MEC Wild Bucks (formerly Big Wild Bucks) is back! We have $10,000 to give away to three worthy Canadian organizations – and we need your help choosing the winners. Vote for the project you’d like to see funded at mec.ca/wildbucks before November 8. The projects span the country, and range from protecting caribou and grizzly habitat to creating parks, restoring watersheds, and supporting students as they monitor local streams.
To kick off this year’s edition of MEC Wild Bucks, we have a guest post from last year’s Wild Bucks winner: Nature Canada. In 2012, Nature Canada received the most votes and $5000, money they used to protect the Pacific Northwest and its wildlife.
The Pacific Northwest coast is a global biodiversity hotspot. Its forests and coastlines support some of the richest marine life on the planet, and globally important bird areas nestled throughout the area are home to enormous colonies of marine birds like murrelets, auklets, petrels, puffins and gulls. Nearly half the world’s population of ancient murrelets depend on the old growth forests along Gwaii Haanas for nesting and the rich coastal waters for food.
Nature Canada wanted to protect this area from the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. So, together with our partners, BC Nature and the Environmental Law Centre, we petitioned and were accepted as an official intervener in the Northern Gateway pipeline proposal to the Joint Review Panel appointed by the federal government to assess the impacts of the project. Collectively, we sought to bring our knowledge and our science to the proceedings, and to argue that the proposed bitumen pipeline presented an unacceptable risk to the wildlife of this rich and vital area. But the resources provided through the intervener process weren’t enough to fully fund and present our scientific information.
The MEC Big Wild Bucks program presented us with a unique opportunity to petition the public for additional support. Our submission through Big Wild Bucks was simple: to help us protect the wild northwest and its wildlife from the proposed pipeline. We faced tremendous competition from four other worthy environmental causes. In the end, Nature Canada received the most votes and we were awarded a much-needed $5000, which enabled our scientists and lawyers to make important presentations to the Joint Review Panel in Prince George, Prince Rupert and Kitimat.
Along with the people of the northwest, we’re now waiting for the government’s response, and are hopeful that our interventions on behalf of nature will influence the panel’s final decision.