Conservation Updates
Why are the Peel Watershed and Three Rivers Wilderness Important?
Go to the previous Three Rivers conservation update.
In the Yukon we still can achieve what has eluded us elsewhere in Canada – to live in our natural environment and draw from its resources while ensuring the entire living community remains whole. As wildlands and pristine mountain rivers such as those of the Peel watershed become increasingly rare in North America and around the world, we have a profound responsibility – and opportunity – to bequeath these wonders of nature to future generations – both for humanity and for their intrinsic value.
CPAWS-Yukon Calls For Protection of the Three Rivers Wilderness
CPAWS-Yukon has a bold vision for new protected areas in the northern Yukon’s Peel River watershed. The Society presented its conservation proposal for protection of the Three Rivers wilderness 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.”
In support of the conservation proposal, CPAWS-Yukon also launched a new book celebrating the Three Rivers. The book features stunning photography, art works from the traveling national exhibition, and essays by local authors and prominent Canadians including 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) is available in bookstores across Canada.
Why Protect It?
The Peel watershed and Three Rivers wilderness are globally important, and vital to northern conservation. Some key values to protect include:
- intact mountain watersheds and wilderness on a vast scale, with fresh clean waters, rare in the world;
- pristine mountain boreal ecosystem, a benchmark of Canadian significance, with a full complement of predator and prey species;
- largest intact woodland caribou herd in the Yukon, a species vulnerable elsewhere;
- 25% of Yukon’s Peregrine Falcons breed in the Peel watershed;
- large critical wetland areas, of territorial significance, used by waterfowl for staging and nesting;
- refuge for large carnivores such as grizzly bears, wolves, wolverine, species that require large wilderness to survive.
Wilderness, or traditional homeland, as viewed by many aboriginal peoples, is an integral part of the North; it has intrinsic and spiritual value now and for the future. Conservation provides lasting community and economic benefits, supporting traditional land uses such as harvesting, and sustaining cultures and local ways life – while allowing new industries and job opportunities based on wildland conservation to flourish.
Our Goal
Our goal is to protect and conserve the wilderness of the Three Rivers and the ecological integrity of the greater Peel watershed.
Proposed Conservation Strategy for the Peel River Watershed (A Proposed Biosphere Reserve)
(Click image for an enlarged view.)
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To achieve this CPAWS proposes wildland areas in the Three Rivers watersheds, including territorial park protection for the Snake River drainage. We call for special conservation zones in the remainder of the Peel watershed to protect critical wetlands, sensitive river corridors and other important biological and cultural features. Taken as a whole, the Peel watershed is an exceptional candidate for a “biosphere reserve,” where conservation supported by local communities, can contribute to a lasting economy that respects the region’s way of life and is sustained by an intact ecosystem.
This focus on wildland conservation within the Peel watershed reflects many of the protected area proposals put forward during the past 20 years by First Nations, territorial governments, local renewable resource councils, and non-government organizations such as the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS). It is also consistent with the Canada-wide effort to conserve the boreal biome and protect key landscapes within the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative. The proposal protects a representative part of 4 major realms in the Peel watershed – boreal forest, rugged highlands of the northwestern cordillera, Beringia, sub-arctic (taiga) plateaus and plains. It also and embodies the Mackenzie Mountains and Peel Plateau Ecoregions, which are not yet adequately represented in the Yukon protected areas network.
The Science Behind the Proposal
Even though industrial development is outpacing conservation in many southern parts of Canada, the northern boreal forest is still one of the largest intact ecosystems left on the planet. About 70 percent remains in a natural state, 30 percent is tenured for industrial uses, and 10 percent is protected. In the Yukon the amount protected roughly matches the 10 percent national average, but is far short of the 50 percent protection goal recommended by scientists and conservation organizations such as the Canadian Boreal Initiative and CPAWS. (Visit www.cpaws.org or www.borealcanada.org.) We propose a conservation strategy that includes core protected wilderness areas in the Three Rivers watersheds, along with special conservation zones in the Greater Peel watershed to protect critical wetlands, sensitive river corridors and other important biological and cultural features. The core wilderness area is approximately 30,000 km2, big enough to support species and ecological processes that depend on intact ecosystems, and a sufficiently large theatre to accommodate the drama of climate change.
The CPAWS proposal is similar to the scale of protected lands in the Muskwa-Kechika area of northern BC, and is in line with the conservation plan the Deh Cho First Nations have proposed for their territory in the Nahanni region of the Northwest Territories.
What You Can Do
Yukon Government and Land Use Planning
Write a letter in support of conservation to Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie or contact your Member of the Legislative Assembly:
Yukon Government
Box 270, Whitehorse, YT, Canada Y1A 2C6
Participate in land use planning by attending public meetings held by the Peel Watershed Planning Commission. Send a letter to the Commission expressing your support for protecting the Three Rivers watersheds.
201, 307 Jarvis Street, Whitehorse, YT Y1A 2H3
Telephone: (867) 667-2374
Fax: (867) 667-4624
www.peel.planyukon.ca
Federal Government
Write a letter to federal Environment Minister John Baird and ask for more federal support to protect migratory birds and trans-boundary caribou in the Peel watershed. Ask for intervention by Parks Canada in support of protecting the natural values of the Bonnet Plume Canadian Heritage River.
Minister of Environment, Government of Canada
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A OA6
Support CPAWS
Learn more about this landscape and support the work of CPAWS Yukon. Get a copy of Three Rivers: The Yukon’s Great Boreal Wilderness, available in local bookstores and online via the CPAWS Yukon store. Check out the CPAWS online store for books, Three Rivers posters, videos and more.
Attend a CPAWS public event on the Three Rivers or other boreal conservation work. Join CPAWS-Yukon and ask to be put on a Three Rivers mailing list. Contact CPAWS Yukon for details:
Telephone: (867) 393-8080, Ext 1
Write: PO Box 31095, Whitehorse, YT Y1A 5P7
E-mail: info@cpawsyukon.org
For more on travelling the wild Yukon with first rate guides and services, visit the Wilderness Tourism Association of the Yukon, at www.yukonwild.com.
Go to the previous Three Rivers conservation update.
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