Nature Conservancy Magazine: Summer 2007 - The Last Stand

Norman Wells sprung up as an oil town in the early 1900s. Today, the proposed Mackenzie Gas Pipeline promises unprecedented development that will open new petroleum fields.
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Go Deeper

The Boreal Forest in Canada
Stretching across 1.6 billion acres, the North American boreal forest is one of the few largely unspoiled ecosystems remaining on Earth.

The Conservancy's Global Forest Partnership
This partnership works to advance responsible forest management practices, high-impact conservation transactions and public policies that protect, restore and manage the world’s forests.

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Preventive Conservation

In the face of these mounting threats, the boreal is also the setting for one of the most ambitious conservation projects ever undertaken — one that brings together an unusual cadre of stakeholders.

Instead of preserving small islands of beleaguered habitat in a sea of development, First Nations groups, industrial giants and environmental organizations have pledged to protect fully half of Canada’s boreal forest in vast, interlocking reserves designed to safeguard natural and traditional cultural resources, with carefully planned, sustainable development on the rest. The idea is to plan reserves first, before all of the proposed development hits, rather than try to pick up the pieces afterward.

The project, known as the Boreal Forest Conservation Framework, was first proposed in 2003. In the face of exploding pressure on the boreal, it is nothing less than an attempt to turn the usual model for landscape conservation on its head.

“If you look at the map of forest cover 8,000 years ago versus today, there are only three big green spaces left on Earth — the Russian boreal, the Canadian boreal, and Brazilian rainforest. Everything else is just a fragment,” says Larry Innes, interim director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative, which is spearheading the project.

“So the question is how to protect and conserve these last forests, and Canada is key,” he says. “Canada is well-governed, has a strong conservation ethic, and the necessary conservation legal framework.”

Largely undeveloped, the Northwest Territories will be critical to realizing this almost unparalleled goal, with the growing likelihood of the pipeline a powerful incentive to move quickly. An ambitious conservation strategy is being mapped out there by First Nations governments like the Sahtu Dene and the Dehcho on the southern half of the river; the strategy includes identifying their important cultural and environmental sites for protection before the pipeline route is finalized.

Much of the guidance they receive in this effort comes from groups like the Conservancy, which joined the boreal framework partnership in December 2005. While the Conservancy does not support the pipeline, it has taken a neutral position on the project, trying to ensure that if the development goes ahead, it does so in the least damaging way.

“The Nature Conservancy brings a great deal of experience in working in a cooperative way on conservation issues, as well as a very strong science background,” says Innes.

Federal and territorial governments are working with local stakeholders on a five-year action plan to establish protected areas within the Mackenzie Valley before the pipeline development begins. Recently, however, government officials have talked of planning conservation “concurrent” with development. The pipeline developers — who downplay the project’s impact — are pressuring officials to approve the project before protected areas are locked in.

The race is on between conservation planning and energy development in the Mackenzie Valley, and the winner will likely shape the future of the boreal. The stakes are huge: Both the conservation plan and the pipeline project approach a scale nearly unprecedented in North America.

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