Growing Nopiming Park After the Fire shows climate action and peace needed in the park
 

Today the Wilderness Committee released a report on the 2025 wildfires that examines the forests, wildlife and nature experiences lost to fire in Nopiming Provincial Park and provides recommendations to care for this special park in the future. The report concludes better park management is needed, but the critical step to support Manitoba's outdoor way of life is to act on climate change.  

“Nopiming Park has provided us with a cherished nature destination for 50 years, giving us access to wilderness,” said Wilderness and Water Campaigner Eric Reder. “While much of the forest is gone now, Nopiming is again offering us entrance, this time to an understanding of proper ecological care for parks and wilderness.”  

Read the full report here

The report examines the forests that burnt and the myths around managing forests in the province. It also looks at the public firefighting resources required to preserve private industrial operations like mines as well as private cottage developments. It starkly lays out the amount of human infrastructure in the eastern forest that was at risk all at once in 2025.

“We know reflecting on accidents and past ecological destruction is how we got all of our current environmental laws. Learning from these fires is an essential piece of growing the society our future requires,” said Reder.

Other recommendations in this report include limiting disturbances from mineral exploration and eliminating the destructive and disruptive military training. While people have been restricted in Nopiming since the fires started, the military and mining companies have been allowed to disturb the peace.

“It’s time to get the destructive Department of National Defense out of our park. Ecologically fragile lands and waters aren’t a place to sneak in a military training base. Springer Lake is supposed to be an ecological reserve, not a place for playing war games.”  

"Wilderness needs to be quietly experienced to retain its value and for us to accept its benefits," - Eric Reder, Wilderness and Water Campaigner

A key part of the report recommends connecting people with the park through more people-powered trails so folks have more hiking and paddling opportunities. The report also suggests a process for decolonizing Nopiming, one of few parks in the province with an Indigenous name. And it reminds Manitobans that the government hasn’t fulfilled their requirements under federal species law in caring for boreal caribou. The report notes more protected lands for caribou were recommended 15 years ago already.

“Peaceful excursions for people amongst intact nature and wild species has to be how we grow a new park management plan, one produced with the First Nations whose territory the park overlaps.”  

The report concludes that rebuilding regulations, so people operate in harmony with nature, should begin with how we care for the lands, waters and human infrastructure in provincial parks. The entirety of society must grasp they have to live within the bounds of nature.

“Wilderness needs to be quietly experienced to retain its value and for us to accept its benefits. It's my hope we put Nopiming back on a path to the peaceful, marvelous wildness I felt growing up,” emphasized Reder. “Although the threat of climate change looms over my vision of what this park might become, I believe enough Manitobans support the concepts laid out in this report and will preserve this natural jewel.”

Access the full report, Growing Nopiming Park After the Fire, and related images in this folder.

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For more information or interviews, please contact:

Eric Reder | Wilderness and Water Campaigner
eric@wildernesscommittee.org