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Kennedy Calls for Halt to Hydro Dam Projects
By Alexandra Paul, Winnipeg Free Press Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he has a warm spot in his heart for Manitoba. In an interview yesterday from his office in New York, he said the spruce forests that are home to moose and bear and the lakes that hold a lot of the planet's fresh water are a natural treasure that needs to be protected. His environmental organization last month called on the province to put a moratorium on further hydro development. "Manitoba has the largest section of pristine boreal forest in the world, unroaded and uncut," Kennedy, senior attorney for the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council, said yesterday. "It's the heart of the boreal forest." An ardent environmentalist, Kennedy spent four days in Manitoba in June as a guest of the Pimicikamak Cree of Cross Lake and the Ojibway of Poplar River. Cross Lake is 530 kilometres north of Winnipeg. Poplar River is 340 kilometres north of the city. Kennedy, the son of assassinated U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy, is credited with helping to save the homeland of the Haida Indians, British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, from clear-cut logging a decade ago. With his attention now turned to the planet's polar greenbelt -- the band of spruce that wraps itself around the northern hemisphere like a ring -- Kennedy is ready to lend his famous family name to a boreal crusade. It's no accident Kennedy's passion is the environment. It's an empathy he learned at his father's knee -- and from his famous uncle, John F. Kennedy, the U.S. president assassinated in 1963. "My father and President Kennedy were very, very interested in these issues," he said. Kennedy said his father took him and his brothers and sisters all over North America, paying visits to aboriginal lands, among other places. Kennedy carries a treasured Indian name given to him in a Sioux ceremony from those days. Kennedy said his childhood travels taught him that money wasn't everything. "Aboriginal people and other people who live close to the land recognize that there are other values in the wilderness that can't be measured in money," he said. Kennedy said his father "believed that American democracy would never achieve its mission -- until we first went back and made amends to the aboriginal people who were the first people who own this land." The younger Kennedy said he's convinced Manitoba's boreal forest is vital to the continent's ecological future, its trees as critical to life as the air we breathe. "They are the lungs of the planet," he said. "The scientists who work on these issues say without the Manitoba section, it would impact the capacity of the boreal forest as a whole to function." "It will directly, obviously, impact the people who live in those areas, but I think it also impacts all of us," Kennedy said. Earlier this month, he praised Manitoba for extending an agreement to protect thousands of hectares of northern boreal forest on the east side or Lake Winnipeg from development. Kennedy says he has fallen for Manitoba's north. "I'm certain I'll come back -- God willing."
First published in Winnipeg Free Press, July 15, 2004
Related NRDC Pages last revised 7.16.04
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