In 2009, the Conservation Alliance awarded the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society a grant to expand the Nahanni National Park Preserve by a stunning seven million acres. To finish the job of protecting the entire Nahanni watershed, it is critically important to protect the headwaters in Nááts’ihch’oh National Park Reserve…
The South Nahanni Watershed and Nahanni karstlands cover almost 40,000 sq kms of spectacular Boreal wilderness in the Mackenzie Mountains of Canada's Northwest Territories. The South Nahanni River, running through the heart of this wilderness, stands among the world's greatest natural wonders as it plunges over Virginia Falls, a waterfall twice as high as Niagara, and carves a passage through the earth almost as deep as the Grand Canyon.
The Nahanni lies within the Boreal forest — a global forest that wraps the northern hemisphere, and within the Yellowstone to Yukon region — the mountain region stretching from Wyoming to the Yukon. In 2009, the Dehcho First Nations and the federal government announced the six-fold expansion of Nahanni National Park Reserve, protecting three quarters of the Nahanni watershed forever. The final step needed to secure the entire watershed is to establish the proposed Naatsi'ihch'oh National Park Reserve upstream, to protect the Nahanni headwaters.
Soon, decisions will be made on a boundary for the proposed Nááts'ihch'oh National Park in the headwaters of the Nahanni watershed. Unfortunately, pressure is building to leave important areas of Nááts'ihch'oh unprotected to allow for future mining development.