The plan would add 1.1 million acres to existing parks in the Stikine River system, and ban logging over an additional 4 million-acre area.

Outside of protected provincial parks, it would create a "grizzly-salmon zone" in which preserving bear and fish populations would take precedence over all proposed forms of development.

"We have tried to create a continuity between protected areas over the border in Alaska and those in British Columbia," said Glenda Farris, chief negotiator for the Tahltan Nation.

The Tahltan Nation is a group of Indian tribes that worked with local communities and the provincial government to devise the plan.

The Stikine is one of North America's swiftest rivers, famous for the narrow, 1,000-foot-deep Grand Canyon of the Stikine. It is one of three great river systems along the Alaska-British Columbia border that empty into American waters.

The plan, covering a vast, almost entirely wild area of northwest British Columbia, is being sent to Victoria for approval by the provincial Cabinet before being sent to the B.C. Legislature for ratification.

"What I'm hearing is that the government sees this as a priority and will approve it: The government will then move to put the protection, particularly the logging ban, into legislation," Bob Peart, executive director of the Vancouver office of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, said yesterday.

Southeast Alaska is one of the most protected places in America. Since the 1980 Alaska Lands Act, Congress has designated more than 5 million acres of wilderness along with national monuments at Admiralty Island and the Misty Fiords region on the state's southern boundary.

As conservation values prevailed in Alaska, major land-use controversies have moved upstream into British Columbia.

The province vetoed a multibillion-dollar open pit mine proposed in the Tatshenshini-Alsek River system, which empties in Glacier Bay National Park in the United States.

American politicians led by then-Sen. Al Gore vehemently opposed the mine on grounds that putting a dam-held tailings pond in a prime earthquake zone was an invitation to environmental disaster. Instead, British Columbia created a 2.2 million-acre wilderness park, which has become one of North America's premier rafting destinations.

However, on the Taku River, which flows into Alaska near Juneau, the B.C. government decided to allow revival and expansion of the Tulsequah Mine, located just upstream from the U.S. border.

Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles protested and asked the International Joint Commission, which deals with U.S.-Canada boundary disputes, to take up the issue of the mine.

The Stikine River has seen its share of grandiose development plans. In the 1970s, B.C. Hydro proposed building giant dams in the river's canyon. The B.C. government carved out a railroad grade and spent $2 million to bridge the Stikine, only to abandon the project.

The province had also supported construction of a big mine on the south boundary of Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Park, famed for herds of stone sheep and caribou and its predator population of wolves and grizzlies.

The dam plans are dead. The proposed land-use plan allows for limited mining outside of provincial parks, but bans tailing ponds from flood plains. It would add 800,000 acres of land to Spatsizi Park. Mount Edziza Park would grow by 100,000 acres. With the additions, wilderness parks will cover 3.5 million of the upper Stikine River system.

"The Stikine is our finest canyon in Canada," said Gil Arnold, who represented a binational group called Friends of the Stikine in land-use negotiations.

The Grand Canyon of the Stikine, where the river is only 10 feet wide at one point, has been an obstacle to salmon migration. But major tributaries such as the Tuya and Iskut rivers are home to significant populations of sockeye salmon. Tuya Lake is the site of a salmon enhancement project run by British Columbia and Alaska.

Another transboundary stream, the Unuk River, also is covered by the land-use plan. A protected area adjoining America's Misty Fiords National Monument would safeguard its sockeye salmon.

Officially called the Cassiar-Iskut-Stikine Land and Resource Management Plan, it was part of a process of regional land-use "tables" in which the B.C. government has worked to build consensus amid logging and mining controversies.

Unlike farther south on the B.C. coast, which has seen confrontations between Greenpeace protesters and loggers, the three-year planning process appears to have worked out a peaceful solution for the Stikine.

Although living in a remote area, the Tahltan Indians approached negotiations with professional studies. They used focus groups in villages to get sentiments on the final plan.

P-I reporter Joel Connelly can be reached at 206-448-8160 or joelconnelly@seattle-pi.com Error: Unable to read footer file.