Fort Simpson (July 17/06) -Senator Nick Sibbeston has again voiced concerns about Nahanni National Park Reserve's proposed expansion and the affect it will have on the Deh Cho's future.

"Once the blinds are drawn it's forever - it's like diamonds," Sibbeston said about growing the park's boundaries seven times over.

Senator Nick Sibbeston points towards park superintendent Chuck Blyth while discussing the proposed Nahanni National Park Reserve expansion during a public open house. - Roxanna Thompson/NNSL photo

The NWT senator made the comments at a public open house about the expansion plan held by Parks Canada in Fort Simpson on July 6.

Calling the scheme "extreme" and a land grab by environmentalists, Sibbeston added he would like to see the areas of high mineralization left out of the plan.

In the future, Dene and Metis will need these resources to support their government, he said.

The consensus to come out of the meeting was that people want more information before anything is decided.

Community members listened to presentations on the research projects conducted in the park study area including studies on land cover, caribou locations, grizzly bear occurrences, Dall's sheep, bull trout and glaciers.

Fort Simpson Mayor Duncan Canvin said he would like to see an extensive study that covered the entire park area.

The existing research only conducted geophysical surveys on three areas of high resource potential because covering the entire area would cost approximately $20 million, explained Danny Wright with the Geological Survey of Canada.

Expansion of the park has been a goal of Parks Canada since the first management plan in 1987, Murray said.

The park is currently 4,766 square kilometres. While there are no boundaries set for the proposed expansion, the study area for the park occupies 39,842 square kilometres.