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The Mackenzie River and its tributaries drain a fifth of Canada’s land area. The proposed pipeline will run 750 miles—the entire length of the Mackenzie Valley.Go DeeperThe Boreal Forest in Canada The Conservancy's Global Forest Partnership Explore Planet Earth |
First Nations in the Lead
Ironically, the pipeline’s proponents now include the leadership of several of the previously opposed First Nations groups, including the Gwich’in and Inuvialuit in the north, and the Sahtu Dene. They have formed the Aboriginal Pipeline Group, which would eventually take one-third ownership of the pipeline.
Not everyone wants in, however. The strongest opposition has come from the Dehcho First Nations, which inhabits the southern half of the river valley and which has been holding out for the settlement of outstanding land claims before joining other Native groups in the pipeline project.
Dehcho Grand Chief Herb Norwegian has been the most vocal opponent of the pipeline. “It’s not as if you’re running a garden hose across your backyard,” he told the Toronto Globe and Mail last year. “You’re talking about building something the equivalent of the China Wall. Something that will stay forever and ever.”
Yet even the chief’s uncle, Leo Norwegian, a Dehcho elder, has made his peace with the project, testifying in its favor at hearings last summer. “Times have changed,” he told the newspaper. “I lived our traditional way of life, but we’ll never do that again.” Some individual Dehcho groups also have expressed an interest in joining the pipeline group.
Regardless of their different stands on the pipeline’s construction, all of the First Nations are participating in conservation planning in advance of its arrival, through the Northwest Territories protected areas strategy. The Gwich’in have designated about 13 percent of their land for protected areas status and may expand that figure. The Dehcho have proposed protecting from future development 25 million acres — more than half their territory — an area roughly the size of Kentucky. Across the Northwest Territories, some level of protection has been proposed for more than 38 million acres.
“First Nations have a very different relationship to the land,” says Larry Innes. “They understand all too clearly the risks of damaging or destroying their only home.” But each community’s perspective on the pipeline generally depends on the direct economic relevance. Groups in the north, such as the Inuvialuit, tend to support the Mackenzie pipeline, says Innes. They also stand to profit from the project because their territory encompasses the coastal gas fields. To most of the Dehcho, however, the pipeline is simply a dramatic imposition, adding little to their well-being.
Regardless, says Shannon Haszard of Ducks Unlimited, aboriginal communities understand what’s at stake: “Up here, you don’t have to do a ‘sell job’ on conservation — they know how important it is, and many of them see it as a matter of survival.”
But there is no guarantee for the future of this vast wilderness. The territorial government, which had pledged itself to a “conservation first” policy, now seems more intent on seeing the pipeline built quickly, even if a protected areas strategy for the region remains unfinished.
“Our focus is to ensure that as the pipeline goes in — if it goes in — that it does so in a way that’s sustainable, with a robust system of protected areas already in place, and with best practices laid out for management,” says Witten. “We would like to see the protected areas strategy fully implemented prior to pipeline construction — it would give the Mackenzie Gas Pipeline proponents some certainty, too.”
“Protected areas that are mapped out in advance, instead of worked in around development, are far more effective at conserving biodiversity and ecological functions,” Witten says. “What’s so wonderful about the boreal, and the Mackenzie in particular, is that here we have that opportunity.”
Nature picture credits: Photo © Garth Lenz (Carcajou Canyon)
