Guardians of Edehzhie: Protecting the land during the pandemic
There was a time last year when the guardians of Edehzhie would head out on the land in the Northwest Territories and worry what their communities might look like when they returned.
That was when COVID-19 started to sweep across Canada, threatening the country’s northern communities, including those around the protected area known as Edehzhie in the Dehcho region of the N.W.T.
Established in 2018 between the Dehcho First Nations and the federal government, Edehzhie is the country’s first Indigenous Protected Area. It covers more than 14,000 square kilometres of land — more than twice the size of Banff National Park.
Edehzhie is known as the “breadbasket” of the Dehcho region, because of its abundance of wildlife, plants and fresh water.