Lake Louise in Banff National Park, Alberta Canada Parks Day takes place each year on the third Saturday in July. This country has dedicated more land to parks than any other country in the world. On June 9, 2009, Environment Minister Jim Prentice and DehCho First Nations Grand Chief Gerald Antoine announced the final boundaries for the greatly expanded Nahanni National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories. The world famous park reserve is now nearly seven times the size of the original one established in 1972. It will permanently protect over 30,000 km of Boreal wilderness - an area the size of Vancouver Island.
"The Nahanni is the jewel of Canada’s Boreal forest, and one of the world’s greatest wilderness treasures. Canada has shown true global leadership by protecting it," says CPAWS National Executive Director Eric Hébert-Daly. "With this announcement the federal government has created a national park that can take its place alongside Banff and Jasper as one of the world’s great protected areas," says Harvey Locke, CPAWS Senior Advisor for Conservation. The announcement of final boundaries comes nearly two years after Prime Minister Harper and former Environment Minister John Baird promised a massive expansion of the park, crowning years of collective work by CPAWS, local First Nations and many others to convince the federal government to permanently protect this iconic wilderness area.
"The elders of Nahanni Butte and the leaders of the Dehcho First Nations were determined to see this through," says Lani Cook, Executive Director of CPAWS NWT Chapter. "For the past nine years, we have been honoured to work closely with them to get protection for the Nahanni."
The announcement is great news, but in the last year, the government's efforts to expand national parks has slowed considerably. More protection is needed for many ecologically important landscapes and ocean areas.
Canada's nature reserves include 10% of its land but only 1% of its oceans and fresh water. However, Canada's huge land mass makes it the leader in nature reserves. Major conservation efforts have taken place in some provinces. At long last, Manitoba has banned logging in 79 parks after years of campaigning by conservation advocates.
Though the protection of our natural reserves is slow in coming, (we need many more natural resources protected) Canada Parks Day is a great day to celebrate the beautiful national and provincial parks within our boundaries.
Enjoy your weekend and take time to enjoy the natural resources that are available to you.
Oh my, Mary! What an awesome scene in that photo!
ReplyDeletemary...as always, a lovely post! Incredible photo!!!
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Who knew? Thanks for the update on Nahanni. It's nice to see Lake Louise again -- I've only been there once.
ReplyDeleteThe photo of this lake surrounded by mountains is stunning. It reminds me of the most photographed lake in Glacier National Park with the little island. I can't remember its name.
ReplyDeleteThanks too for visiting my birds blog.
Pick a Peck of Pixels is my photo blog with a difference -- I am hoping you are the difference. For this blog to be famous and me written about in the Wall Street Journal like I was in the seventies, will require more than a couple of dozen hits a day. If 10,000 visitors leave comments then it is instantly famous and your comments are part of history. Lets Make History.
Beautiful photo...and what a great country. To protect nature and its glory.
ReplyDeleteThis weekend is a free day to all our national parks/forests. Those that charge a nominal fee for entry, it's free today and tomorrow. Thing is, those kinds of days the parks/forests get so trashed....it ticks me off.
Great post.
What a beautiful picture!! I am enjoying vising with my daughter Carrie. Just Nancy and me are home today. Everyone else has gone shopping. Hugs Grams
ReplyDeleteIf it's legal I'll send you some seed from that Bachelor Button plant. Let me know.
ReplyDeleteI have heard of Lake Louise but have never seen it till now. It is absolutely gorgeous! I can't imagine having access to such a place.
It's hard to take advantage of parks, lakes or any place like that around here because our town is totally overpopulated. Today I tried for nearly an hour to find a parking place down at our Boulevard Park to no avail and finally gave up and came home, hot, tired and cranky as an old bear!
Now we are going to try the lake and pray for a parking place.
Does it make me a bad Canadian that I didn't know we had a Canada Park's Day every year? lol It's the first time I hear of it! Geesh! We certainly do have some gorgeous parks throughout Canada. More parks should ban logging...I remember being in Vancouver back in 1986 and 1989 and seeing the hills and parks being stripped of their trees, it really was a devastating sight!!! xoxo
ReplyDeleteI love nature! We just came back from a vacation in one of our state parks. We need to protect more of our land from development.
ReplyDeleteThat photo is astoundingly beautiful! So much of our planet needs help in preserving its beauty and health.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing like nature to soothe a person's soul. Something that good to us deserves us to be good to it, too!
Kari
So interesting! Another great informative post about Canada! You are teaching me so much.
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