Wild at Heart Spring 2009: Protecting the Peel

Protecting the Peel: Yukon Watershed needs your help!

by Theresa Gulliver, CPAWS-Yukon

Overlooking the Snake River watershed
A hiker stands on a ridge overlooking the expansive
Snake River watershed. Photo by Peter Bowers.

Along the Yukon's northeast border, the magnificent Peel watershed stretches across 14 percent of the territory. This is a large and ancient wilderness; some of which eluded the last Ice Age. Aside from the healthy herds of woodland caribou, the Peel watershed is well known for its stunning mountain boreal landscape and fresh, free-flowing tributaries: the Wind, Snake, Bonnet Plume, Hart, Blackstone and Ogilvie rivers. The Peel definitely has the magic of the northern lights. But its survival could be dimmed in the current land use planning process. After four years, a planning commission has presented three future scenarios for this watershed.

CPAWS-Yukon is in favour of Scenario 2! It provides the most certainty for protection of wilderness and traditional values, the maintenance of healthy wildlife populations along with recreation, tourism and guide outfitting businesses.

Scenario 2 protects 54 percent of the watershed from all roads and industrial development including the entire Wind, Bonnet Plume and Hart watersheds and the Upper Snake. It is the option CPAWS-Yukon and others, including the Yukon Conservation Society, the Wilderness Tourism Association of the Yukon, the Tourism Industry Association of the Yukon and the Guide Outfitting Association, stand strongly behind as the best starting point for a land use plan.

Grizzly Bears in the Yukon
About 6,000 grizzly bears, about one-quarter of the world's
population, live in the Yukon. Photo by Peter Mathers.

Nearly 1,000 public letters reached the planning commission so far. These letters helped ensure Scenario 2 was created. At CPAWS-Yukon, we hope more letters will be sent to the planning Commission and Yukon Government urging a strong commitment to protection of full watersheds upon the release of the draft land use plan April 17, 2009.

If the Peel Planning Commission and Yukon Government don't hear clearly that people want entire watersheds protected, then roads, mines and oil and gas development could fragment the landscape, changing its nature while impacting the species living there, the renewable businesses thriving there and First Nations who rely on the area.

We need all Canadians to stay involved at this critical time, as decisions are being made now that will shape the future of one of the country's last intact mountain boreal ecosystems. It's not just a Yukon issue. The Peel watershed has national significance. Canadians need to raise their voices for its protection. How you can help:

Thank you.

back to Wild at Heart: Spring 2009 Newsletter