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FORT SIMPSON, N.W.T. — Prime Minister Stephen Harper kicked off a three-day Arctic sovereignty tour Wednesday by announcing the expansion of one of the country's most rugged and beautiful national parks.
Mr. Harper said the government will add 5,400 square kilometres of land to the Nahanni National Park Reserve — a world heritage site — barring it from further development.
Protected areas include mineral hot springs, limestone formations with geological significance, towering waterfalls — one twice the height of Niagara Falls — and deep, mist-shrouded canyons.
“Canada is blessed with magnificent geography from coast to coast to coast, but none more spectacular than Nahanni Park,” Mr. Harper said.
“Today's announcement will ensure that more of this precious land, and the unique wildlife populations it sustains, will be protected for future generations.”
The northern trip, which will also include military announcements, is meant to bolster Canada's sovereignty over the North. It comes after a Russian miniature submarine dropped a small flag on the ocean bottom at the North Pole symbolizing Russia's claim to the area — and the resources it contains.
Liberal critic Ujjal Dosanjh has dismissed Mr. Harper's tour as a sham in light of the Russian gesture.
“The prime minister is busy draping himself in the Canadian flag and praying that nobody notices that he's not actually doing anything.”
The Canadian military, meanwhile, is in the midst of a significant Arctic exercise — Operation Nanook — around the southern tip of Baffin Island. About 600 people from the Forces, the RCMP and the coast guard, are taking part.
Mr. Harper made the park announcement from a podium overlooking a meadow beside the confluence of the Mackenzie and Liard rivers, a spot which has been a traditional meeting place for natives from time immemorial.
About 200 metres away, a wooden teepee marks the site where Pope John Paul II held a mass in 1987.
Mr. Harper said he wants to see the park himself: “To discover what countless hunters, fishermen, back-country hikers and canoeists have been reporting for decades: Nahanni wilderness contains some of the most breathtaking terrain in the world.”
The announcement brings the total area under protection for the park — home to wolves, grizzly bears, lynx, woodland caribou, Trumpeter Swans, Dall's sheep and mountain goats — to 28,000 square kilometres. That's five times the size of Prince Edward Island.
The World Wildlife Fund-Canada welcomed the park expansion.
“This marks significant progress on the larger need to respect community wishes to sequence conservation first, in advance of industrial development,” said Rob Powell, director of the group's Mackenzie River Basin program.
Bill Carpenter, a senior adviser to the group on northern issues, said protecting the area from development is consistent with native traditions.
While environmentalists welcome the Nahanni expansion, they have been pushing for inclusion of the entire watershed, which would involve up to 38,000 square kilometres. However, that expansion would also likely include the site of a zinc mine with an ore body worth an estimated $2.5-billion.
Nahanni was originally set aside by then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau in 1972. Struck by the area's rugged and forbidding beauty, Mr. Trudeau established the reserve to protect it from proposed hydro-electric development. In 1978, the United Nations designated the area as a world heritage site.
Mr. Trudeau's son, Justin, later headed a national campaign to protect more of the area's wilderness. Environmentalists are concerned its sensitive ecosystems are vulnerable to industrial development.
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