Province designates two new provincial parks
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2010 (5607 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The province set aside two northern wilderness areas today to be provincial parks.
Colvin Lake and Nueltin Lake Parks hug the Nunavut boundary and cover about 610,000 hectares, a total area 10 times larger than Winnipeg, Premier Greg Selinger said.
The Colvin Lake Provincial Park, known as the Land of Little Sticks, protects a total of 163,070 hectares.
Nueltin Lake Provincial Park totals 447,190 hectares.
Both fall in an area of transition between boreal forest and the tundra and are within the traditional hunting and trapping territories of the Northlands Denesuline First Nation and Sayisi Dene First Nation.
Chief Joe Dantouze of the Northlands Denesuline First Nation said the wilderness area designation means both areas will be protected from development such as mineral exploration and mining.
Lands included in a wilderness land-use category under the Provincial Parks Act also legally prohibit commercial logging hydroelectric development, oil and gas development and any other activities that may significantly or adversely affect habitat.
The designation also means the Qamanirjuaq barren ground caribou herd has a better chance of recovery after seeing its numbers drop substantially in recent years.
The province also says Nueltin Lake and Colvin Lake parks store an estimated 126 million tonnes of carbon, the equivalent to the emissions of 2.5 million cars in 10 years.
Selinger also said the designation of these parks sees the percentage of Manitoba lands under permanent protection jump to 9.9 per cent.
* More information on the new Colvin Lake and Nueltin Lake provincial parks.
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Manitoba chapter executive director Ron Thiessen said in a statement the two new parks have a combined size larger than Prince Edward Island.
“For those of us working toward large-scale protection of Manitoba’s Boreal Region, and for all Manitobans, this is a tremendous victory,” Thiessen said.
