nation lands and resources manager.

There are also growing concerns about whether it is possible to pull together an action plan before the deadline.

“This is June and it’s due in December. It’s not looking good,” said Mikisew Cree director Melody Lepine, who is planning to give an update to the World Heritage Committee meeting in Bahrain this week.

“Not a single thing has been done for the Peace-Athabasca Delta,” she said.

Mikisew Cree Chief Archie Waquan echoes concerns about the timing.

“Parks is being a little too slow on some of the issues. I think we will have to put light or something under them to get this through by December,” he said.

There is also the overarching — and unanswered — question of whether any government would be willing to rein in oilsands development or construction of the Site C dam to save the Peace-Athabasca Delta, one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world.

Becky Kostka, lands and resources manager for Smith’s Landing First Nation.

Fort Chipewyan residents have watched as channels in the delta have dried up over recent decades, with dams on the Peace River, withdrawals of water from the Athabasca River by the oil and gas industry and climate change identified as the major culprits, and few are confident that substantive action will be taken.

“Soon we will have no delta. It’s so dry it it will be a good place to build a golf course,” said taxi driver Bill Tuccaro.

No one is expecting a total clampdown on oilsands development, said Mikisew Cree elder Terry Marten, “but it’s a matter of making sure it’s done properly to protect our way of life,” she said.

A visit to the  the headquarters of Wood Buffalo National Park in Fort Smith confirmed the complications, with staff unable to answer questions until other departments were consulted.

The progress report outlines steps to address the recommendations and sets out how governments will work together, said Audrey Champagne, Parks Canada media relations officer, in an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal.

“It also signals that engagement with Indigenous communities is critical to the development of the action plan,” she said.

Alberta’s oilsands north of Fort McMurray.

Proposed site of Teck’s Frontier Mine 30km south of Wood Buffalo National Park. If built it would be the largest mine ever constructed in Alberta’s oilsands.

Tailings ponds in Alberta’s oilsands.

Staff and funding have been committed to the Wood Buffalo action plan, Champagne said.

“Canada is confident that, through collaboration with provincial and territorial governments, key stakeholders and Indigenous groups, we can create a path forward to ensure the future of Wood Buffalo National Park,” she said.

A strategic environmental assessment, a stepping stone to the action plan, was released in May, confirming problems with water levels, climate change and pollution, but the assessment immediately drew criticism for compiling existing research rather than conducting new studies.

“I don’t think it’s a document that, ultimately, will be very impactful,” said Bruce Maclean of Maclean Environmental Monitoring, a company that has worked with Mikisew Cree for more than a decade.

However, there are bright spots on the horizon for Wood Buffalo with the whooping crane population increasing, making the flock the only self-sustaining population of whooping cranes in the world.

“In 1941, there were 21 whooping cranes in existence and the population estimate now is 431 birds in the Wood Buffalo flock, so that’s a great success,” said Rhona Kindopp, Parks Canada resource conservation manager for Wood Buffalo.

“This is the second highest number of nesting pairs since our stewardship began in the 1940s.”

Wood bison herds, which are protected in the park, are also doing well, with about 3,000 animals and, although about 40 per cent are infected with bovine tuberculosis or brucellosis, that is better ratio than in other populations, Kindopp said.

And, as the action plan slowly takes shape, there is agreement that the UNESCO scolding has resulted in much-needed attention to the remote park, with international eyes now focused on Wood Buffalo.

The Narwhal’s reporter Judith Lavoie travelled with Sierra Club BC campaigner Galen Armstrong and Sierra Club BC photographer Louis Bockner to Wood Buffalo National Park in early June. Lavoie’s travel expenses were paid by The Narwhal, with the exception of a flyover of a section of Wood Buffalo National Park, for which she snagged an empty seat in the plane.

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 B.C. government cannot expect support from First Nations for its much-touted liquefied natural gas (LNG) projects if the province insists on steamrolling ahead with the Site C dam, a First Nations chief is warning.

“They want support on LNG, and the level of destruction that is going to bring, and then they want Site C as well. They can’t have them both,” Chief Roland Willson of West Moberly First Nation told DeSmog Canada.

There is no logical reason to have both, Willson added, saying the provincial government has ignored alternatives to Site C, even as the federal Joint Review Panel found there is no immediate need for the power and excess power would be sold at a loss.

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Treaty 8 First Nations in B.C. are vehemently opposed to BC Hydro’s plans to build a third massive dam on the Peace River that would flood more than 5,000 hectares of land, swamp more than 330 recorded archaeological sites and — in direct contravention of the 1899 treaty — destroy land now used for hunting, fishing and collecting medicinal plants.

Initially, some Treaty 8 Tribal Association nations were willing to look at what the B.C. government was offering in terms of mitigation and compensation, but, as more information became available, Willson noted a change in attitude.

“Now everyone is opposed,” he said.

The treaty states First Nations have the right to continue with their way of life “for as long as the sun shines, the grass grows and the rivers flow.”

But with massive resource development in the area, the sun, grass and rivers are all at risk and Site C is the final straw, Willson said.

With high levels of methylmercury in fish because of rotting vegetation from the previous two dams, fishing is restricted and ungulates, such as caribou, are being destroyed by the major projects, said Treaty 8 Tribal Association Chief Liz Logan, who has asked the UN Special Rapporteur James Anaya to call on the government of British Columbia to assess cumulative impacts of industrial activity in the area.

A recent study, Passages from the Peace (PDF), by the David Suzuki Foundation and Global Forest Watch Canada found 28,587 kilometres of pipelines, 45,293 kilometres of roads and 116,725 kilometres of seismic lines used for oil and gas exploration within the Peace region.

“We have become the cash register for the province . . . .Now our way of life is going to be interfered with again,” Logan said.

“We are bush people and this is our grocery store, our pharmacy, our school and our church. It still sustains us.”

The treaty is alive, despite damage inflicted on the ecosystem by resource extraction and previous Peace River dams, so the province should think carefully about ramifications of treaty-breaking, Willson said.

The Joint Review Panel agreed the dam will have significant adverse effects on First Nations practices and heritage and that many of those effects cannot be mitigated.

A total of 21 First Nations would be affected if the valley is flooded and, with numerous legal decisions reasserting First Nations’ constitutional rights, there is growing awareness that a court challenge could hold up the $7.9 billion project for years if the province decides this fall to proceed.

First Nations file for judicial review of panel report

This month the Mikisew Cree First Nation, which has nine reserves in northeastern Alberta, and the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, which has eight reserves near the southwestern tip of Lake Athabasca, filed a Federal Court application for a judicial review of the Joint Review Panel report.

The two Treaty 8 First Nations rely on the Peace Athabasca Delta for plant gathering, fishing, hunting and travel through the many lakes and river tributaries and presented evidence at the hearings that showed the Delta is already ecologically stressed, with low water levels affecting wildlife habitat and harvesting.

Any further changes to water levels in the Delta could prevent First Nations from exercising their treaty rights, according to the application, which aims to have some sections of the Joint Review Panel report declared invalid and unlawful, some sections quashed and others referred back to the panel for further consideration.

The application is asking the Federal Court to prohibit the federal and provincial governments from taking any further actions that would allow Site C to proceed until a new report is issued that complies with “principles of procedural fairness.”

BC Hydro spokesman Dave Conway said he could not speculate about the possibility of Site C heading to court.

“However, I can tell you that we aim to fulfill our duty to consult and, where appropriate, accommodate aboriginal groups,” he said.

Logan said the five Treaty 8 nations have not yet voted on whether to go to court, but there are heavy hints that any attempt to build the dam will immediately become entangled in legal battles.

Chief's mandate: 'Oppose this right to the end'

“The only mandate I have right now is to oppose this right to the end. We are going to go back to our people once we hear the decision,” Logan said.

Willson supports the judicial review of the environmental assessment and then, if necessary, a court challenge.

But going to court is expensive, especially when going up against the deep pockets of BC Hydro and the provincial government, he said.

BC Hydro has talked with more than 50 aboriginal groups in hundreds of meetings since 2007 and will continue to look for mitigation measures, Conway said.

“We are committed to providing lasting benefits to aboriginal groups through the construction and operation of the project. In addition, we are negotiating impact benefit agreements with some First Nations where appropriate,” he said.

An impact benefit agreement could mean a lump sum payment, payments over time, cash equivalent benefits or agreements around provincial Crown land, Conway said.

But a major hurdle is the distrust First Nations have for government.

West Moberley First Nation Chief Roland Willson. Credit: Garth Lenz.

“Nothing the B.C. government has done since I have been chief has made me trust that I can believe anything they do,” Willson said.

Logan said she always tries to be hopeful.

“But, unfortunately, in my 16 years of working with this government, I have learned not to really trust what comes out of their mouth,” she said.

Site C likely to get entangled in court challenges

As decision time approaches, other Site C opponents are counting on the power of First Nations.

There is no doubt Treaty 8 nations have a strong case for stopping the dam plans, said Andrea Morison, coordinator of the Peace Valley Environment Association.

“That bodes very well for the campaign and I absolutely expect it would go to court,” Morison said.

However, in the meantime, Peace Valley residents and First Nations are hoping Site C will be rejected and there will be no need for a legal battle.

That will take more pressure from people in southern B.C., Logan said. A petition to stop the Site C dam and save the Peace River Valley has been set up at StopSiteC.org

“We are doing everything we can, along with our environmental friends from down south, to create awareness and tell people ‘it’s coming out of your pocket,’ ” she said.

Photo: Treaty 8 Tribal Chief Liz Logan by Zack Embree.

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