The Peel Watershed covers 68,000 square kilometres of pristine mountains, wetlands, rivers, tundra and forest. It is world renowned for its rugged natural beauty and ecological richness, and, more recently, as a wilderness under threat.
Thousands of mining claims dot the territory, with companies seeking to extract copper, platinum, uranium, lead-zinc, and iron. The mines themselves would disrupt the landscape and watershed, and the roads required to support those mines have attracted their own criticism for the landscape fragmentation they would bring.