This week’s Hungry Horse News has a decent write-up on the UN World Heritage Committee scientific mission report on threats to Waterton-Glacier Park . . .

Scientists from the United Nations are calling for a moratorium on mining in the Canadian Flathead, just north of Glacier National Park.

Last fall Paul Dingwall, a New Zealand scientist with the World Conservation Union and the World Wide Fund for Nature, and Keshore Rao, deputy director of the United Nation’s World Heritage Center, toured Glacier and Waterton Parks as well as the Canadian Flathead. They wanted to see for themselves the potential impacts of proposed coal, coal bed methane and gold mines in Canada on the Park.

“Their basic conclusion is they have no doubt that mining is incompatible,” with the park, said Stephen Morris, chief of international affairs for the National Parks Service.

Read the entire article . . .

Canadian press coverage of the World Heritage scientific mission report on threats to Waterton-Glacier Park is a bit more thorough than the articles posted in local papers. Not surprising, since the report primarily targets proposed resource extraction activities in the Canadian Flathead.

Here are a couple examples. Both are recommended reading for anyone interested in this issue.

From the Vancouver Sun . . .

A United Nations report has recommended a moratorium on mining in the controversial Flathead Valley of southeastern B.C. and development of a comprehensive transboundary conservation and wildlife management plan for the area, a U.S. official revealed Thursday.

Stephen Morris, chief of international affairs for the National Park Service, said in an interview from Washington, D.C., that he has received a copy of a fact-finding mission report by two UN world heritage representatives who visited the area in September.

Read the entire article . . .

And from the Lethbridge Herald . . .

No mining activity in the Flathead Valley is safe mining activity when it comes to protecting the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, suggests a UNESCO report now in the hands of federal government officials in Canada and the U.S.

“I don’t want to get into too much of the detail, but the overriding recommendation is that in the view of the mission, they see mining in the Flathead watershed as creating unacceptable impacts on the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage Site, and they don’t think there’s a compromise position,” said Stephen Morris, head of the international affairs office for the U.S. National Park Service.

Read the entire article . . .