SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - For decades, aboriginal leaders, environmental groups and political officials have been working to conserve the territory's landscape, trying to protect its plants, animals and traditional sites for future generations.

Herb Norwegian at Cirque of the Unclimbables, now in the recently expanded part of the Nahanni National Park Reserve. Before the expansion, the park contributed $2.8 million a year to the economy and that number is expected to increase over the next few years. - photo courtesy of Tessa MacIntosh National Parks in the NWT Aulavik National Park (Banks Island) Tuktut Nogait National Park (Beaufort Delta) Nahanni Reserve National Park - third largest in Canada Wood Buffalo National Park - largest in Canada, shared with Northern Alberta Most land protected: First: Northwest Territories Second: Quebec Third: British Columbia Fourth: Alberta Fifth: Manitoba Sixth: Ontario Percentage of land protected compared to land mass: First: Yukon Territory Second: Alberta Third: Manitoba Fourth: Quebec Fifth: British Columbia Sixth: Northwest Territories - Source: Statistics Canada

Their plans are slowly moving closer to fulfillment with the successful expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve and National Historic Site designation for Saoyú-ehdacho on the west arm of Great Bear Lake, two areas officially protected within the past three months.

Together, they span 35,500 square kilometres. Presently, the NWT has more land legally protected from industrial development - permanently and temporarily - than anywhere else in Canada, although that land takes up only about 20 per cent of the territory.

The NWT's four national parks help boost tourism in the territory, attracting about 2,000 visitors a year, according to Parks Canada.

Kathryn Emmett, Parks Canada executive director of Northern Canada, says parks and other protected areas open up new economic opportunities in addition to preserving biological habitats.

"What national parks do is they contribute to the tourism sector of an economy and the services associated with that tourism sector. They help to balance the economy as well," Emmett said. "Sometimes with resource development, you go through boom and bust cycles. You know, resource commodity prices vary over time. With tourism, it tends to be a more constant type of industry."

The Nahanni National Park Reserve accounts for about half of the total visitors to NWT parks and brings in nearly $2.8 million per year, on average, to the Deh Cho region and the NWT economy.

Now that it's expanded, Parks Canada will spend $1.4 million per year to operate it, in addition to a $5 million capital investment, and increase its staff of local people from 12 to 30 employees.

Advocates say protected lands and parks are necessary to maintain diversity - both ecological and economical. But some industry professionals worry the protected areas may be cutting into the territory's mineral resource potential.

The economic boost from expanded park boundaries doesn't come close to what the NWT would see if the area could be turned into a mine.

"The Chamber of Mines believes that we're selling our future without knowing what that future might be," said Mike Vaydik, general manager of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines. "We are playing a rich man's game of setting aside these huge areas, and we're not rich men. We're a developing economy and we live off transfer payments from the (federal) government."

The chamber is on the NWT Protected Area Strategy steering committee, along with the territorial, federal and aboriginal governments, and environmental organizations. The strategy aims to work with those groups to establish protected lands and balance them with development areas in the territory, but Vaydik says the mining industry isn't getting an equal trade-off. Both the Protected Area Strategy and the Canada National Parks Act require mineral sampling to find out if proposed protected land is suitable for mining or other development, but he says those processes may not be thorough enough.

"The level of effort put into making sure there aren't any potential mines under a potential park is nowhere near what's required to really find out if there might be a mine there. It's almost tantamount to guesswork," said Vaydik. "These are the kinds of things that are very difficult to determine. Only one in a thousand good mineral showings ever shows up to be a mine."

Currently, diamond mines make up half of the NWT's economy and directly involve thousands of NWT residents.

"This is a $2 billion-dollar a year industry, and (as for) tourism - the most absolutely pie in the sky supporter of tourism has never, ever forecast anything like that," Vaydik said. "We're not saying we shouldn't have a diversified economy, but we don't think mining and tourism are exclusive. We think they can co-exist and the government should be encouraging them both, not setting aside huge tracts of land which mean that we won't be able to develop the resources there."

The process of legally protecting land from development - whether just on the land's surface or both surface and underground - is a long one. The NWT Protected Area Strategy (NWT-PAS) groups worked for 10 years before the Saoyú-ehdacho National Historic Site was recognized in April.

"It's a lengthy and rigorous process," said Karen Hamre, NWT-PAS managing director. "There was a very, very strong push from communities and from regional governments that they wanted to have the protected areas in place before they opened up the lands for development."

Land protection remains a high priority across the North, Hamre said, particularly in areas where aboriginal governments are working on settling and implementing land claims.

The NWT-PAS has identified approximately 20 more areas across the NWT that could be protected, and the federal government has committed to establishing six national wildlife sites in the territory in the near future.

Lani Cooke, executive director of the NWT chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS-NWT), says she's noticed the GNWT is becoming more interested in protecting land under its own legislation, rather than federally.

"The territorial government - in credit to them - they're interested in starting to look at ways to protect lands through their own legislation. So we're excited about that," Cooke said, adding that one of the biggest challenges in protecting NWT land is developing a "shared vision" among so many different stakeholders.

"We believe that local people and aboriginal people can certainly benefit from protection of land, benefit culturally and benefit economically. We also believe that there needs to be a balance between protection and development so we're working very hard on the side of the scale that is weighing in on protection," she said.

"We want to communicate clearly with people that don't share our vision, and we don't want to further antagonize the process. We'd like to see if we can come to some kind of congenial way of working and (strike) a balance ... That's not exactly happening right now but it would be my hope that we could address this in a way that there's respect between the differing perspectives."