Amiskwaciwâskahikan | Edmonton, AB – CPAWS Northern Alberta is celebrating the legal protection of the Gipsy Gordon Wildland Provincial Park – which permanently protects 186,000 hectares of boreal forest. This now legally protected park will safeguard habitat for many at risk species, including threatened woodland caribou, and is also the last remaining Intact Forest Landscape area in the region, meaning it is a large forest area that has very little human disturbance.
Plans to protect the Gipsy Gordon area began in the early 2000s as part of land use planning discussions for the Lower Athabasca Region.
The proposal for the wildland park came together through true collaborative conservation efforts between environmental organizations, including CPAWS Northern Alberta, and industry, in particular Alberta Pacific Forest Products (Al-Pac), and was supported by Indigenous communities in the area. Al-Pac agreed to defer the area from harvest years before it was removed from their Forest Management Agreement Area (FMA) upon its inclusion in the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan in 2012. The area then sat in limbo without legal protection until last week.
“We are delighted to see the Gipsy Gordon Wildland Provincial Park finally get its due protection after all these years”, Says Kecia Kerr, Executive Director, CPAWS Northern Alberta, “It is great news and honours the work and advocacy that was put into this conservation area by countless people over, not just years, but the past two decades.”
The expansion of Alberta’s protected area network is in line with spring 2025 polling that showed that “78% of Albertans support creating new protected areas specifically for wildlife”. CPAWS hopes that this long overdue news, which coincides with public engagement on the Government of Alberta’s Plan For Parks open until July 26th, signals a future where the creation and expansion of parks and protected areas is a key tool used by the province for the protection of species and beloved landscapes in Alberta.
For more information, please contact:
Dr. Kecia Kerr
CPAWS Northern Alberta
[email protected]
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