News stories by Christopher Pala* - IPS/IFEJ

Scientists are closely examining the reefs of this island just north of Venezuela to determine why it has escaped the devastation that wiped out 85 percent of the Caribbean's corals since the 1970s.

It was here in Yellowknife, on an inlet of the Great Slave Lake, that Stephen Kakfwi, then a minister of wildlife and economic development who would go on to become premier of the Northwest Territories, brought together in 1996 a group that would decide which areas of the forest needed to be protected and which areas could be developed.