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Alberta just created the world’s largest boreal protected forest.. right next to the oil sands!

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From the Province of Alberta

The largest contiguous area of boreal protected land in the world has been established in northern Alberta.

The Government of Alberta partnered with The Government of Canada, the Tallcree First Nation, Syncrude and the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) on the conservation of more than 6.7 million hectares (67,000 sq. km) of boreal forest.

The creation of the Kazan, Richardson and Birch River wildland provincial parks connects the federal government’s Wood Buffalo National Park to other existing wildland provincial parks.

The new and expanded wildland provincial parks are: Kazan, Richardson, Dillon River, Birch River and Birch Mountains. In total, these northern Alberta parks contribute more than 1.36 million hectares to the province’s protected area network.

This is the largest addition to the Alberta Parks system in its history, and will constitute the largest contiguous protected boreal forest in the world under the guidelines of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

“Our government is committed to protecting our land, water and forests for future generations. Preserving these areas has allowed Alberta to establish the largest contiguous boreal protected area in the world. This historic achievement shows what can be accomplished when governments, First Nations, industry and environmental organizations work together.”

Shannon Phillips, Minister of Environment and Parks

“The environment and the economy go together – that’s why our government is investing in protecting nature and wildlife habitat. It’s encouraging to see governments, Indigenous peoples, industry and conservation groups working together to protect this significant part of Alberta’s boreal forest as an important natural legacy for Albertans, Canadians, the world and future generations.”

Catherine McKenna, federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change

Identified in the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan (LARP) in 2012, the new parks were fully reviewed to ensure there are no economic impacts on natural resource industries or communities. Industry tenures in the parks were compensated years ago, leaving the lands free for protection.

For the five new and expanded wildland provincial parks, the Government of Alberta proposes to enter into cooperative management arrangements with Indigenous communities. Indigenous advice and knowledge will inform decision-making and management of these lands and the province will provide resources to support this process.

“Our government is listening to the Indigenous peoples of Alberta who share a deep connection with this land. This opportunity for cooperative management will help to enrich and strengthen the planning, management and operation of Alberta’s provincial parks, while also implementing our commitment to reconciliation and our respect for Indigenous heritage and traditional knowledge.”

Richard Feehan, Minister of Indigenous Relations

“This collaboration between the Nature Conservancy of Canada, the governments of Canada and Alberta, and industry are aligned with the Tallcree Tribal Government’s values regarding the preservation of the boreal forest. The boreal forest holds greater value to the First Nation for exercising our traditional way of life and the quiet enjoyment of our treaty rights.”

Rupert Meneen, Chief, Tallcree First Nation

In addition, Alberta plans to integrate an Indigenous Guardian Program into these wildland provincial parks. Under this program, First Nations and Metis peoples will be hired to monitor the areas, help maintain the lands and provide education and outreach to park visitors.

“The new wildland provincial parks ensure Indigenous peoples have places to hunt and fish with their families for generations to come. The Government of Alberta’s commitment to work collaboratively with Indigenous communities to develop cooperative management plans provides a historic opportunity to have Indigenous knowledge and values influence land-use planning.”

Bill Loutitt, CEO, McMurray Metis

Treaty 8’s Tallcree First Nation, in cooperation with the NCC and the Alberta and federal governments and with support from Syncrude, generously relinquished their Birch River area timber licence and quota to enable one of the new parks (Birch River WPP) to proceed.

The Government of Alberta thanks the Tallcree First Nation for working with the government and the NCC to achieve this historic outcome. Alberta and the Tallcree First Nation have agreed to manage the Birch River WPP with mutual benefit toward conservation and economic opportunities.

“Canada’s boreal forest is unique in the world. The ecological value of this region cannot be overstated—this is a conservation achievement of global significance. Through partnership, we have been able to make a significant step forward in advancing meaningful conservation in Canada.”

John Lounds, president & CEO, Nature Conservancy of Canada

In addition, the environmental benefits created through the establishment of the Birch River WPP will provide conservation offsets that Syncrude can apply towards future industrial activities.

“Syncrude is proud to play a role in this remarkable initiative that provides both economic and environmental benefits for Albertans and Canadians. This agreement supports our commitment to responsible development of the oil sands resource while contributing to the conservation of the boreal forest for future generations.”

Doreen Cole, managing director, Syncrude Canada Ltd.

“Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc. (Al-Pac) extends our support and congratulates the Government of Alberta as it formalizes the creation of the world’s largest network of protected areas in Canada’s boreal forest. Al-Pac has long recognized the importance of conservation areas as an integral part of managing human activity in the boreal forest for the long-term benefit of both biodiversity and the economy. ”

Elston Dzus, forest ecologist, Alberta-Pacific Forest Industries Inc.

Establishing the wildland provincial parks (WPPs) will mean a protected area that is more than twice the size of Vancouver Island (32,000 sq. km), slightly smaller than the province of New Brunswick (72,908 sq. km), slightly bigger than the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia (64,000 sq. km), and 10 times the size of the Greater Toronto Area (7,124 sq. km).

Background

  • In 2010, the Lower Athabasca Regional Advisory Council, consisting of representatives from municipalities, industry, First Nations, and environmental non-governmental organizations, recommended that the Government of Alberta establish the Kazan, Dillon River and Richardson WPPs and expand the existing Birch Mountains WPP.
  • In 2012, the Government of Alberta completed the Lower Athabasca Region Plan (LARP), establishing the Birch River Conservation Area in a section of the A9 forestry management unit (FMU). While the oil sand agreements in the area were cancelled, forestry was permitted.
  • Between 2012 and 2016, the Government of Alberta spent $45 million to purchase oil sands and metallic mineral leases in the identified conservation areas.
  • In March 2018, the Government of Alberta, the NCC, the Tallcree First Nation, and Syncrude signed a Memorandum of Understanding that would see the Tallcree First Nation relinquish its timber licence and quota in the A9 FMU to the Government of Alberta.
  • By Tallcree First Nation voluntarily relinquishing its timber licence and quota, commercial forestry will no longer take place in Birch River WPP.
  • The establishment of the Kazan (570,822 hectares of new land for a total of 659,397 hectares), Richardson (264,727 hectares of new land for total of 312,068 hectares), Dillon River (191,545 hectares) and Birch River (331,832 hectares) WPPs, and the expansion of the Birch Mountains WPP (by an additional 1,563 hectares) create 1,360,390 hectares of new protected land.
  • Birch Mountains WPP is already designated and is now 145,969 hectares in size.

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Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson slams CBC for only interviewing pro-LGBT doctors about UK report on child ‘sex changes’

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From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

The recently published Cass Review found that ‘gender medicine’ is ‘built on shaky foundations’ and recommended against surgical or pharmaceutical intervention for gender-confused children.

Dr. Jordan Peterson has condemned the government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for handpicking doctors to discuss evidence against the gender “transitioning” of children.   

In an April 15 X post, Peterson blasted the CBC for only selecting pro-LBGT doctors to discuss the U.K. National Health Service’s Cass Review, which exposes the dangers of “transitioning” children through mutilating means, such as pharmaceutical drugs and surgeries.

“All the truth the unrepentant butcher-enablers at @CBCNews are capable of is invisibly hidden in this one line: ‘Canadian doctors who spoke to CBC disagree…’” he slammed.   

“Right. All the ‘doctors’ who spoke to @CBCNews were chosen because they disagreed,” Peterson asserted.   

“I find them detestable,” he added. “Everything they publish is a lie in one damned way or another.”   

“And these lies lead to the crimes against humanity denounced by the Cass report.” 

The Cass Review, published earlier this month, is the world’s largest review into “transgender” interventions for minors. Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician commissioned by the UK’s National Health Service to review the transgender “services” being made available to gender-confused minors, is scathing in her analysis.  

Cass found that “gender medicine” is “built on shaky foundations,” and that while these drastic interventions should be approached with extreme caution, “quite the reverse happened in the field of gender care [sic] for children.”  

However, the report was not well received by the CBC, which ran an article criticizing the report and the U.K.’s recent decision to ban puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for youth under 16.  

“While experts in the field say more studies should be done, Canadian doctors who spoke to CBC News disagree with the finding that there isn’t enough evidence puberty blockers can help,” the CBC wrote.  

However, as Peterson pointed out, the CBC only interviewed pro-LGBT doctors who supported their agenda, including one who suggested that “transgender” surgeries are as natural as giving birth.  

“That would be kind of like saying for a pregnant woman, since we lacked randomized clinical trials for the care of people in pregnancy, we’re not going to provide care for you… It’s completely unethical,” Dr. Jake Donaldson, a Calgary physician who treats “transgender” patients, told CBC.  

“There actually is a lot of evidence, just not in the form of randomized clinical trials,” he added.  

On the same day as the CBC report, Calgary pediatrician Dr. J. Edward Les wrote an article published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, agreeing with the Cass Review conclusions.

“If nothing else, the scathing final report of the Cass Review released this week (but commissioned four years ago to investigate the disturbing practices of the UK’s Gender Identity Service), is a reminder that doctors historically are guilty of many sins,” he wrote in his opening line.  

Les also blasted the Canadian law, particularly Bill C-4, which banned a number of practices considered to be “conversion therapy,” including “any practice, service or treatment designed to change a person’s gender identity.”  

“As far as I know, no one has been charged, let alone imprisoned, since the bill was passed into law,” wrote the doctor. “But it certainly has cast a chill on the willingness of providers to deliver appropriate counselling to gender-confused children: few dare to risk it.”  

Indeed, while the CBC was unable or perhaps unwilling to find doctors who agreed with the Cass report, Les is hardly alone in challenging the LGBT narrative surrounding the mutilation of the gender-confused, especially minors.

LifeSiteNews has compiled a list of medical professions and experts who warn against “transgender” surgeries, warning of irreversible changes and lifelong side effects.     

Moreover, internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) have shown that doctors who offer so-called “gender-affirming care” know that transgender hormones cause serious diseases, including cancer, but prescribed them anyway.  

The internal documents, dubbed the “WPATH FILES,” include emails and messages from a private discussion forum by doctors, as well as statements from a video call of WPATH members. The files reveal that the doctors working for WPATH know that so-called “gender-affirming care” can cause severe mental and physical disease and that it is impossible for minors to give “informed consent” to it.   

As LifeSiteNews has previously noted, research does not support the assertions from transgender activists that surgical or pharmaceutical intervention to “affirm” confusion is “necessary medical care” or that it is helpful in preventing the suicides of gender-confused individuals.    

In fact, in addition to asserting a false reality that one’s sex can be changed, transgender surgeries and drugs have been linked to permanent physical and psychological damage, including cardiovascular diseases, loss of bone density, cancer, strokes and blood clots, infertility, and suicidality.     

There is also  overwhelming evidence that those who undergo “gender transitioning” are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not given irreversible surgery. A Swedish study found that those who underwent “gender reassignment” surgery ended up with a 19.2 times greater risk of suicide.    

Indeed, there is proof that the most loving and helpful approach to people who think they are a different sex is not to validate them in their confusion but to show them the truth.     

A new study on the side effects of transgender “sex change” surgeries discovered that 81 percent of those who had undergone “sex change” surgeries in the past five years reported experiencing pain simply from normal movement in the weeks and months that followed — and that many other side effects manifest as well.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

NPR senior editor admits extreme bias in Russia collusion, Hunter Biden laptop, COVID coverage

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. … one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies … ’

A longtime senior editor at National Public Radio (NPR) published a blistering critique of the government-funded “news” outlet’s extreme liberal bias, citing how NPR willfully “turned a blind eye” to the truth concerning alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the origin of COVID-19.

The Free Press’ explosive 3,500-word op-ed “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust.” by Uri Berliner confirms what many heartland Americans have known for decades: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”

“Our news audience doesn’t come close to reflecting America,” wrote Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years. “It’s overwhelmingly white and progressive, and clustered around coastal cities and college towns.”

Berliner paints a picture of an organization driven by DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) that almost always “defaulted to ideological story lines,” and is damaged by “the absence of viewpoint diversity.”

“I looked at voter registration for our newsroom. In D.C., where NPR is headquartered and many of us live, I found 87 registered Democrats working in editorial positions and zero Republicans,” Berliner wrote. “None.”

When he presented his findings at an all-hands editorial staff meeting, suggesting “we had a diversity problem with a score of 87 Democrats and zero Republicans, the response wasn’t hostile. It was worse. It was met with profound indifference.”

Berliner draws attention to three enormous examples of NPR’s blindness regarding enormously important stories, a blindness that likely produced real-world consequences concerning the two most recent U.S. presidential elections and COVID-19 policies.

Russia collusion hoax

“Persistent rumors that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia over the election became the catnip that drove reporting,” Berliner said. “At NPR, we hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff.”

“But when the Mueller report found no credible evidence of collusion, NPR’s coverage was notably sparse,” Berliner confessed. “Russiagate quietly faded from our programming.”

“It is one thing to swing and miss on a major story,” Berliner allowed. “What’s worse is to pretend it never happened, to move on with no mea culpas, no self-reflection. Especially when you expect high standards of transparency from public figures and institutions but don’t practice those standards yourself. That’s what shatters trust and engenders cynicism about the media.”

Hunter Biden’s laptop ignored ‘because it could help Trump’

After the New York Post published a shocking report about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop just weeks before the 2020 election, “NPR turned a blind eye.”

NPR’s managing editor dismissed the important story, saying “we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions.”

“But it wasn’t a pure distraction, or a product of Russian disinformation, as dozens of former and current intelligence officials suggested,” Berliner wrote. “The laptop did belong to Hunter Biden. Its contents revealed his connection to the corrupt world of multimillion-dollar influence peddling and its possible implications for his father.”

“The laptop was newsworthy. But the timeless journalistic instinct of following a hot story lead was being squelched,” he continued. “During a meeting with colleagues, I listened as one of NPR’s best and most fair-minded journalists said it was good we weren’t following the laptop story because it could help Trump.”

NPR’s COVID-19 pandemic coverage ‘defaulted to ideological story lines’

Berliner described how NPR’s COVID-19 coverage fervently embraced a one-sided political narrative, promoting the notion that the virus came from a wild animal market in Wuhan while totally disregarding the possibility that it might have escaped from a Wuhan lab.

“The lab leak theory came in for rough treatment almost immediately, dismissed as racist or a right-wing conspiracy theory,” Berliner said. “Anthony Fauci and former NIH head Francis Collins, representing the public health establishment, were its most notable critics. And that was enough for NPR. We became fervent members of Team Natural Origin, even declaring that the lab leak had been debunked by scientists.

“Reporting on a possible lab leak soon became radioactive,” Berliner said. “But the lab leak hypothesis wouldn’t die.

“Over the course of the pandemic, a number of investigative journalists made compelling, if not conclusive, cases for the lab leak. But at NPR, we weren’t about to swivel or even tiptoe away from the insistence with which we backed the natural origin story,” Berliner wrote. “We didn’t budge when the Energy Department — the federal agency with the most expertise about laboratories and biological research — concluded, albeit with low confidence, that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the emergence of the virus.”

“Instead, we introduced our coverage of that development on February 28, 2023, by asserting confidently that ‘the scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to a natural origin for the virus.’”

In all three cases, “politics were blotting out the curiosity and independence that ought to have been driving our work.”

DEI now trumps journalistic principles at NPR

“To truly understand how independent journalism suffered at NPR, you need to step inside the organization,” explained Berliner, who emphasized that the most damaging development at NPR over the last few years has been the absence of viewpoint diversity.

DEI considerations trumped journalistic principles. “Identity” groups within the organization — including Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR) are now “given a seat at the table in determining the terms and vocabulary of our news coverage.”

“There’s an unspoken consensus about the stories we should pursue and how they should be framed. It’s frictionless — one story after another about instances of supposed racism, transphobia, signs of the climate apocalypse, Israel doing something bad, and the dire threat of Republican policies,” Berliner said. “It’s almost like an assembly line.”

Berliner concluded:

With declining ratings, sorry levels of trust, and an audience that has become less diverse over time, the trajectory for NPR is not promising. Two paths seem clear. We can keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it will all work out. Or we could start over, with the basic building blocks of journalism. We could face up to where we’ve gone wrong. News organizations don’t go in for that kind of reckoning. But there’s a good reason for NPR to be the first: we’re the ones with the word public in our name.

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