Great Bear Lake agreement gives 'us the ability to actually sit at the table, says Délįnę chief

The Délįnę Got'įnę government and its federal and territorial counterparts have agreed on further protection for Great Bear Lake or TsáTué, a UNESCO-recognized biosphere reserve.

The new agreement will enhance conservation of the area and will lead to long-term funding. It also formally recognizes the Sahtugot'ine's millennia-long stewardship in the Northwest Territories region.

"It's a step in the right direction," said Danny Gaudet, the Délįnę Got'įnę government's Ɂek'wahtı̨dǝ́ or chief. "It's finally given us the ability to actually sit at the table to talk about the preservation of water, the lake, and the water bed and the land in and around Great Bear Lake."

Gaudet said that includes the watershed too.

TsáTué, at over 31,000 square kilometres, is the eighth largest freshwater lake in the world, and one of the "most intact ecosystems on the planet," according to a news release from the Délįnę Got'įnę government. It represents 0.31 per cent of Canada.

Gaudet said Délı̨nę's elders and spiritual leaders have been working for generations to protect and emphasize the importance of the lake.

The region straddles the Arctic Circle and the lake is surrounded by intact boreal forest and taiga, and is habitat for muskox, moose and caribou, the release says. The only community in the watershed is the Dene community of Délı̨nę, "where the water flows."

The agreement — a Letter of Intent to advance the Sahtu K'aowé Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) — was signed Saturday in Montreal during the 15th United Nations Council of Parties to the UN Convention on Biodiversity, or COP15.

"We're very excited about this idea that we can actually sit at this table, the letter of intent lays out the process that we have to work towards," Gaudet said.

He said the hope is to have the final agreement ready by the spring. He said eventually, there will be a celebration to mark the national conservation for the lake and watershed.

'Most valuable resource in the world'

He said it's becoming increasingly important that water bodies are protected.

"We look at Great Bear Lake as a future refuge. With climate change ... they talked about how important water is going to be — it'll become most valuable resource in the world," Gaudet said.

"We have to make sure that it's available for next generations, and so that's basically our role. And in doing this work, that ties into what we've done with respect to the land claims, and what we still have the potential to do with self government."

He said after the final agreement is struck, there's still about two years of work to "set everything up."

"There's going to be some interesting discussion in and around how this will all work," he said.

"In the end, ideally, we want to integrate our self government agreements and our land claim agreement into these … there's a lot of work to do. And hopefully we'll get there at some point."

Gaudet said there's hopes of expanding water protection "so that the rest of the region can be involved in their areas and maybe understand what we're working on so that they could also benefit from the work we're doing."

Leeroy Andre, former chief of the Délįnę Got'įnę government, said in part, it's about controlling any possibly future development in the area.

"We're trying to protect Great Bear Lake because we think here in Délįnę  that it is such an important lake. And we don't want development on it. But we'll work with developers to to find out ways to allow certain projects to go ahead," he said.

"We're not saying no, it's just we want this lake to be pristine, not only now but in the future generations."

The next steps include establishing long-term funding, and when an agreement is finalized for that, the release said the parties have agreed to include TsáTué in Canada's Protected and Conserved Areas Database (CPCAD), as part of the national and global targets to protect 25 per cent of Canada's terrestrial and freshwater by 2025.