Tag Archives: Morice River

Indigenous Nations, Industry

‘Heartbreaking’: an overhead view of Coastal GasLink sediment spills into Wet’suwet’en waters, wetlands

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By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Sleydo’ Molly Wickham was composed and quiet as she stared out the window of a helicopter flying over vast stretches of TC Energy’s Coastal GasLink pipeline on Wet’suwet’en territory (yintah). Below, a wide swath cut through forests and wetlands, crossing creeks and rivers. 

A wing chief of the Gidimt’en clan, Sleydo’ was part of a small group on a monitoring flight to document the contentious project’s impacts as soaring temperatures rapidly melted last winter’s heavy snowpack.

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Animals

The last 33 caribou: fighting for the survival of a Wet’suwet’en herd

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

There’s a serene pocket of mountainous habitat in northwest B.C. where 33 caribou live, drinking from glacial-fed creeks and grazing on alpine lichens. Though it’s peaceful, they have nowhere to go. They’re surrounded.

They’ve been cut off from where they gave birth to their young and the tracts of land that supported them through the long northern winters by highways, hydroelectric dams, rail lines, clearcuts and farmland. The herd’s range has been fragmented for more than a century and faces imminent threats.

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Energy, Indigenous Nations, Rivers & Oceans

Tensions rise as Coastal GasLink blasts a creek near a Wet’suwet’en camp

By Matt Simmons, The Narwhal, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

Less than one kilometre from a Wet’suwet’en camp and village site, where cabins, tiny homes and a feast hall provide space for ceremony, cultural practices and opportunities to reconnect with the land, is a vast muddy clearing, guarded by private security workers. 

Here, the path of the Coastal GasLink pipeline crosses Ts’elkay Kwe (Lamprey Creek), a tributary of Wedzin Kwa (Morice River). This work requires digging a trench right through the creek to bury the pipe under it.

Ts’elkay Kwe is a known spawning channel for steelhead trout trout and other species, including coho salmon, according to a 2007 land-use plan. But steelhead and salmon throughout the watershed are in decline, in part due to widespread clearcut logging and climate change.

Continue reading Tensions rise as Coastal GasLink blasts a creek near a Wet’suwet’en camp →