Photo:  Wayne Sawchuk/ Northern Images

Beneficiary: Chetwynd Environmental Society, $2,500 award

"We planned the future of a frontier."

Patience is a virtue. But for an environmentalist like Wayne Sawchuk, who spearheaded a 14-year campaign to save the largest continuous tract of pristine wilderness in northern British Columbia, patience was a necessity.

A part-time guide and lifelong trapper and hunter, Sawchuk is the past president of the Chetwynd Environmental Society. During a 1992 campaign to save the last unspoiled valley near Dawson Creek, Sawchuk reviewed a map of wilderness areas in the northern Rockies, including the vast Muskwa and Kechika watersheds, and noticed the accelerated pace of encroaching development. Dubbed the "Serengeti of the North," the Muskwa- Kechika region occupies 6.4 million hectares, where the boreal plains and muskeg meet the mountains. It is home to the continent's greatest diversity of large mammals, including moose, grizzlies, wolves, Stone sheep, elk, bison, caribou and mountain goats. "You can go for six weeks and never see a soul," says Sawchuk.

To plan a response to the impending threat, Sawchuk convened a series of meetings for trappers, guides, environmentalists and First Nations leaders. Their strategy: to convince the government that sustainable development and wilderness protection were politically advantageous. "To protect important areas, you need a proactive campaign," says Sawchuk. "We aimed high and said what we thought needed to be done."

The negotiation, however, was complex. Some mining, oil, gas and forestry tenures were already in place. The province responded with a series of regional Land and Resource Management Plans (LRMP) in Fort St. John, Fort Nelson and Mackenzie over an eight-year period. Each time, Sawchuk was there, frequently defending a line in the sand. "Once, industry argued that legislation was unnecessary," he explains. "It was 14 to 1. I was the one."

The painstaking consensus resulted in a landmark solution: the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area, which contains several new parks, designated timber and resourceextraction sectors and wilderness zones. Management is guided by an advisory board with a $3 million budget, and industry is held to a high standard of wilderness preservation that includes preplanning, ongoing assessments and bottom-line expectations, such as the removal of roads and the protection of wildlife and its habitat. Says Sawchuk: "We planned the future of a frontier."