News Release

Conservation Group Calls For Protection of Yukon’s Three Rivers Wilderness

November 8, 2005 – Whitehorse – The Yukon Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society today announced its bold recommendations for conservation and new protected areas in the northern Yukon’s Peel River watershed. The Society presented its conservation proposal to the Peel Watershed Regional Planning Commission, which is now accepting public comment on the future of the region. For more than a decade, CPAWS-Yukon and its partners have worked on conservation assessments, raising public awareness about the awe-inspiring wilderness of the Wind, Snake and Bonnet Plume watersheds, known as the “Three Rivers”.

Three Rivers – The Yukon's Great Boreal Wilderness is packed with awe-inspiring photography, art and fine writings by such notables as Margaret Atwood, Courtney Milne and John Ralston Saul.

This week, CPAWS-Yukon launches a new book celebrating the Three Rivers, featuring stunning photography, art works from the traveling national exhibition, and essays by local authors and prominent Canadians such as Margaret Atwood, John Ralston Saul and Brian Brett. Three Rivers: The Yukon’s Great Boreal Wilderness (Harbour Publishing, November 2005, edited by Juri Peepre and Sarah Locke) will be available in bookstores across Canada.

“Our goal is to protect and conserve the globally important boreal wilderness of the Three Rivers and to keep the greater Peel watershed healthy,” said Jim Pojar, Executive Director of CPAWS. “Yukoners value free ranging caribou, the majestic grizzly bear, and the privilege of living in the midst of one the world’s great remaining wild places, and we need the foresight to protect entire watersheds such as the Wind, Snake and Bonnet Plume.”

To achieve this goal, CPAWS proposes a wilderness area in the Three Rivers watersheds, including territorial park protection for the Snake River drainage. The Society is calling for conservation zones elsewhere in the Peel watershed to protect critical wetlands, sensitive river corridors and other important biological and cultural features.

“For too long the Yukon Party government has ignored what many Yukoners value most – clean water, plentiful wildlife and protection of our magnificent wildlands. Day after day, we hear only about grandiose schemes for more roads, railways and pipelines – but on the topics of conservation and protected areas, so vital to our economic future and well-being, the government is silent,” added Juri Peepre, the Three Rivers Project Coordinator.

“Successive Yukon governments have sold off resource development rights in the Peel region at bargain basement prices – all in advance of land use planning. Even with the Planning Commission up and running, the government proposes to open the entire watershed for oil and gas exploration at the discretion of industry. We think its time to counter this lopsided thinking with a bold and even-handed conservation vision that safeguards our inheritance. We look to the Land Use Planning Commission as the best hope to achieve that goal,” said Pojar.

For more information, contact:

Juri Peepre
Three Rivers Project Coordinator
Telephone: (867) 668-6321

Jim Pojar
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) Yukon Executive Director
Telephone: (867) 393-8080 ext. 2

 
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See also:
Why are the Peel Watershed and Three Rivers Wilderness important?