(PHOTO BY JANE GEORGE)
Research institute gave licence to controversial U.S. project
The Nunavut Research Institute handed out a research licence to a team of U.S. scientists who may be violating Canadian conservation guidelines for a unique site on Axel Heiberg Island.
JANE GEORGE
Nunatsiaq News
AXEL HEIBERG ISLAND, Nunavut — A team of American scientists who are now excavating large amounts of earth and fossils from a priceless fossil forest site on Nunavut's Axel Heiberg Island received a licence to do their work from the Nunavut Research Institute.
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Canadian researchers and officials with the federal government's Heritage department have recently complained that the 13-member U.S. team may cause irreparable damage to the site, which is being proposed as a United Nations World Heritage Site and a National Heritage Site.
They say the U.S. team may be violating Canadian conservation guidelines for the site.
However, three-year U.S. project received a renewable research license from the Nunavut Research Institute. That gave the team the go-ahead to to dig up to 150 cubic metres of earth on the delicate tundra of Axel Heiberg Island..
Jamal Shirley, the Nunavut Research Insitute's acting director, said he has been looking into the file.
"I've been able to grasp that the permit process was done quite thoroughly," said Shirley. "But everything will be reviewed."
Before its final approval by the research institute, agencies as the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, the Nunavut Impact Review Board, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and the hamlet of Grise Fiord were supposed to have screened the project.
Shirley said that cancelling a research project's permit is an exceptional move, though the research institute has the power to revoke multi-year licensing if there are "complaints with just cause" are received concerning the project."
A site visit last week by land use officials from DIAND and the Qiqiqtaaluk Inuit Association showed that the team's camp site conformed to its permit.
And the U.S. project's leader, Art Johnson, said his team has, in fact, done much less digging than they had originally outlined in their project proposal.
But the Canadian Conservation Insitute, an agency of the Canadian Heritage department, isn't satisfied that the paperwork is in order.
Dave Gratton, a conservator with the CCI who has visited the fossil forest on several occasions, was enraged when he learned of the scope of U.S. project's work.
"It hit us like a bombshell," said Gratton. "Obviously, something went wrong with the approval process in Ottawa."
Gratton has asked Heritage Canada and the Privy Council to intervene so that the fossil forest will be protected while it is reviewed for inclusion into Ellesmere Island national park, or is declared a World Heritage Site.
"Only political action is going to save this site," Gratton said.
While the Nunavut government has not yet officially responded to the concerns raised by the fossil forest excavation, Peter Irniq, Nunavut's deputy minster of culture, said that he expects that the Nunavut government will want a bigger say in the fate of its heritage sites than in the past.
Yet if the fossil forest had been included within the boundaries of the new Quittinirtaaq National Park on Ellesmere Island, the project would have been subject to an environmental assessment review process.
The Nunavut Impact Review Board did not call for an environmental impact study of the site before approving the U.S. project, because it can't independently call for such a review.
"It has to be triggered by a government agency," said the impact review board's environmental assessment officer, Gladys Joudrey.
NIRB does carry out around 150 screenings a year, some on research projects, but in the case of the U.S. proposal to excavate the fossil forest, no one asked for a review, despite a long list of agencies that received information about it.
Joudrey said that she has forwarded the file to Nunavut's Department of Sustainable Devleopment.
Jim Basinger, a paleo-botanist from the University of Saskatchewan who has extensively studied the forest, says he things Nunavut should establish a better screening process for scientific projects.
He'd also like to see a set of guidelines for foreign scientists to ensure that they respect the High Arctic region, and previous scientific work done in the same field.
Basinger is troubled that well-funded American science managed to take precedence over his low-impact Canadian study of the site.
"This project is big science which isn't necessarily good science," said Basinger. "The public is ripe for high profile projects which are catchy."
The effect of cost-cutting on support groups such as the federal government's Polar Continental Shelf Project also means that well-funded projects are more attractive.
Poorly-funded Canadian researchers working in the High Arctic traditionally live in modest field camps, fueled more by enthusiasm for their studies than by money.
They usually return for a only few weeks during the summer, slowly advancing their research. They generally bring along their students, as well, to interest them in Arctic research.
But Basinger said fewer young Canadian researchers are willing to funnel their limited resources into studies in the Arctic.
Now he's worried that official government response to the damage done by the Amercians at the fossil forest could bring about a total a clamp-down on all High Arctic research.
"Northern science is extremely vulnerable and if it's pushed, it will implode and it will be impossible to get it restarted," Basinger said.