A report commissioned by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee is calling for a “conservation and wildlife management plan” for the transboundary Flathead and a new management plan for the Flathead River Valley that “gives priority to natural ecological values and wildlife conservation.”…

The 50-page report, released today at the World Heritage Committee meeting in Brasilia, recommends:

• A new B.C. Southern Rocky Mountains Management Plan “that gives priority to natural ecological values and wildlife conservation.”
• Taking steps to minimize barriers to wildlife connectivity, including a long-term moratorium on further mining developments in south eastern B.C., including in the Elk Valley, “in the corridor of natural terrain that creates vital habitat connectivity and allows the unimpeded movement of carnivores and ungulates” between Waterton-Glacier and Canada’s Rocky Mountains national parks.
• A single conservation and wildlife management plan for the transboundary Flathead.
• Inscription of Waterton-Glacier on the list of World Heritage in Danger if development of the proposed Lodgepole coal strip mine had proceeded (the B.C. government banned Flathead mining and energy development in February 2010 after receiving a draft copy of the mission report).

For those of you who prefer to get your information directly from source documents, we’ve made the full report available for direct viewing/download (50 pages, PDF format, 2MB).

There’s a renewed push for wilderness in the North Fork. Headwaters Montana, a relatively new conservation group has released a plan for land conservation on both sides of the border.

Tucked in that plan is a call for 140,000 acres of designated wilderness in the Thompson-Seton and Mount Hefty areas.

But the plan doesn’t end there. It includes a wilderness designation for Glacier’s backcountry, expansion of Waterton Lakes National Park to the Canadian Flathead and wildlife management zones west of the Waterton expansion.

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A stunningly beautiful park that spans the Canada-U.S. border in southwestern Alberta may soon be added to an infamous United Nations list of the world’s most threatened special areas.

In a session in Seville, Spain, next month, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization will consider a petition by 11 conservation groups asking that Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park be designated a World Heritage Site in Danger.

“If that happens, it would be a really big black eye for both Canada and the United States,” Ryland Nelson, a spokesman for one of the petitioning groups, Wildsight, said yesterday.

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Conservation groups are renewing calls for Waterton Lakes National Park to be expanded into the Flathead River Valley, despite British Columbia’s decision to close the door to coal bed methane development in the ecologically key area in southeastern B.C.

The Sierra Club, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Wildsight and others say the relatively untouched valley is still imperilled.

“Until we have permanent protection for the Flathead River Valley in the form of a national park, it is still threatened by future coal bed methane proposals,” said Sarah Cox, a spokeswoman for Sierra Club B. C. “And it’s under threat from a proposal for strip mining coal and other minerals.”

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