The Sacred Headwaters: The Fight to Save the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass

In the rugged northern Rocky Mountains lies a spectacularly beautiful valley, known to the Native peoples as the Sacred Headwaters. There, on the edge of the Spatsizi Wilderness, the Serengeti of North America, three of the continent's most important salmon rivers—the Stikine, the Skeena, and the Nass—are born. Now, against the wishes of the Native inhabitants, the government of British Columbia has opened the Sacred Headwaters to industrial development. Imperial Metals proposes an open-pit copper and gold mine, called the Red Chris mine, processing 30,000 tons of ore a day, and Royal Dutch Shell wants to extract coal bed methane gas from an anthracite deposit across an enormous tenure of close to a million acres.

The splendor of the region is portrayed in this collection of photographs by the International League of Conservation Photographers, and by other professionals who have worked here, including Sarah Leen of the National Geographic. Wade Davis’ compelling text describes the region’s beauty, the threats to it, and the response of the inhabitants. The inescapable message is that no amount of methane gas can compensate for the sacrifice of a place that could be the Sacred Headwaters for all the peoples of the world.