Protect Waterton-Glacier park, groups implore UN

MARK HUME
Globe and Mail
June 4, 2008

VANCOUVER -- Several leading environmental groups in the U.S. and Canada have written to the United Nations asking that proposed energy developments along British Columbia's Flathead River be investigated as threats to a World Heritage Site.

In a letter sent yesterday, the organizations state that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, which links globally significant national parks in Alberta and Montana, be placed on the UN's World Heritage in Danger list.

"There is substantial danger that the existing statutory and regulatory framework will fail to adequately protect Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and its surrounding lands from adverse impacts caused by mining and CBM [coal bed methane] development in the headwaters of the Flathead River," the groups state in a letter to Francesco Bandarin, director of the UN's World Heritage Centre.

The UN has recognized Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park as a World Heritage Site since 1995, when it was listed because of its "outstanding universal value" and its extraordinary densities of grizzly bears, wolves, lynx and wolverine.

Chloe O'Loughlin, executive director of the B.C. chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, one of eight groups that signed the letter, said placement on the World Heritage in Danger list would bring intense scrutiny to the coal and coal bed methane projects, which environmentalists say will pollute the Flathead River.

The proponents, whose projects have not yet been approved by government, have said they will operate within strict guidelines that are meant to protect the environment.

But critics claim the massive open-pit coal mine, which would remove 40 million tonnes of coal and create 300 million tonnes of waste rock, and the methane project, which could potentially see thousands of wells drilled in a 500-square-kilometre zone, would inevitably pollute the Flathead River.

The Flathead rises in the southeast corner of B.C., with Waterton National Park lying directly east of the Rocky Mountains in Alberta, and Glacier National Park to the south in Montana.

The Flathead forms the western border of Glacier National Park, and the proposed B.C. developments have drawn criticism from Montana's leading politicians, and recently from Barack Obama, who was campaigning in the Democratic primary in Montana earlier this week.

Ms. O'Loughlin said the environmental groups, which include the Sierra Club BC, National Parks Conservation Association and the Wilderness Society, have turned to the UN because of concerns that B.C. will approve development in the Flathead despite growing opposition.

She said protesting to the World Heritage Committee is a logical step because the developments could not only pollute the Flathead, but might also fragment habitat used by wildlife that now move easily back and forth from B.C. into the parks in Alberta and Montana.

"A World Heritage site is in danger here. It is being threatened by potential energy and mine developments in the Flathead and will be as long as the Canadian portion of the Flathead is open for business," Ms. O'Loughlin said.

She said she expects a response from the World Heritage Committee within six weeks and is hoping an investigation could begin soon after. "There is a sense of urgency about this," she said.

There are 14 World Heritage sites in Canada, including the Rideau Canal, which runs from Ottawa to Kingston and was listed by the UN last year. Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories and L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland were the first Canadian sites on the list in 1978.

The UN has 30 sites on its World Heritage in Danger list, none in North America.

Among the sites in danger are Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where wildlife have been massacred; the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, which are threatened by the introduction of alien species; and Simen National Park, Ethiopia, where human settlement and road-building activities are blamed for wildlife declines.