Award-winning scientist warns that proposed mine jeopardizes Nahanni National Park World Heritage Status

Posted on July 11, 2005

Ottawa - Award-winning Canadian scientist, Dr. Derek Ford, has written to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, who are meeting in Durban South Africa this week, warning that if Canadian Zinc Corporation's proposed zinc/silver/lead mine goes ahead upstream from Nahanni National Park Reserve and World Heritage Site in the NWT, the resulting environmental damage would jeopardize the very values that make this boreal wilderness jewel worthy of World Heritage status.
      
Dr. Ford, Professor Emeritus at McMaster University and a leading world authority on limestone caves and other karst formations, is concerned that this proposed mine and access road could contaminate the surface and groundwater in the South Nahanni River and World Heritage Site downstream, and disrupt the delicately balanced ecosystem of the Nahanni wilderness. Dr. Ford's field research was instrumental in the designation of Nahanni National Park Reserve on the first list of World Heritage Sites in 1978.

Dr. Ford writes that there is a serious risk of long term sulphuric acid contamination of surface and groundwater from the mine due to its sulphide ore body and the fact that all water from the mine will flow into the South Nahanni River via Prairie Creek or via underground springs. He also questions the integrity of the tailings pond which sits directly beside the Creek, noting that the mine site sits close to where one of the largest earthquakes in Canada in the past 50 years took place in 1985, making this a dangerous place for a tailings pond. The high levels of mercury in the rock also are cause for concern.

"I believe that the development and operation of the proposed Prairie Creek Mine threatens the very values that make the Nahanni worthy of World Heritage designation," he writes in his letter to UNESCO's World Heritage Centre in Paris. "If the mine proceeds I shall urge the World Heritage Committee to place Nahanni National Park Reserve on the list of World Heritage in Danger, and, if the mine is developed, to strike Nahanni National Park Reserve from the World Heritage list."

Dr. Ford also expressed serious concern about attempts by Canadian Zinc to re-develop a winter access road to the Prairie Creek mine site across sensitive limestone terrain known as karst. A winter road was previously built in 1980, but has been closed for more than 20 years.

"For years I have submitted that the Nahanni karst area needs to be protected in an expanded national park. The 'Nahanni North Karst' (almost all of which lies outside of the current national park) is the most spectacular arctic or sub-arctic limestone karst terrain on the planet. This is not an area that should be subject to roads and industrial activity," says Dr Ford.

UNESCO's World Heritage program is designed to recognize and protect cultural and natural heritage considered of outstanding value to humanity. This process is embodied in an international treaty called the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, adopted by UNESCO in 1972. As a signatory to the Convention, Canada has a duty of doing "all it can" to protect, conserve and transmit to future generations the World Heritage located in Canada, including Nahanni National Park Reserve.

Dr. Ford's letter to the World Heritage Committee is available online at www.cpaws.org.

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Contact for further information and to arrange interviews:
Alison Woodley (613) 569-7226 ext 227 (office) or (819) 923-3094 (cell)
CPAWS Northern Conservation Specialist

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) is Canada's voice for wilderness. Since 1963, CPAWS has helped to protect over 40 million hectares of Canada's most treasured wild places. For further information about CPAWS' Nahanni and Boreal Forest Conservation campaigns, visit www.cpaws.org.

CPAWS is working with other conservation groups, the Dehcho and other First Nations and industry to conserve Canada's entire boreal region, as signatories to the Canadian Boreal Initiative's Boreal Forest Conservation Framework.