A pathway for future generations
The Yukon is home to some of the largest natural areas left in the world. Today industrial development, resource extraction, and roads are already expanding into once remote areas at ever-increasing speed. Yukon First Nations, CPAWS Yukon, and many others have called on the Yukon government to pause the development until land plans are agreed on first. The Yukon government has continued to say no to this call.
Land use planning creates a guide and vision that ensures the health and well-being of people, animals, lands and waters, while carefully planning where activities like roads and mining are best suited to occur. Its purpose is to ensure a good future for many generations. Knowledge from those who have stewarded these lands and the collection of baseline data are important in these processes, as are the community voices of all Yukoners and those who will continue to be stewards into the future.
CPAWS Yukon has heard from many Yukon First Nations that they view this important process as land relationship planning, rather than land use planning, because the word “use” infers that the land is to be used. However, this does not reflect the reciprocal relationship that people have with land and water.
Everyone’s interactions with the land are relational, from our smaller ones like recreating or harvesting, to larger scale interactions like research, roadwork, forestry, mining, or taking larger groups of people into nature. Our work as an organization is to ensure that land planning in the Yukon reflects our many important relationships and values with the land.
The Yukon is divided into several large planning regions. So far, only two plans have been completed: the North Yukon Regional Plan and the Peel Watershed Regional Plan.
Planning in the Dawson Region is in the final stages, and soon planning within the Stewart River Watershed in the Northern Tutchone region will ramp up.
The entire process is designed to be shaped collaboratively, with the intent of providing a map towards a healthy and more certain and harmonious future. This is why CPAWS focuses a lot of its attention on these regional plans, and works to encourage everyone to participate along each step of the way.
STEWART WATERSHED
DAWSON REGION
PROTECT THE PEEL
We can work together to prevent Yukon’s wild spaces from being carved up or lost through proactive land planning and improved mining laws, allowing for those wild spaces to thrive for future generations.
Stories about Land Planning
