HELENA – The state of conservation at two Northern Rockies national parks near a place eyed for possible coal mining will be reviewed by a UNESCO committee meeting in Spain this week.
Groups that say Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, consisting of a U.S. park and a Canadian park, is at risk hope the meeting in Seville, Spain, will bring their concern some global attention. They’ve petitioned UNESCO to declare the peace park endangered. But a lawmaker in the Canadian province of Alberta rejects any suggestion that coal mining or other industry threatens environmental quality in a slice of North America known for stunning alpine scenery and extraordinary wildlife habitat.
Glacier National Park in Montana and Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, jointly the peace park, are among several dozen places worldwide whose conservation status is on the agenda for the UNESCO World Heritage Committee’s Seville meeting scheduled to open Monday and continue for a week.
The UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1995 declared Waterton-Glacier a World Heritage Site, a designation bestowed on 878 places worldwide to recognize extraordinary cultural or natural resources. Now the Washington, D.C.-based National Parks Conservation Association, Canadian environmental group Wildsight and nine other organizations have petitioned UNESCO to declare the Northern Rockies parklands a World Heritage Site in Danger.
An unsuccessful petition for endangered status a few years ago presented concern about climate change and its effects on the parks. The new petition is tied to potential coal and coal-bed methane extraction in southeastern British Columbia.
“This is a serious request for UNESCO to recognize the perpetual threat posed to these parks … by various mining and mineral extraction proposals,” Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., wrote in a January letter to Canada’s ambassador to the United States.
About 30 World Heritage Sites have been declared endangered, a designation that can heighten sensitivity about a locale and raise its profile.
The National Parks Conservation Association and Wildsight, which sent representatives to Seville, say water pollution in Waterton-Glacier is among the risks from potential coal mining and coal-bed methane work in southeastern British Columbia. The Flathead River system spans the international border and the North Fork of the Flathead forms Glacier’s western boundary.
Officials in the provincial government say no projects will be permitted without meeting rigorous environmental requirements.
“There are no imminent threats to the Flathead Valley,” said Bill Bennett, the British Columbia minister of community and rural development and a provincial legislator. The valley, also dubbed the Crown of the Continent, encompasses a swath of southeastern British Columbia and northwestern Montana. Canada’s Cline Mining Corp. has been looking at possible coal-mine development in the valley.
Bennett said the call for UNESCO action is part of a larger effort to have the Canadian Flathead declared a park.
“It’s the same old group employing the same old tactics,” he said Friday. “Let’s tell everybody in the world that the Flathead Valley on the Canadian side is at imminent risk, and do something that will help us get a national park.”
Bennett said his constituents don’t support mining in the Flathead Valley and neither does he, but establishing a park is unwise because it would make land off limits to popular activities such as hunting and snowmobiling.
Wildsight’s Ryland Nelson, who was going to Seville with Will Hammerquist from the Whitefish, Mont., office of the National Parks Conservation Association, said designation of a Flathead park would be a good move but is not the petition’s underpinning. The petition is about protecting Waterton-Glacier, Nelson said Friday.
Calls seeking comment Thursday about Cline’s interest in the Flathead Valley were not returned by the company’s Toronto office.
A spokeswoman for BP, Melanie Ostopowich in Calgary, Alberta, said the energy company is part way through a three- to five-year period of environmental studies for its potential Mist Mountain coal-bed methane project in southeastern British Columbia.
The U.S. government’s delegation at the Seville meeting was to be led by Dan Wenk, acting director of the National Park Service, with officials of the U.S. State Department and the Interior Department among the delegates. Whether Wenk would speak on the Waterton-Glacier matter was uncertain, said Stephen Morris, international affairs chief for the Park Service.