Sophia Rabliauskas, leader of the Poplar River First Nation, led a movement with community members and elders to protect two million acres of undisturbed boreal forest (a huge carbon sink) in the territory of the Poplar River First Nation on Winnipeg Lake, Manitoba. She played a key role in gaining interim protection of the forest and developing a land management plan which acted as a blueprint for all future land use management actions. The blueprint focuses on respecting traditional knowledge, using environmental analysis, providing economic opportunities, including protection of traditional hunting, trapping and fishing activities, and creating sustainable tourism opportunities. Rabliauskas is drawing attention to the reality that First Nations territory, being public lands, legally can be granted to industries for logging, timber, and hydropower developmental activities, without prior consultation with the First Nations. Photo credit: The Goldman Environmental Prize
