The Muskwa-Kechika Management Area (M-K or M-KMA) is a provincially-run tract of land in the far north of British Columbia. It has an advisory board that counsels the government on land-use decisions. Established by provincial government legislation in 1998, the area is meant to be preserved as a wild area, but development is not outright forbidden; the land is divided into different zones, with varying levels of protection, although the whole area is to be used according to an overall plan. The original concept called for 25% of the land to be turned into provincial parks, 60% to become "special management zones" (where limited mining and oil/gas drilling would be permitted), and 15% to become "special wild land zones", where logging would be prohibited.[1] The original size of the M-KMA was 4,450,000 hectares (11,000,000 acres). However, in 2000, with the approval of the Mackenzie Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP), over 1,900,000 hectares (4,700,000 acres) were added to the M-KMA for a total area of 6,400,000 hectares (16,000,000 acres)—an area slightly smaller than the US state of Maine, or the entire island of Ireland, or seven times the size of Yellowstone National Park, in Wyoming.[2][3][4]

Name and geography

The area is named after the Muskwa River and Muskwa Ranges (from the Cree: maskwa, "bear") and the Kechika River and Kechika Ranges (Kechika means "long inclining river"). The area include the Northern Rocky Mountains to the north of Lake Williston and the Rocky Mountain Foothills north of the Peace River and much of the southeastern Cassiar Mountains and a small portion of the northeastern Omineca Mountains. With the southern Selwyn and Mackenzie Mountains north of the Liard River, the area defines the Boreal Cordillera Ecozone.

Parks and protected areas

(with area)[5]

Notes

  1. ↑ "National Geographic Magazine". Archived from the original on November 10, 2008.
  2. ↑ Muskwa-Kechika Management Area website
  3. ↑ "It encompasses approximately 16 million acres, making it about the size of Ireland."
  4. ↑ "Seven times the size of Yellowstone National Park, and only slightly smaller than the state of Maine,"
  5. ↑ Muskwa-Kechika.com "Protected Areas" page Archived 2008-10-11 at the Wayback Machine

References

Vaillant, John (November 2008), "Northern Giant", National Geographic, pp. 136–51, archived from the original on October 16, 2008

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