Two bison in Wood Buffalo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Alberta and the Northwest Territories/Darren Roberts, NWT Tourism

The Mikisew Cree First Nation hopes Parks Canada will help fund an environmental research and monitoring institute based in Fort Chipewyan. Director of government and industry relations Melody Levine says there will eventually be a naming contest and an Indigenous name, but for now the project is going by various names including the Peace-Athabasca Delta Institute or the Delta Institute for short.

The proposed institute is detailed in the 2020 Indigenous State of Conservation Report for Wood Buffalo National Park that was submitted to UNESCO by the three Indigenous communities that rely most on the Peace-Athabasca Delta within Wood Buffalo National Park to maintain traditional ways of life. It was sent to the director of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre on January 15 after Canada filed its own State of Conservation report to UNESCO in December in a bid to maintain World Heritage Site status.

“There is a recognized need for a centralized and coordinated research and monitoring body to direct Peace-Athabasca Delta monitoring and to establish partnerships with indigenous communities so that Indigenous knowledge can be responsibly included in environmental research, monitoring, and interpretation,” says the report.

The Mikisew Cree have already received funding to develop the institute concept, hire a project manager, conduct community consultations, develop a governance and operational model, and complete an infrastructure pre-feasibility study.

“However,” the report states, “for the full vision to be realized, funding to establish and operate this research and monitoring program will be needed.” The institute would be based in Fort Chipewyan and have field stations across the delta.

Canada recently pledged an extra $59.9 million ($47 million USD) for three years to help save Wood Buffalo from external threats that include nearby hydropower dams, oil sands activity and climate change.

Standing barefoot on the unusual salt plains of Wood Buffalo National Park/C. MacDonald, Parks Canada

Wood Buffalo is Canada’s largest national park with 44,807 square kilometres (17,300 square miles). It’s mainly in northeastern Alberta and dips into southern Northwest Territories. Eleven Indigenous communities have long been stewards of the region’s lands and waters. The park is usually accessed from Fort Smith or Hay River in the Northwest Territories, or from the fly-in community of Fort Chipewyan in Alberta.

It has about 3,000 wood bison (the world’s largest free-roaming, self-regulating herd) and is the only remaining natural nesting ground for about 505 endangered whooping cranes. It’s the world’s second largest inland freshwater delta and draws migratory wildlife, boasts gypsum karst topography with water-filled sinkholes, and has extensive salt plains that are unique in Canada.

The remote park — which earned UNESCO world heritage status because of its “outstanding universal value” (OUV) — only sees about 5,000 visitors a year.

The Indigenous State of Conservation Report says the Wood Buffalo National Park Action Plan is undermined by governance challenges, inadequate allocation of long-term resources, limited progress improving Indigenous partnerships and a lack of timely corrective measures to reverse trends relating to water quality and quantity.

The problems “underscore that the deterioration of the Park’s OUV is ongoing,” the report concludes. Lepine says the goal is to help Parks Canada. “We think we can come up with a lot of great solutions. The common goal is protecting the OUV.”