Chinchaga Wilderness

The Opportunity:

• Home to old-growth forests, marshes, lakes, peatlands, woodland caribou, grizzly bear, wolverine and songbirds
• There is a small existing park which does not represent all ecosystems in the region
• The existing park is too small to match the life history requirements of large animals like grizzly bears
• Recognized as an “endangered forest” by conservation groups worldwide
• Threatened by forest harvest and petroleum exploration and extraction

Where is it?

The Chinchaga Wilderness Area is located in northwestern Alberta, bordering with British Columbia.

What CPAWS Northern Alberta is doing:

• Working to acquire legislative protection for the entire Chinchaga Wilderness Area
• Ensuring that protection is accomplished through a science-based land-use planning process that identifies an appropriate protected area as well as surrounding special management zones
• CPAWS is requesting that a moratorium on new industrial development must be placed on the area to maintain its values while protected area boundaries are being discussed

Achievements to date:

• 2003: Published a booklet identifying the Chinchaga as an Endangered Forest and linking it to the international Endangered Forest campaign.
• Within weeks of this booklet’s release, the provincial government announced that 3,500 sq. km in the heart of the Chinchaga would remain permanently unallocated to forestry. This forest had originally been allocated to Grande Alberta Paper, a paper mill project we successfully fought in an earlier phase of the campaign.

IN DEPTH

Chinchaga Wilderness

The Chinchaga Wilderness area in northwest Alberta contains a wonderful diversity of boreal ecosystems including old-growth forests, marshes, lakes, and peatlands. Woodland caribou, grizzly bear, and wolverine still roam widely in the Chinchaga Wilderness, and many birds depend on the Chinchaga to nest and raise their young.

Alberta conservation groups have long sought the protection of the Chinchaga Wilderness. The existing park in the region (see Fig. 1) is small and primarily comprised of peatlands. It does not represent all the ecosystems of the northern Foothills Natural Region and is too small to maintain natural processes or meet the habitat requirements of wide-ranging species such as grizzly bear and the endangered woodland caribou. It is lacking in old-growth forest and intact areas essential for the protection of species and wilderness. We propose establishing additional protection in the region, sufficient to achieve all of these objectives.

In November 2003, provincial, national, and international conservation groups identified the Chinchaga as an Endangered Forest. Many international customers of forest products have made commitments to avoid products from Endangered Forests.

We have had partial success in gaining a large representative protected area in the Chinchaga for wildlife, economic diversification, and future generations. In December 2003, the Alberta Government announced it would not allocate a large portion of the region to logging. However, we still have concerns about the lack of old forest protection, activities of the petroleum industry, and the lack of a planning process for the area.

The protection of the Chinchaga Wilderness needs to be accomplished through a science-based land-use planning process that identifies an appropriate protected area as well as surrounding special management zones. This planning process must involve conservation organizations, First Nations, local communities, industry, trappers, guides and outfitters, tourism operators, recreationists, scientists, and government. It must recognize and maintain the globally significant wilderness and wildlife habitat of the area.

For now, a moratorium on all new industrial development must be placedon the area to maintain its values while protected area boundaries are being discussed. This means that existing petroleum facilities may continue to operate, but not permitting new activity such as logging or development of roads, wellsites, and seismic lines.

Benefits of Protecting the Chinchaga Wilderness

• Contribute to the maintenance of biodiversity of the Boreal Natural Region of Alberta, including species of particular concern such as woodland caribou and grizzly bear
• Meet public demand for the protection of wilderness, for current and future generations
• Provide an ecological benchmark for Alberta's northern Foothills Natural Region, as required for the implementation of ecological forest management
• Enable the highest standards of forest product certification (Forest Stewardship Council)
• Help assure that products from the forest industry operating in the Chinchaga region are acceptable to markets that are increasing demanding forest products that are not environmentally controversial
• Contribute to the economic diversification of northwest Alberta through new opportunities for tourism
• Provide an opportunity for the Alberta government and forest industry to honour their commitments to the National Forest Strategy and the Canadian Biodiversity Strategy and others.

For more information on the Chinchaga campaign, click on the following links to Chinchaga fact sheets or visit our Resource Room for more information on the Chinchaga campaign.

For more information on the Chinchaga Wilderness please see: Chinchaga Wilderness: The last hope for the creation of a large protected area the foothills Alberta 2003.

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