Threats to Pacific Northwest Marine Conservation: The Enbridge Northern Gateway Project
Proposed route of pipeline
In the plenary talk on the last day of the International Marine Conservation Congress, Kyle Clifton, of the Gitaga’at First Nation of British Columbia, discussed traditional and contemporary marine resource management practices. At the end of his talk he noted there is now a much bigger threat to sustaining the health of the marine resources of the area than at any time in the past. In 1972 Canada’s federal government imposed a moratorium on tanker traffic on the Canadian portion of waters along the Inside Passage, the marine route from Puget Sound to the north ending in the Alaska Panhandle at Juneau and Skagway. It is called the Inside Passage because it is to the east of many offshore islands of British Columbia and southeastern Alaska. …