Officials with Parks Canada will decide within a month how to expand the Nahanni National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories, which could make the protected area five times bigger than it is now.

Steve Catto, a park establishment officer for the Nahanni reserve, told CBC News that his team will review what it's heard from the public over the last few weeks and decide which boundaries to recommend by early December.

Parks Canada is currently weighing economic interests versus conservation issues while it hashes out the expansion. The government has been working on the issue with aboriginal people of the Dehcho region for decades.

While expanding the park is necessary to protect animals and water quality, at least one mining company is interested in setting up shop in the mineral-rich area, leaving Parks Canada to consider how much development should be allowed. The Dehcho First Nations have clearly stated that they want the entire watershed protected.

"Most of the areas of higher potential for mineral development are in the upland areas of the watershed," Catto said Thursday. "So future development, you know, could pose a threat to the downstream portions of the watershed where most of the park area would be."

The park reserve, created in 1972, currently covers about 4,700 square kilometres. The expansion would include about 23,000 square kilometres of land currently under interim protection by the Dehcho First Nations.

Canadian Zinc Corp. has already started work on its Prairie Creek mine site on the park's edge, currently building a winter road to the site.

Parks Canada is offering several options for the park expansion, two of which would try to balance conservation with some development at the park's edge.

Chief Keyna Norwegian of the Liidlii Kue First Nation in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., said she is more concerned about ensuring that aboriginal people retain control over how the expanded park is managed, as opposed to the size of the park itself.

"We're giving away something and what are we going to get in return? We want to make sure that our future generations will be able to benefit from this park if it's going to happen," she said.

Norwegian said she wants land in the park set aside to build a First Nations-owned lodge that would bring in tourists on a year-round basis.