Docu-series highlights Tsá Tué biosphere
Tsá Tué stars in TVO series on Canada’s UNESCO designated biosphere reserves
Canada's largest biosphere reserve and the only one in the world created and maintained by an Indigenous community is being highlighted in a documentary series this month.
Striking Balance is a series produced by TVO in Ontario. The show shines a spotlight on Canada's UNESCO designated biosphere reserves, from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia.
This first episode of the second season premiered this month and centred on Great Bear Lake, part of the Tsá Tué reserve, a nine million hectare biosphere.
Tsá Tué was recognized by UNESCO as an international biosphere reserve in 2016. It's the largest biosphere on the continent and the first North of 60.
"I think it's an exciting example of Indigenous conservation," said the show's director, Zach Melnick.
Melnick says it's been fantastic to get to learn about what people are doing across the country to more toward creating what he called a "sustainable development of nature in their own backyards."
"And you see that, my goodness, there's a place where the abundance of fish is still big enough, still good enough that it's almost like the stories we hear about what the Great Lakes used to be. And so really, it's going there and sort of stepping back in time almost and seeing what a really healthy big cold water ecosystem looks like."
The documentary also outlines the Deline's troubled uranium mining history.
"It seems like they've really taken to heart an incident that occurred in around World War Two when the Great Bear Lake was a source of uranium for the Manhattan Project," he said.
"So they had this very sort of negative example that they they didn't want what they didn't want for the future of the lake.
"That really culminated in in the coming the first biosphere reserve in the world, really to be entirely led by an indigenous community. And they've really embraced this wholeheartedly."
Melnick hopes audiences are left with a better appreciation and sense of gratitude to the people of the Sahtu Region who are dedicated to look after one of the most pristine sources of freshwater left on this earth.
Watch the episode of Striking Balance featuring Tsá Tué here: