One year ago, after scathing reports by international agencies, the federal government promised to better protect Wood Buffalo National Park, with Environment Minister Catherine McKenna saying a warning from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, followed by an equally dire assessment by the International Union on the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), were a call to action.

But that action is moving at a glacial pace, even though the stated threats to the integrity of Canada’s largest national park, such as upstream oilsands development, climate change and construction of the Site C dam, are continuing unabated.

“Change in the [Peace-Athabasca Delta] is undisputed and there are clear, consistent and conceivable hints at causal relationships with industrial development, confirmed by western science and local and indigenous knowledge,” the report warned. It also took aim at forestry, pulp and paper, uranium mining, agriculture and other resource development in the watershed.

Now, with World Heritage Centre deadlines approaching, a coalition of Indigenous and environmental groups is pushing for faster decisions and dedicated funding to help address the park’s many problems.

“When our community heard Minister McKenna tell us that the mission report was a call to action we were hopeful,” said Melody Lepine, director of government and industry relations at Mikisew Cree First Nation.

“A year later, there is little concrete action to report to our elders except that we keep trying to get government to honour its commitment. So much more needs to be done and done fast,” she said.

Last July Lepine told a World Heritage Committee session in Krakow, Poland, that Canada is not acting in good faith and described how the Peace-Athabasca Delta — the world’s largest freshwater inland delta — is threatened by dams and rapid industrial development.

Wood Buffalo encompasses about 4.5 million hectares of boreal plains in northern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories, is home to the world’s largest herd of free-ranging wood bison and is the breeding ground for the only wild, self-sustaining migratory flock of whooping cranes.

The park was visited by UNESCO inspectors after a 2014 petition from the Mikisew Cree First Nation and the subsequent report warned that, without a major and timely response, the organization would recommend that Wood Buffalo be included in the list of World Heritage in Danger, a list usually reserved for sites in countries dealing with disasters.

A November report by the IUCN raised further red flags, saying the park had deteriorated since the IUCN’s 2014 assessment and that the federal government’s response has been “inadequate in light of the scale, pace and complexity of the challenges.”

Wood Buffalo received the worst rating of all of Canada’s 10 natural world heritage sites and, only the Florida Everglades received a lower IUCN rating in all of North America.

The World Heritage Committee has asked Canada for a Strategic Environmental Assessment to be completed by next month and for an Action Plan to be submitted by December 1, so that it can make a decision on further action by summer 2019.

But even the planning has run into problems, with the federal government not taking into account some of the activities and threats outside the park boundaries.

“Canada’s ongoing refusal to consider the impacts of the Site C dam dam on the Peace-Athabasca Delta is astounding, “ said Galen Armstrong, Sierra Club B.C. Peace Valley campaigner.

The committee agreed in its report.

As for Site C project, the mission notes that the joint review panel’s conclusion that project impacts on the Peace-Athabasca Delta would be “negligible” is not substantiated by any information presented in its report and appears to be based exclusively on the proponent’s definition of downstream impact area.

McKenna, in a statement, said the government is responding to the World Heritage Committee’s request and the 2018 budget proposes “historic investments” to protect Canada’s nature, parks and wild spaces.

“Included in these investments in Canada’s natural legacy is a commitment to invest in the action plan that is being developed for Wood Buffalo National Park World Heritage Site,” she wrote.

Becky Kostka, Smith’s Landing First Nation lands and resources manager, said there have already been missteps and the initial draft of the Strategic Environmental Assessment was inadequate, simply pulling together previous studies, and did not represent Indigenous voices and Indigenous knowledge.

“Local knowledge-holders would have liked a bigger part,” Kostka told The Narwhal.

“Previously they (government) said there were no environmental changes north of the Peace River and when I talk to the elders they say there are significant changes happening across the park.”

However, there appears to be a willingness to make changes and a series of meetings are now being planned, she said.

Funding is another problem and diverting scarce resources previously allocated for Wood Buffalo will not suffice, said Kostka, who is also concerned about the tight time-frame for producing an action plan.

Those concerns are echoed by Alison Ronson of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

“It is clear the World Heritage Committee is expecting Canada to deliver more than a plan to plan,” she said.

“With the commitments for environmental conservation in the new federal budget, Canada can and must develop an action plan with real resources.”

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Canada’s largest World Heritage Site is under threat from unfettered oilsands development and hydro dams on the Peace River — where the B.C. government is now planning to build the massive Site C dam — says a hard-hitting report by a United Nations agency.

While contaminants from the oilsands are affecting water and air quality, water flows through Wood Buffalo National Park are being strangled by dams, according to the highly critical report by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and International Union for Conservation of Nature

The report warns that, if there is not a “major and timely” response to its recommendations the organization will recommend that Wood Buffalo National Park be included in the list of World Heritage in Danger, a list usually reserved for sites in war-torn countries or those facing other disasters.

The park, made up of 4.5 million hectares of boreal plains in northern Alberta and the southern Northwest Territories, has been affected by decades of massive industrial development along the Peace and Athabasca Rivers, along with poor management and lack of overall consideration of the effect of projects, it says.

“The scale, pace and complexity of industrial development along the critical corridors of the Peace and Athabasca Rivers is exceptional and does not appear to be subject to adequate analysis to underpin informed decision-making and the development of matching policy, governance and management responses,” says the executive summary, which adds that the park is also subject to the additional stress of climate change.

If the development approach of the last decades continues, the future of Wood Buffalo National Park is uncertain at best and several current project proposals add severity and urgency to the message, says the report, which singles out Site C and the Teck Frontier project, which would bring oilsands development closer to the southern boundary of the park and encroach on the habitat of the Ronald Lake Wood Bison Herd.

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

The park is home to the largest free-ranging buffalo herd in the world and includes the only known breeding ground for endangered whooping cranes.

UNESCO inspectors concluded that oilsands development near the park is affecting the water, land and air while putting human health at risk.

“There is long-standing, conceivable and consistent evidence of severe environmental and human health concerns based on both western science and local and indigenous knowledge,” it says, pointing to evidence that toxins such as mercury are showing up in fish and bird eggs.

The report includes 17 recommendations, including working more closely with First Nations, better monitoring of the Peace-Athabasca Delta, a systematic risk assessment of tailings ponds and strengthening of Parks Canada’s conservation focus and management of the park.

UNESCO also wants to see an environmental and social impact assessment of the Site C dam.

“The time is now to finally give this project the scrutiny it deserves and to establish a basis for informed and balanced decision-making still currently lacking,” says the report.

Galen Armstrong, Peace Valley coordinator for the Sierra Club of B.C., said the damning report demonstrates that government should never have approved Site C.

“Sierra Club B.C. is calling on the Trudeau government to suspend its approval of Site C and order an immediate halt to construction, while Canada assesses the report’s recommendations and implements changes,” he said.

B.C. Hydro said in a statement that it was disappointing that the report ignored Site C facts.

“It’s unfortunate that the WHC/IUCN report chose to ignore details about the federal-provincial environmental assessment process for Site C. By doing so, the report presents an incomplete picture of Site C and the Peace Athabasca Delta,” says the statement.

The park was visited last fall by UNESCO inspectors after a 2014 petition from the Mikisew Cree First Nation.

Melody Lepine, who led the Mikisew petition, said the report confirms what Mikisew elders have been saying for years.

“Canada may have ignored the Peace-Athabaska Delta and the Mikisew Cree in the past, but now the world will be watching. It’s time for Canada to start working with us to protect the Delta,” Lepine said.

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said in a statement that the report represents a call to action that will require collaboration between all levels of government, engagement with First Nations and consultations with industry.

“And it will need to include the best available science and the traditional knowledge of our indigenous communities,” she said.

Meanwhile, members of the Mikisew Cree and non-profit groups are hoping the report and McKenna’s response will mean a change of direction.

Candace Batycki, Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative program director, said it’s ironic the report has been delivered the same year Canada celebrates its 150th birthday by providing free access to national parks.

“Will Wood Buffalo National Park remain an object of national pride or will it become a symbol of the impacts runaway development and disrespect for indigenous lifeways have on nature and culture?” she asked in a news release.

“Only strong leadership and action can prevent an international embarrassment.”

Photo: Salt flat by Agenta Magenta via Flickr

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Food is at the heart of our cultural lives. It’s not just sustenance—it’s part of how we celebrate, how we mourn and how we come together. But what happens when the food that defines us begins to disappear?

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report released in March, climate change is already having an affect on food security. Extreme weather in “key producing regions” has already led to drastic jumps in food pricing. In cities we are padded from these effects by long supply chains, but not so in places like Hartley Bay on the northern coast of British Columbia.

“We depend on the sea so much for our food,” says Gitga’at Chief Ernie Hill, the principal of Hartley Bay Elementary/Junior High/Secondary School who has spearheaded efforts there to document and teach traditional indigenous harvesting practices.

Spring is harvest season around Hartley Bay, he says. Starting in April, when the clear weather coincides with low tides in the morning, families from the Gitga’at Nation travel to nearby islands where they collect seaweed and lay them to dry for the day in the warm sun. While the grown-ups harvest, the little ones scrape sea prunes, large shelled mollusks also known as chitons.

Now at the age of 73, Hill is no longer able to perch on the slippery rocks to harvest the seaweed, but he’s still committed to passing that tradition on to younger generations. He learned to harvest and prepare traditional foods such as seaweed, halibut and clams when he was a child, and over the years, he has passed that knowledge on to both his children and grandchildren.

Now, with the help of his students, members of the community, and “world class” videographers, he’s been steadily building a library of short documentaries that record traditional food gathering practices so they can be shared long after his generation is gone.

Through the ministrations of community elders like Hill and Helen Clifton, who just received a BC Community Achievement Award, the practices have endured as a way to bring families together much as they did before colonization disrupted lives. They also provide a respite from the rising price of importing food to the remote community, and the nutrient rich traditional diet helps to combat rising levels of diabetes caused by sugar-rich processed foods.

The trouble is that, because of climate change, nature is no longer cooperating the way it once did. According to Clifton, who co-authored a paper on the subject of environmental change with University of Victoria researcher Nancy Turner, weather in the region has been progressively less reliable over the last two decades. Unseasonable spring rains have obstructed the seaweed drying process. Frost and snow have damaged the plants.

And it’s not just seaweed—the rains have impeded the curing of halibut, disrupted pollination cycles and caused berries to grow so over ripe as to be inedible. For the last year the community has also been warned against harvesting clams because levels of toxins leading to paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) were more than twice normal. Hill says tests pinned the problem on a rise in pH level, which could be due to climate change—because the water is getting warmer, it can no longer hold as much oxygen.

Seeing that gradual decline in harvest, the Gitga’at Nation decided to contract sustainability experts from EcoPlan International to aid in the testing and planning process. Analyst Colleen Hamilton presented the work they had been doing at the most recent Livable Cities Forum in Vancouver.

Their goal, she said, was to corroborate local observations with science that would help further conversations already happening within the community. “The first thing we did when we started this project was go into the community and talk to people about all the weird things they were seeing.”

What the group found was that although the challenges were huge, the community was already making some moves to adapt by constructing buildings for drying halibut indoors and setting up freezers at the seaweed harvest sites to preserve it through the rain.

Another idea that came up was to shift focus onto other traditional foods that might better season the changes in temperature. There may be no clams this year, but there were mussels and cockles. Although the Gitga’at Nation is staunchly opposed to fisheries, which Hill says do more harm than good, the group has been experimenting with growing oysters and scallops that may deal better with the new conditions.

The resilience of the Gitga’at Nation, built up over a thousand years of observing and adapting to our planet’s shifts, may offer a road map to other communities dealing with climate change. According to a 2012 report for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “Indigenous peoples have long and multi-generational histories of interaction with their environments that include coping with environmental uncertainty, variability and change. They have demonstrated their resourcefulness and response capacity in the face of global climate change.”

Still, it’s a slow, sometimes disheartening process, one that has been interrupted by the fight against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal which poses a much more immediate threat to traditional waters.

Another unexpected challenge to the process has been massive funding cuts in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Since 2013, maintaining fish habitats is no longer part of the purview of the DFO. In the region around Hartley Bay, that has meant a suspension of water testing which was providing valuable clues about future avenues for adaptation.

“It’s such a strange thing for Harper taking the habitat out of the DFO,” Hill says. “It would have been interesting if the testing had continued over time. Then we would have known exactly what is happening.”

Image Credits: miguelb via Flickr | **604*250** via Flickr

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