Home > Programs > Energy Solutions > Mackenzie WILD

Mackenzie WILD

Canada’s wildest big river

Dene people call it Dehcho, the Big River. The Mackenzie River, is Canada’s wildest big river flowing through 1800 kilometres of globally important forests and tundra teeming with caribou, moose, geese, wolves, and bears.

Indigenous People have conserved and stewarded the lands, waters and wildlife of the Mackenzie Valley from time immemorial.

The Mackenzie Valley is now threatened by Canada’s biggest natural gas pipeline project ever. If it proceeds, the Mackenzie Gas Project will trigger the transformation of the Mackenzie Valley from largely intact wilderness to industrial landscape.

Learn more about the Mackenzie WILD campaign.

The current Mackenzie WILD Coordinator is Meredith James. She is based in Edmonton, Alberta in the Prairie Chapter Office. She can be reached at 780.439.1160 or by emailing meredith@sierraclub.ca

Action Alert

In Edmonton on Monday, February 26, 2007, environmental groups, including the Sierra Club of Canada, representing millions of North Americans challenged the Joint Review Panel and the Mackenzie Gas Project (MGP) to fully explain the end use of the proposed pipeline's gas and what sustainability tests the project will be subjected to.

Support their call by signing the Mackenzie WILD declaration at www.mackenzieWILD.ca .  

A second way to help keep the Mackenzie Region wild is to ensure this issue gets the media coverage it deserves. As you may know the MGP is currently in the final stages of public hearings and as such, we expect that this issue is likely to receive increasing media attention in the coming weeks. An excellent way to maximize the impact of this coverage is to submit a short 'letter to the editor' to your local newspaper.

Letters to the Editor

If you see an article in the next few weeks regarding the MGP, the Alberta tar sands, the Clean Air Act, or Canada's role in climate change, please take a few minutes to let other people in your community know how these issues are related to industrialization of the Mackenzie River Basin! You don't need to be an expert! You just need an opinion on the issue and a desire to voice it! Here are some tips for letter writing:

Check the paper's website or letters/opinion section for the Letter to the Editor email address, or submit it online through their website.

Be sure to check the paper's website or letters section for a word limit. It's usually around 150-200 words. Stick to that limit!

Pick an article (about the MGP, the tar sands, the Clean Air Act, or climate change) to respond to.

Reference the article at the beginning of your letter

Keep your letter short, personal, and punchy. Where possible relate the issue to your specific community. Call on leadership to take action appropriately, if your letter gets printed with their names mentioned it ends up on their desk!

Submit it with in three days of the article's print date.

HINT: Watch for media coverage of the February 26 Joint Review Panel in Edmonton.

If you send in a letter, please let Meredith know as well at meredith@sierraclub.ca

If you are unsure what to write, try these suggestions...

If the article you are responding to relates to the Tar Sands...

Point out how the MGP is sure to trigger increasing industrialization of the Mackenzie River Basin and new oil and gas projects all over the North.

Point out how another proposed pipeline, the Northcentral Crossing Project, would connect the southern terminus of the Mackenzie pipeline to Fort McMurray, allowing Mackenzie gas to flow across northern Alberta to fuel expansion of tar sands developments

Remind your community members that he US recently called on Canada to expand its tar sands five fold in order to fuel its oil addiction. The MGP is therefore a national issue that will set Canada's energy export future for generations to come!

Discuss the potential implications for climate change, if these projects go through. Think of how all the Greenhouse Gas emissions will further impede our commitments to Kyoto.

If the article you are responding to is related to the MGP's Joint Review Panel (for example the one in Edmonton on February 26)...

Express your concern over the development of one of the world's last wild river basins.

Discuss how the construction of the pipeline would inevitably cause significant ecological destruction along the right-of-way. Much boreal forest in Mackenzie Valley would be clear-cut and heavy machinery deployed to construct the industrial infrastructure needed to extract and transport the natural gas

Point out that The Mackenzie Gas Project would fragment the habitat of grizzly bears, woodland caribou and wolves, destroy forests and wetlands, and prejudice the creation of protected areas.

Remind the members of your community that this is a national issue that affects all Canadians. How will Canada reduce its GHG emissions with the destruction of such an important carbon sink and the industrialization of such a large area?

If the article you are responding to relates to the Clean Air Act or climate change:

Discuss how Canada needs a clear energy plan in place in order to reduce our GHG emissions.

Point out how difficult is will be to achieve any proposed targets with industrial megaprojects like the Mackenzie Gas Project

Inform your community about how another proposed pipeline, the Northcentral Crossing Project, would connect the southern terminus of the Mackenzie pipeline to Fort McMurray, allowing Mackenzie gas to flow across northern Alberta to fuel expansion of tar sands developments

Ask why we are using relatively clean burning natural gas to produce dirty tar sands oil (which produces 2.5 times the amount of GHGs as natural gas)