A lone wood bison in Wood Buffalo National Park near Fort Smith/Hans Pfaff/NWT Tourism

Canada has pledged an extra $59.9 million towards a 142-item action plan to help save Wood Buffalo National Park from external threats like nearby hydropower dams, oil sands activity and climate change. But a State of Conservation report was filed late to UNESCO in December and environmental and Indigenous groups are still waiting to hear exactly how the money will be allocated in a bid to keep the park off a list of global World Heritage Sites in danger.

“I think our fear is that Wood Buffalo National Park becomes this kind of forgotten park that falls through the cracks and that just continues to degrade without any urgent action to reverse or stop that,” says Gillian Chow-Fraser, the boreal program manager for CPAWS Northern Alberta.

Canada’s largest national park boasts 44,807 square kilometres (17,300 square miles) and is five times larger than Yellowstone National Park. Most of it is in remote, northeastern Alberta and it spills over the border into the Northwest Territories. Eleven Indigenous communities have long been stewards of the region’s lands and waters.

Created in 1922 to protect northern Canada’s last remaining bison herds, Wood Buffalo earned its UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) World Heritage Site designation in 1983 for its “outstanding universal value.”

The Great Plains-grassland ecosystem boasts forest, wetlands, prairie and delta. It has the world’s largest free-roaming, self-regulating wood bison herd and is the only remaining natural nesting ground of the endangered whooping crane. Four North American flyways converge over the Peace-Athabasca Delta, drawing migratory birds. The world’s second largest inland freshwater delta draws great concentrations of migratory wildlife, boasts gypsum karst topography with water-filled sinkholes as well as extensive salt plains created by saline groundwater left behind by ancient seas and forced to the surface that are unique in Canada. It’s the world’s largest dark sky preserve and the only place on earth where the predator-prey relationship between wolves and wood bison (a threatened species) has continued unbroken.

“Wood Buffalo is a really important park to Canada and it would be really tragic for the degradation to continue without some really hard work to go in and stop the degradation,” says Chow-Fraser. She’s based in Edmonton for the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS), a national environmental organization. “We are still looking for transparency on how that new money is going to be spent and what action is going to be taken.”

An aerial view of some of Wood Buffalo National Park's unique lanscape/Nick Fitzhardinge/Travel Alberta

In 2014, the frustrated Mikisew Cree First Nation asked UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to give Wood Buffalo an “in danger” listing to help focus attention and funds from the national and international communities. It said hydro-electric damming along the Peace River in British Columbia and oil sands activities along the Athabasca River in Alberta have “significantly reduced the flow of water to the delta,” affecting migratory bird and local fish populations. Climate change is also changing Peace-Athabasca water flows and levels.

In response, the committee asked Canada to prove it would take immediate and significant measures, and it sent a reactive monitoring mission to the park that made a series of recommendations. Ottawa started working with the governments of Alberta, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, plus Indigenous partners, to develop an action plan.

Related Story: Wood Buffalo National Park And Its Wildlife Confronted By Numerous Threats

In 2018, the federal government promised $27.5 million ($21.6 million USD) towards a five-year plan to protect Wood Buffalo and in February 2019 it released the action plan.

The UNESCO committee commended Canada's plan and “recognized the significant effort and investment that Canada and its partners have made to strengthen the protection and management of the site,” according to a government news release. But the Mikisew Cree says UNESCO also warned the park could go on its “in danger” list — the first step to losing its heritage status — and asked for an updated report.

Canada’s State of Conservation report was due December 1 but the government requested an extension and filed it December 21. The 35-page report addresses specific UNESCO concerns and 14 pages outline whether each of the 142 items in the action plan are completed, underway, not started or not due yet.

Meanwhile, on December 2, eight Indigenous communities and environmental groups emailed an open joint letter to the UNESCO director voicing concern about the slow implementation of the Wood Buffalo action plan. It offered on-the-ground perspectives of issues such as reductions in environmental monitoring of threats, river diversion of the Site C hydroelectric project, new risks associated with oil sands tailings, and its desire to see a budget breakdown for implementation of the action plan.

The letter asked UNESCO to view the report “with a critical eye,” insist on “more significant progress from Canada on critical pieces” of the action plan, and push Canada to recognize that actions by provincial governments that exacerbate threats to Wood Buffalo must be immediately addressed. “The responsible management of a national park is of national importance,” the letter read, “and the continued degradation of a World Heritage Site is of international concern.”

Then on December 21 after belatedly filing the Status of Conservation report, Ottawa committed another $59.9 million ($47.1 million USD) over three years to Wood Buffalo, pledging it will help strengthen park management in collaboration with Indigenous partners, enhance research, monitor and manage the Peace-Athabasca Delta using science and Indigenous knowledge, and establish new mechanisms to support improved water management in the Peace-Athabasca Delta.

A viewpoint and interpretive plaque over the salt plains at Wood Buffalo National Park/George Fischer/NWT Tourism

CPAWS welcomed the unexpected funding and Michael McLeod, member of parliament for the Northwest Territories, promised in a December statement that “we are working with our partners to protect this culturally and ecologically important site for future generations." Jonathan Wilkinson — Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister Responsible for Parks Canada — also pledged that the government will ensure Wood Buffalo “remains a treasured place for present and future generations.”

While the Mikisew Cree First Nation welcomed the funding news, it hopes it “will be combined with bold actions and improved partnerships between Canada and Indigenous peoples.” Chief Peter Powder also acknowledged “the immensity of the work that lies ahead to save Canada’s largest national park.” The Mikisew Cree urged Canada to use the money to deliver immediate progress on key items from the action plan, including:

• Establishing and repairing water control structures in the delta as one part of the solution to the drying of the delta;
• Expanding monitoring and research, including boosting Canada’s support for a monitoring institute in Fort Chipewyan developed in partnership with Indigenous communities;
• Transitioning to real co-management of the park with Indigenous groups;
• Creating a new water council to ensure the Peace River is managed in a way that restores the resiliency of the delta;
• Building a deeper partnership with the Mikisew Cree for collaboration on key pathways for saving this important place.

The federal government says more than half of the 142 identified actions in the plan have been completed or are underway despite COVID-19 pandemic challenges, that it “recognizes the scale and complexity of issues” facing Wood Buffalo, and that it remains committed to collaborative efforts to ensure the ongoing protection of the property’s outstanding universal value. Of its 11 First Nation and Métis partners, five are in Alberta and six are in the Northwest Territories.

“We really want to help Parks Canada and we think we can come up with a lot of great solutions,” says Melody Lepine, director of the Mikisew Cree First Nation.

There are 53 properties on UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger. Most are in troubled countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Madagascar, Libya, Palestine and Venezuela. The United States has one entry on the list — Everglades National Park, “because of serious and contributing degradation of its aquatic ecosystem.” The World Heritage Committee is expected to meet in Fuzhou, China this summer to review candidates for its World Heritage List and assess the List of World Heritage in Danger.

Parks Canada is the lead agency for implementing the World Heritage Convention in Canada and it fully or partially manages 12 of the country’s 20 World Heritage Sites.

Wood Buffalo is remote wilderness park that’s usually accessed from Fort Smith or Hay River in the Northwest Territories, or from the fly-in community of Fort Chipewyan in Alberta. It typically sees about 5,000 visitors a year.