by Ric Stryde
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 04/97) - Nunavut could have as many as five new national parks by the time the new territory springs into existence.

Parks Canada is now negotiating to turn two National Park Reserves -- Auyuittuq on Baffin Island and the Ellesmere Island reserve -- as well as three pieces of land reserved for national park usage, into full-fledged parks.

The three reserved targets are Wager Bay on the western coast of Hudson Bay, North Baffin and Northern Bathhurst Island.

"The goal is to create national parks that represent each of the particular regions," Gordon Hamre, Northern parks and sites adviser for Parks Canada, said in an interview last week.

Canada is divided into 39 different regions, 12 of them within the boundaries of the NWT.

Regions are created by looking at the land and trying to decide what sections of land are fairly homogeneous.

At least one park is then created in each region, to protect and promote a network of protected areas representative of all Canada's regions.

National park reserves differ from national parks in that Ottawa has not settled a right, title, or interest by an aboriginal group that claims the affected area.

To become a park, Canada must settle any hiring or business issues that the aboriginal group may have. Then the aboriginal organization must surrender rights to land, because national parks are considered Crown land.

With land reserved for national parks, the federal government declared the designated territory off-limits to oil exploration, mineral claim-staking and any other business purposes. Lands may be reserved for years before anything is done to them -- the East Arm of Great Slave Lake has been on reserve since the 1970s, for example.

Ellesmere Island Park Reserve, North Baffin Land Reserve and Auyuittuq Park Reserve are expected to become parks by early 1998, said Hamre. That is when he expects negotiations with Inuit in the areas to be complete.

Northern Bathhurst Island Land Reserve is expected to be completed not long after, because negotiators are dealing with Inuvialuit there as well, and they expect any conditions they will have to meet will be approximately the same as the three others.

The Canadian government's negotiator for the Wager Bay reserve, Elizabeth Seale, said that the Keewatin issues will be dealt with, and a new park unveiled, by March of 1999.

If all goes as planned, then Nunavut will have five new national parks, as well as its own new boundaries, by April 1, 1999.