There seems to be some great news on protected areas in Manitoba, progress we’ve been waiting more than a decade to see. There is a posting on the Manitoba Conservation website with a proposal for a Red Deer Wildlife Management Area (WMA) west-central Manitoba, which will create a new designation larger than Duck Mountain Provincial Park!

The Red Deer WMA encompasses the area north of Red Deer Lake all the way past Overflowing River. Woodland caribou make this region home, and this will be the first piece of caribou habitat protected since we finally got the woodland caribou listed under the Manitoba Endangered Species Act in 2006. This is progress not only on protecting our rich natural heritage, but also on sustaining our woodland caribou populations.

One other incredible good-news fact about this WMA is that it is one of the first large-scale protected areas in Tolko’s Forest Management License. Tolko has control of the largest public forest that has ever been given out in Canada. We have been investigating Tolko’s overuse of the public forests for several years now, and calling for new protected areas throughout their logging license area. This is a step towards preserving the natural areas that are under increasing pressure from the logging industry as well as the mining industry.

Two other protected areas are being proposed in the same region, both Ecological Reserves (ERs): Lake Winnipegosis Salt Flats and Big Island ERs. Ecological Reserves afford an area the highest level of protection form disturbance or development out of all protected area designations. It is again great news to see more of our province being preserved for future generations.

And now for the “maybe” I put in the title: the bad news. It appears that the information about this new protected area was not made public until December 13. Certainly the information wasn’t publicized in any of the normal channels of Conservation communication. The reason that this is bad news is that information posted states the public comment period on these proposals expires on October 30, 2010. How is this possible? The proposals weren’t publicized on the Public Consultations section of the Conservation website, they weren’t announced through the government News Release service that sends out two or three releases every single day, and the snail mail letters that Conservation sends out to all interested parties on new protected areas weren’t sent. Does this mean the proposal has been cancelled? Does that mean the government didn’t get any feedback (because it wasn’t publicized) and is abandoning the plan? We don’t really know. The Wilderness Committee has emailed a formal request to Conservation Minister Blaikie, asking that the public comment period be extended until January 28, 2011. This will allow WC to do the necessary research into the boundaries of the proposal, have discussions with interested local citizens, and then present our findings to our members and supporters who are always anxious to provide their opinions to government. We’ll keep you informed of what’s happening over the next couple weeks.

- Eric Reder

Click here for the Wilderness Committee Press Release.