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A Summer Spent at CPAWS

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Written by Preet Dhillon, Conservation Intern

The COVID 19 pandemic proved a challenging year for many universities, as classes shifted from an in-person learning experience to online classes offered remotely. I found myself, along with other students, in a unique and new situation. Instead of attending classes and engaging with teachers and peers on campus, ‘campus’ became the desk in my room while classes were held on the screen of my computer. Come the month of May the remote school year had come to an end; it was time to go back home to the Yukon. After a year of learning online I was looking forward to spending a summer at CPAWS Yukon.

As I reflect on what I have gotten up to in these past few months, I am grateful for the opportunity to have had the position of conservation intern over the summer. Here you will find out how I spent my summer at CPAWS and what I was able to do.

I started out my summer helping Conservation Coordinator, Maegan Elliott, with fieldwork aimed to monitor the biodiversity of McIntyre Creek. I was able to learn about the methods used to capture the biodiversity such as motion trapping cameras, bat detectors and Autonomic Recording Units (ARUs). While setting up these systems we explored a variety of different areas such as soggy wetlands, tall pine and spruce tree forests, aspen groves and more! McIntyre Creek is an incredible area, filled with a variety of plant life and wildlife.

I enjoyed hiking through the McIntyre Creek area and exploring the diversity it has to offer, while learning of how the different methods work, how to set them up and the value that they hold in assessing biodiversity.

Setting up cameras in McIntyre Creek, by Maegan Elliott
Setting up cameras in McIntyre Creek, by Maegan Elliott

I enjoyed exploring McIntyre Creek throughout the summer, and I would encourage many others to do the same. I discovered McIntyre Creek to be a very diverse area, filled a with a variety of plant life, wildlife, and different natural landscapes. I was able to collaborate with the Yukon Conservation Society’s summer intern, as we worked on a booklet called “A Walk-Through McIntyre Creek”. This booklet features directions for a 2km hiking trail and information about the First Nations, natural history, plants, wildlife of McIntyre Creek and more!

Furthermore, with an interest on Yukon bumblebees, I was also able to monitor bumblebee diversity in McIntyre Creek. Blue vane traps were placed at a variety of sites in the McIntyre Creek area, for a few weeks. Each bumblebee was then identified by local biologist Syd Cannings. At one of the sites, I was able to encounter the Western Bumblebee listed as a special concern on species at risk. This allowed me to discover the importance species at risk have on larger scale.

Additionally, after a year away from the farmers market due to the pandemic, we were excited to make a reappearance as we greeted familiar faces and introduced ourselves to some new ones. I was able to spend each Thursday at the market along with other members of the CPAWS team, where we would provide information and updates to the public on CPAWS work. I enjoyed interacting and engaging people on their interests surrounding Yukon wilderness and the CPAWS organization. Despite the windy days that proved challenging when trying to keep displays put together, the farmers market was a delightful experience and would like to thank everyone that dropped by!

CPAWS Yukon at the Fireweed Market, by Preet Dhillon
CPAWS Yukon at the Fireweed Market, by Preet Dhillon

I find summers to take a very long time to arrive as we wait for them through the cold months. Interestingly, summers seem to end way sooner than you expect. I find my summer spent at CPAWS, to be similar. Although it was short and sweet, I am fortunate to walk away plenty of knowledge and am thankful for the CPAWS family who made it so great and helped me so much.

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Protect the Peel digital archives project – a retrospective

Protect the Peel digital archives project – a retrospective

Written by Judith van Gulick, Operations Manager

The reason that CPAWS Yukon was founded in the early nineties, was to bring greater attention to conservation issues in the Yukon. More specifically, conservation in the early years was mainly focused on the Bonnet Plume river and the Peel watershed. In August 2019, the Peel Watershed Regional Land Use plan was signed.

Boxes of folders and papers pertaining to the Protect the Peel campaign and other projects, housed on shelves in the CPAWS Yukon basement

How many documents were created during a campaign that took more than twenty five years to complete? The answer is: enough to almost fill up the entire basement of our office! 

Archive work can often be perceived as mundane and tedious. Luckily we found an enthusiastic intern in early 2019, who spent many months creating a consolidated archive of all research documents, reports, communications between partners, and campaign visuals. The result was a well organized paper archive of the Protect the Peel campaign. Unfortunately, it still wasn’t that easy for staff members to search the archives or to locate information to use for current campaigns, nor were these important materials safeguarded from floods or fires. 

It was a priority for our organization to digitize the archives for safekeeping – this would also enhance searchability and accessibility for staff and researchers outside of our organization. The Government of Yukon’s Community Development Fund (CDF) agreed with the importance of this project and decided to fund about half of the expenses. Thanks to CDF’s funding and ECO Canada’s Digital Skills for Youth wage subsidy, we were able to hire a Junior Digital Archivist, Asad Chishti, and could contract two professional archivists from the Yukon Council of Archives (YCA) to work together on this project. Those three individuals love archives!

The result of many hours of scanning documents, digitizing visuals, and completing the database, is a searchable index that is accessible to all CPAWS Yukon staff members. Staff can use keywords (tags) to search for documents and can easily click on the hyperlinks to bring them to the appropriate document. The wonderful thing about completing this project is that we can easily use past campaign materials to tell intriguing stories about CPAWS Yukon’s history, bring back memories from past successes, and use lessons that we learned in the past to build even better campaigns today and in the future! 

Digitizing the archives already proved helpful to our community outreach team. Asad provided valuable and insightful input during land use planning campaign meetings thanks to their excellent skills in sourcing relevant information. Using photos, important quotes, and letters, which were singled out from the archives, Asad assisted the outreach team with the development of their campaign strategy and outreach plan. 

All of this helps to contextualize how our work on future land use plans extends, borrows and remixes the lessons from the Peel Regional Land Use Planning process. This is something we hope to communicate in order for communities to prepare for land use planning in their regions.

Not only do we now have a digital archive of the Protect the Peel campaign, we’re also set up to add materials to the archives in the future. The YCA archivists led the writing of an archival policy as well as an appraisal policy, which gives our organization much-needed guidance in the process of building upon our archives. You might even say that we’re more excited about archives than we ever thought possible!

The digital archives are – for the moment – only directly accessible to our staff. We welcome you to contact us at info@cpawsyukon.org if you’re interested in a particular report, topic, or other detail from the Protect the Peel archives – we’re happy to help you find the information that you’re looking for!


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A Q&A with Chris Rider on the climate crisis

Recently, Yukon’s French language newspaper L’aurore Boréale interviewed our Executive Director, Chris Rider about to discuss the Climate Crisis.

The interview was done in English, then translated to French for the newspaper. We are posting the English language version, with permission from Sophie Delaigue and L’aurore Boréale. 

  

1. When you look at this past summer (floods in the Yukon and extreme heat/fires in BC), do you think it’s our new normal? 

I hope that the level of flooding we experienced this summer isn’t the new normal, but unfortunately I do think we can expect the Yukon’s weather to continue to become more and more erratic. Scientists are warning that the climate crisis means extreme weather events are going to continue to happen more frequently, and that means that unless the world takes action, flooding and fires are something we will likely see a lot more frequently in the Yukon. For a long time, people have said the costs of addressing climate change are too high. Sadly, we’re already beginning to see that the costs of not addressing it are even higher.

  

2. What is coming up in terms of climate action this fall, e.g. COP26, new policies, etc.? 

I’ve been so inspired by the work that youth have been doing to address climate change in the Yukon. From the rallies organized by high school students to the Youth Panel on Climate Change and the Council of Yukon First Nations Youth Climate Action Fellowship, they are pushing for real change.

I’m also really excited by the growing focus on Indigenous-led conservation in Canada, including the federal government’s recent commitment of $166 million for the establishment of new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s). This is a model for preserving land, where Indigenous governments and citizens are key decision makers when it comes to how the land and water is managed. It is a way of ensuring First Nations, Metis and Inuit people have control over the lands they’ve stewarded for millennia and it’s a model that I think we’re going to see a lot more in the next ten years.   

Supporting Indigenous-led conservation is a big win for our climate, because keeping forests and wetlands intact can help to ensure carbon is captured and stored safely by nature. That’s why this is called a “nature-based solution” to climate change!

  

3. What are CPAWS Yukon top priorities for the next year? 

 Earlier this year, CPAWS Yukon and the Yukon Conservation Society commissioned some independent polling to learn more about Yukoner’s views on nature and the environment. We found that nearly 80% of Yukoners support strong targets for protecting nature. That was really exciting for us to see, and we will work to support First Nations across the Territory, to ensure that the Yukon is a leader in protecting our most valuable natural resource – plants and wildlife!

This includes supporting Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in and White River First Nation citizens to protect important land and wildlife in the Dawson region, which is primarily the traditional territory of Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in; helping to protect Chasán Chúa (more commonly known as McIntyre Creek) in the traditional territory of Ta’an Kwäch’än Council and Kwanlin Dün First Nation in Whitehorse; and supporting Na-Cho Nyäk Dun citizens to keep the Beaver River Watershed free from development.

 
 4. If people could do just one thing to tackle climate change, what would that be? 

We all know that there are plenty of things we can do to help tackle climate change – drive less, fly less, better insulate our homes, etc. – but ultimately most of the big changes will need to come from businesses and government. That’s why I think the single most important thing that we can do is to tell our politicians, and the brands that we engage with, that addressing climate change is something you care about. Tell them that climate change and protecting the environment should be their biggest priority, and that you won’t support them if you don’t see real action. If enough of us continue to do that, they will have to listen!

  

This was originally published en français in L’aurore Boréale. You can read the original here: http://auroreboreale.ca/des-solutions-fondees-sur-la-nature-pour-lutter-contre-le-changement-climatique/

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Conservation from the Couch

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Conservation from the Couch

An abridged version of this was published in What’s Up Yukon

Written by Randi Newton, Conservation Manager

Like many Yukoners, physical distancing meant I spent a lot more time than usual at home this spring. One of my highlights was catching up with local films on the Yukon Film Society’s streaming website, Available Light on Demand. 

I was spellbound by Camera Trap, a short documentary that follows photographer Peter Mather as he tries to capture the perfect photo of the Porcupine caribou herd. Peter uses storytelling to advocate and inspire others to stand with the Gwich’in people and protect the herd’s migration route and calving grounds.

Watching Peter lug a heavy pulk across miles of soggy snow and carry expensive camera gear across streams of slippery snowmelt made my lazy evening on the couch feel even cushier. The end of the film shows the incredible images he was able to capture that will surely inspire conservation action. 

As a teenager, I remember reading National Geographic and being inspired by similar stories of epic journeys in the name of conservation. Now I work for a conservation organization, and my typical journey is far from epic. Usually it’s from home to office and back, with an occasional stop at the grocery store. Lately my commute has been even shorter, from the kitchen to my laptop at the dining room table.  

Even if you can’t undertake a marathon trek across the tundra, you can still support conservation. Writing letters and filling out engagement surveys are incredibly valuable. I call this “conservation from the couch”. These types of actions have advanced conservation efforts across the globe, including protection of the Porcupine caribou.

Two winters ago, oil exploration company SAExploration wanted to conduct an intrusive seismic survey in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Gwich’in Steering Committee and the Sierra Club led a campaign in opposition to the oil surveys, and inspired over 250,000 people to make phone calls or send emails to SAEx. Bernadette Dementieff of the Gwich’in Steering Committee joined local activists to hand deliver boxes upon boxes of letters to SAEx’s headquarters in Houston, Texas. The thousands of calls, emails, and letters – all part of conservation from the couch – had a large collective impact. Public opposition and SAEx’s legal difficulties have succeeded in keeping seismic exploration out of the Arctic Refuge. 

You don’t need to be an “expert” to advocate for issues that you care about. It can be intimidating if you don’t know exactly what to say but this shouldn’t stop you. The important thing is to tell your story, why you care, and what you hope to see. You don’t need to know all the policy jargon, or have navigated the regulatory spider web. For example, thousands of people called to “Protect the Peel”, and wrote why this was important to them. That was enough. Policy makers then translated this call for action into policy (if you’re curious, it translated to designating land management units in the Peel Watershed as Special Management Areas). 

Of course, not everyone has time to draft up a personal response. People are pulled in many directions by everything else going on in the world. Because you may be pressed for time, many organizations, including the team at CPAWS Yukon, often provide template letters that you can sign and send in. Decision makers may not weigh these types of responses as strongly as personal letters but will still see that you care about an issue. One way you can have more impact is to use the template letter as a starting point and add your own message. 

Feeling ready to flex your conservation from the couch muscles? Right now you can provide input on the Yukon Mineral Development Strategy, a strategy that could modernize mineral exploration and development in the territory. Because these practices touch so many facets of life, this is really a chance to have your say in what the Yukon’s future should look like. 

If you’ve ever thought that some things about mineral development in the Yukon need to shift, this is your opportunity to say so. That might include modernizing our mining legislation, putting a pause on mineral staking when land use planning is underway, or ensuring that mining aligns with the Yukon’s commitments to climate action and biodiversity conservation. Mining issues related to social justice and public health may also be on your mind. If you’re interested, CPAWS Yukon created a list of seven recommendations for the strategy, available at https://cpawsyukon.org/yukon-mds/. You can read them from your couch and, if they resonate with you, use them as a starting point to write your own submission. 

Remember, you don’t need to be an “expert”. You are the expert when it comes to your concerns, your values, and the future you want to see.


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Thoughts & Key Recommendations on Whitehorse’s Official Community Plan

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Thoughts & Key Recommendations on Whitehorse’s Official Community Plan

Written by Maegan Elliott, Conservation Coordinator at CPAWS Yukon, Heather Ashthorn, Executive Director of Wildwise Yukon, and Sebastian Jones, Fish, Wildlife, and Habitat Analyst at Yukon Conservation Society.

Header image by Maegan Elliott: Conservation Intern Preet Dhillon walks along a large wetland complex within Whitehorse city limits

The City of Whitehorse is seeking feedback on key policy ideas for the next Official Community Plan until August 31st. This high-level plan will provide overarching direction for the next 20 years, helping determine how Whitehorse addresses big issues—like affordable and just housing, charting how new development occurs, and ensuring that the future is shaped by the visions of the First Nations whose territories Whitehorse occupies. Our organizations encourage people to engage with the full scope of the Official Community Plan, but for the purposes of this blog we’ll focus on the parts of the plan that relate to wildlife habitat and climate change. 

You can read about these key policy ideas, also called emerging directions, here and access the survey to provide your feedback here by August 31st. This blog post includes key recommendations to the City from three local environmental organizations: CPAWS Yukon, Wildwise Yukon, and the Yukon Conservation Society (YCS). 

Key Recommendations from CPAWS Yukon

Overall, the directions laid out for the next Official Community Plan align with CPAWS Yukon’s climate action and conservation goals. The plan includes positive policy directions such as: finding ways to strengthen the circular economy, support low impact and efficient transportation, reduce wildfire risk, monitor and manage climate change impacts, improve our food security, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, densify housing development, maintain a network of green connections throughout the City, and look for opportunities to expand city parks beyond city boundaries with regional planning. CPAWS Yukon is also pleased to see the plan consider a collaborative approach to the conservation of McIntyre Creek, a significant wildlife area and wildlife corridor that passes through the city. However, we have a few key recommendations to offer:

  • Consider the potential future need for wildlife underpasses or overpasses along high-traffic roads that are likely to be upgraded in the future, such as the Alaska Highway and Mountainview Drive.
  • Ensure that further development within McIntyre Creek, such as a road, is removed from consideration before collaborative planning for the area is complete.
  • Improve how wildlife attractants, like garbage and compost bins, are managed in the city and strengthen applicable bylaws, especially along green spaces.
  • Follow the directions laid out in the Wildfire Risk Reduction Strategy. If forest is cleared for fuel breaks, ensure breaks are strategically located to ensure they’re effective and not simply a tool to clear land for development.
  • Ensure alignment with directions laid out in Our Clean Future, Yukon’s strategy to respond to climate change.

Wildwise Yukon’s Key Recommendations

Wildwise Yukon is a not for profit society, established in 2012, that operates to prevent and reduce human-wildlife conflict in the territory through research, outreach and education programs. Wildwise Yukon’s recommendations for the Official Community Plan center on improved coexistence with wildlife in Whitehorse: 

  • Promote human-wildlife coexistence across city strategies.
  • Include specific direction in the Official Community Plan for reducing human-wildlife conflict.
  • All city planning processes must align to promote wildlife-human coexistence. The Official Community Plan should acknowledge that we live in wildlife territory and demonstrate that wildlife will be considered in all planning processes. For example, the Official Community Plan should:
    • Outline the City’s intent to improve our waste management system so it does not lead to habituation and food conditioning of bears.
    • Provide direction for Parks planning in a way that considers and avoids development in areas with optimal bear forage and historical human-bear conflict and maintains trails and campgrounds in a manner which decreases risks.
    • Empower the strengthening of bylaws and regulations to ensure increased agricultural activity in the city doesn’t lead to increased human-wildlife conflict.
    • Consider the use of ornamentals for city beautifications that are not attractive to bears or other wildlife.
    • Empower revisions to municipal building code to require bear proof enclosures for waste storage in all new buildings.
  • All documents should reference the Whitehorse Bear Hazard Assessment, which was co-commissioned by WildWise, the City, Yukon Government, Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council in 2016.

Yukon Conservation Society’s Key Recommendations

YCS is a grassroots environmental non-profit organization, established in 1968. Through a broad program of conservation education, input into public policy, and participating in project review processes, we strive to ensure that the Yukon’s natural resources are managed wisely, and that development is informed by environmental considerations. Policy directions in the Official Community Plan contain numerous excellent ideas, and YCS hopes these suggestions are helpful: 

  1.     Towards Reconciliation:
  • The Towards Reconciliation Policy Directions does reference “continued collaboration” with First Nations, but it does not define a formal role for First Nations in planning. We recommend that this is addressed, and that there is a clear plan for how the City of Whitehorse will ensure that Ta’an Kwäch’än Council and Kwanlin Dün First Nation are meaningful partners in all planning decisions.
  1.     Climate Action:
  • We are pleased to see that a community emissions inventory is proposed; this would be strengthened with measurable targets in line with the International Panel on Climate Change’s direction to massively and urgently reduce emissions immediately, and mechanisms for enforcement.
  • There is an opportunity to reduce wildfire risk and advance Reconciliation by supporting First Nations led controlled burns.
  • We are cautious about expanding agriculture lands as a means towards increased local food production; there are real ecological consequences to converting wild lands to agriculture, and given the amount of underutilized, and un-utilized agriculture land, this may not be a good approach.
  • Winter Transportation should be part of a Winter City Strategy.
  1.     Towards a Sustainable Mode Share:
  • Achieving sustainable transportation is an excellent policy direction.
  • The target to reduce single passenger traffic should aim to reduce the total number of trips in single passenger vehicles compared to today, not simply the proportion of trips as a whole.
  • YCS suggests zoning and other incentives that will foster and even mandate vehicle free households.
  • In our experience, neighbourhoods rarely include a network of walking/cycling/ski trails separate from road networks. Foot trails can pass between houses in a way that roads cannot, and can greatly increase the livability of neighbourhoods.
  1.     Conservation of Natural Areas:
  • We suggest that the Conservation of Natural Areas direction includes a commitment to a defined minimum percentage of lands set aside for conservation, rather than ‘a large percentage’. The setting of this percentage, and identifying which lands, is another opportunity for Reconciliation.
  • Key wildlife corridors should be identified and protected, and wildlife crossing for busy roads should be planned for.
  • The Yukon River Corridor extends from the Southern Lakes to the Alaska border northwest of Dawson City, and early signals from the Draft Dawson Regional Land Use Plan indicate that this corridor will be managed as a unit, primarily for conservation. YCS recommends a commitment to integrating the Yukon River corridor within Whitehorse municipal limits into the Yukon wide Yukon River Corridor Special Management Area.
  1.     Strong Downtown and liveable areas:
  • YCS supports the approach that directs development to the downtown core rather than towards a highway strip. A commitment to zoning that prevents contradictory decisions would put meaning to this policy direction.
  • YCS supports the concepts of Urban and Neighbourhood centres and encouraging development adjacent to transportation routes.
  1.     Targeting the Right Supply of Housing:
  • Consideration should be given to Municipally owned and built housing, a model which has proven itself as a method of rapidly addressing affordable housing gaps in numerous countries. 
  1.     Intensifying Employment Areas:
  • We applaud the direction to accommodate growth, rather than foster growth, and we agree with densifying development.
  • Given that infinite growth on a finite land-base is impossible, no matter how excellent the planning, YCS suggest that Whitehorse consider ways to arrest the curve of growth, and to set a population target and methods to achieve it.

You’ve made it all the way to the end of the key recommendations from CPAWS Yukon, Wildwise Yukon and YCS! To gain some inspiration for your own feedback, scroll down and enjoy a cinematic masterpiece produced by the City of Whitehorse. Then, go take the survey to have your say in the Official Community Plan!


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Bureau of Land Management releases Notice of Intent to create Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Arctic Refuge

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August 3, 2021

Today, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management released a Notice of Intent to create a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the 2019 Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Leasing Program Environmental Impact Statement. 

This is a step towards hopefully identifying, and rectifying, the gaping deficiencies of the previous Environmental Impact Statement, released in September 2019, and begins a 60-day public scoping period. Comments on impacts, issues, and alternatives can be submitted to the Bureau of Land Management to be included in the SEIS. 

While we are pleased to see this, it implies a leasing program would continue for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This critical area for the Porcupine caribou herd requires permanent protection and the United States Congress has an opportunity to take a step in that direction by repealing the leasing program from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. 

Press Statement from the Gwich’in Steering Committee

Press Statement from the Sovereign Iñupiat for a Living Arctic

Full Notice of Intent

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Contact

Adil Darvesh, CPAWS Yukon Communications Coordinator

adarvesh@cpawsyukon.org | 647-984-6067

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The Yukon could be a national leader in conservation

June 22, 2021, Whitehorse, Yukon – Conservation foot-dragging by provinces and territories was the main reason behind Canada’s failure to meet its international promise to protect at least 17% of its land by 2020. While the Northwest Territories, Quebec and federal government earned the highest grades for their efforts to meet the target (A- to B), the Yukon was not far behind with a score of B-, according to a new Report Card by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS). Still, the Yukon Government, along with other jurisdictions, will need to improve their conservation performance in the years ahead if the country is to halt and reverse the critical decline of biodiversity and meet its pledge to protect at least 30% of its land and ocean by 2030.

The Grades Are In: A Report Card On Canada’s Progress in Protecting its Land and Ocean is a baseline for tracking Canada’s annual progress toward its 30-by-30 protection goal. This first CPAWS Report Card evaluated efforts to create protected areas over the past decade by Canada’s current federal, provincial, and territorial governments and assigned each jurisdiction a grade (except for Nunavut and PEI, where CPAWS does not have an on-the-ground presence). This assessment shows that a lack of commitment and ambition across much of the country stymied efforts to protect at least 17% of Canadian land and inland waters by last year’s 2020 deadline. Currently, only 13.1% of the country’s land is protected. Canada met its 10% ocean protection target by 2020 with 13.8% protected, albeit with concerns about the quality of conservation measures in some areas.

The Yukon remains behind the leaders with a score of B- but the potential to improve is high. Currently 11.8% of the territory is protected, and this number will rise to 19.4% once the Peel Watershed Plan is implemented. With the Peel saga resolved and land use planning no longer stalled, the Dawson Regional Land Use Plan is an opportunity for the Yukon to pick up momentum and become a national leader in conservation. Indigenous-led conservation, developing successor mining legislation, and putting the Yukon Parks Strategy into action are further opportunities for protecting Yukon’s ecologically and culturally important wild spaces. 

Some challenges remain. A funding injection is needed to boost depleted land use planning funds to make sure there is capacity and resources to do planning right. . In addition, mineral development continues to move ahead in the absence of land use planning, shaping landscapes before governments and people have the opportunity to determine their best future. 

For the Yukon to become a national leader in conservation, it must:

  • Support First Nation leadership through Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas. 
  • Prioritize land use planning and First Nation rights over mining interests.
  • Pause mineral staking ahead of land use planning.
  • Complete Yukon Species At Risk legislation to protect the plethora of species not protected under existing legislation.

“Yukon Government’s performance for protecting wild spaces over the last decade was mixed but the next 10 years hold promise. The government can help ensure a healthy future for the ecosystems we all rely on by honouring the land use planning process and supporting Indigenous-led conservation,” said Randi Newton, CPAWS Yukon Conservation Manager.

“The goal of this inaugural Report Card is to learn from the successes and failures of the past to guide effective conservation into the future,” added Sandra Schwartz, CPAWS National Executive Director. “With the recent federal commitment of over $3 billion for nature conservation, including for partners, CPAWS is expecting real action – now – and we are looking forward to supporting this important work over the next decade.”

You can view the report here: https://cpaws.org/cpaws-2021-report-card/

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For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact: 

Adil Darvesh
Communications Coordinator, CPAWS Yukon
adarvesh@cpawsyukon.org
867-393-8080 x9

Tracy Walden
National Director, Communications and Development, CPAWS
twalden@cpaws.org 
613-915-4857

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CPAWS Yukon’s Commitment to Reconciliation

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For many years, CPAWS Yukon has been working hard to act in the spirit of reconciliation. It is work that arguably started when previous staff and leaders at the organization began to meaningfully collaborate with Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in, Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation and the Gwich’in Nations of the Northwest Territories, represented by the Gwich’in Tribal Council.

In recent years, working ethically to support First Nations has been something we have continued to focus on. Our team has committed to learning, through taking courses, internal training and conversations and direct teaching by Elders and other First Nations leaders across the Yukon. We are also particularly lucky that Anne Mease, a Selkirk First Nation Citizen with a Masters in Native Studies, works for CPAWS Yukon as our Outreach Coordinator. 

Through all of this, the more we have learned, the more we have come to recognize just how much we still have to do. 

So when, at the beginning of this year, Jared Gonet – a PHD candidate, former President of the Yukon Conservation Society & Taku River Tlingit citizen – approached us about collaborating on a reconciliation document, we were excited to start working on it. 

At the time, we could not have predicted where the document would go, and how much I would learn through drafting it. The more we worked on it, the more important it began to feel. We knew that it was something we had to get right.

What you see here is the result of many, many hours of work. Its authors include Jared Gonet and Caitlynn Beckett (YCS board member), Anne Mease, Joti Overduin and myself. We also had an incredible amount of support and input from the board of CPAWS Yukon, whose input helped make it much, much better.

On May 31st, 2021, our Board of Directors voted to formally adopt this document. In doing so, they have acknowledging the work we have to do and we – as a staff and board – are making a firm commitment to action. Please hold us to it. 

I encourage you to take the time to read this document, and we welcome any organization to adapt or copy it for yourself – though if you do, we ask you not to do it lightly. It can only be meaningful if we, as a sector, follow through on the actions we have committed to. 

With that, I present to you: CPAWS Yukon’s Commitment on Reconciliation. 

Chris Rider
Executive Director

Our Commitment to Reconciliation

Reconciliation is about balance and healing between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples, including non-profit organizations. We are an environmental organization that is settler-founded and has a staff and board that remains mostly-settler. Our ways of operating have been, and are currently, influenced by the norms and customs that have been forcibly imposed since the European colonisation of Canada. This is important to recognize as it carries specific responsibilities in our path towards Reconciliation. It is our desire and our obligation to reconcile the colonial past with the present and into the future. CPAWS Yukon acknowledges the responsibility to support First Nations and the Inuvialuit to safeguard the land, water and air for future generations. We commit to specific actions to help with our path towards Reconciliation, though we acknowledge that we will not be the ones to determine if they were effective. We recognize that we are in the early stages of an important journey, and for this reason, this is a living document and it will continue to evolve as we learn.

Our Pledge:
  • Follow a path towards Reconciliation.
  • Learn from, and be accountable for any mistakes we make and have made. We will work to reinforce and expand positive efforts and approaches.
  • Listen
  • Be true partners with Yukon First Nations and other Indigenous Peoples as we seek to maintain species and places that shelter and provide for those species
  • Continue to prioritize building and stewarding relationships with First Nations and Inuvialuit communities, citizens and governments. We recognize the responsibilities that come with these relationships and that trust is difficult to earn, but easily broken
  • Recognize the history of colonialism that exists within conservation and environmental management and take action to ensure that it does not continue
  • Create awareness about:
    • The structures that were designed to foster and uphold colonialism, such as the Doctrine of Discovery and Terra Nullius. It is helpful that these ideas have been renounced both nationally and internationally, in particular by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and through UNDRIP, though the concepts tied to them are still used today and impede the path to Reconciliation;
    • How the environmental sector can support the abolishment of colonialism.

We are still far from Reconciliation, and acknowledge the fact that it is ultimately not for us to decide what is considered true reconciliation. Understanding the damage done through past and existing colonial institutions and practices, there is still much to learn and much healing to be done. We recognize that this commitment is just a step in our ongoing journey. With this work, we hope we can play a small role towards Reconciliation with Indigenous peoples and we will play this role with humility, respect, and hope for a better tomorrow

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