A comprehensive conservation and wildlife management plan should be developed for the valley, which sits by the Canadian-U.S. border and adjoins the transnational Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. The 457,614-hectare park stretches across the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains into Montana and gained UNESCO protection in 1995.
The U.N. report, to be officially presented in July, suggests that any mining in British Columbia’s Flathead Valley would spill over into the parks, according to Stephen Morris, chief of international affairs for the U.S. National Park Service, who received a copy of the report.
Harvey Locke, conservation vice president of the Wild Foundation based in Colorado, said he is not surprised that “international experts would draw the same conclusion as the majority of East Kootenay residents, namely that the beautiful Flathead Valley with its world-class ecological values is no place for mining or oil and gas.”
Conservationists are pushing to fold 45,000 hectares of the Flathead River into Waterton Park. An additional 300,000 hectares west of the river would be declared a wildlife management area. Mining or oil and gas extraction would be allowed in such an area but not in the Flathead Valley itself (Larry Pynn, Vancouver Sun, Jan. 22). – PV