Mr. Speaker, the Northwest Territories Protected Area Strategy helps NWT communities protect special areas of land for the long term. The strategy is the collective effort of both federal and territorial levels of government, aboriginal government and organizations, industry, and environmental organizations.

Through a variety of legislative tools and processes the strategy enables communities to identify and protect culturally and ecologically significant or core representative areas of our territory. For example, a chosen area can be preserved under the Territorial Parks Act as a cultural conservation area, a heritage park, a natural environment park or a wilderness conservation area. These classifications were determined through extensive collaborations with our partners in the Protected Area Strategy, including aboriginal representatives, environmental organizations and the federal government.

The Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment has created an information package to help communities understand the processes and tools that are available for establishing territorial parks as a means of protecting our valuable lands. I have forwarded this information to Members of this Assembly, and ITI representatives are looking forward to meeting with communities who would

like to learn more about how territorial parks can be used as a tool in the PAS process.

We depend on our land and natural resources for our wealth and our livelihood. Land management options such as the creation of territorial parks under the Protected Area Strategy are one way that we can work in partnership to manage our lands and resources for the future.