March 2005

Department of the Environment
Canadian Wildlife Service

Mills Lake and Edéhzhíe

Mills Lake is a widening of the Mackenzie River 40 km downstream from where it exits Great Slave Lake. The wetlands around it are an important staging habitat for migratory waterfowl moving up and down the Mackenzie Valley. The Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) has had an interest in Mills Lake and its protection for many years and has collected data that documents its importance to waterfowl and shorebirds that use it for spring and fall staging as well as nesting.

Fort Providence has long been interested in protecting Mills Lake for both subsistence and cultural reasons. For the same reasons, several communities in the Deh Cho and Tlicho Regions including Fort Providence, were also interested in protecting the Horn Plateau. The Dehcho and Tlicho First Nations leadership and Fort Providence, Líídli’Kúé (Fort Simpson), Jean Marie River, Pedzéh Kí (Wrigley), Rae (Behchokò) and Wha Ti (Lac la Martre) have agreed to work on a combined initiative. A single protected area, Edéhzhíe, will now be advanced through the process defined in the NWT Protected Areas Strategy (also see article here). The features of this candidate protected area include:

• a representative example of northern boreal forest (Horn Plateau Ecoregion) that supports a population of woodland caribou now listed as “threatened” by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada;
• a boreal wetland (Mills Lake) that is an important stopover for large numbers of birds during the spring and fall migration up and down the Mackenzie Valley; and
• the Horn Plateau is the source waters from a number of regionally important watersheds.

In co-operation with its partners, CWS served as the sponsoring agency and worked toward the protection of Edéhzhíe under the Canada Wildlife Act . A five year land withdrawal for the area was announced in October 2002.

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