Eight mining licenses held by the Canadian Sovereign Coal Corporation (CSCC)--a subsidiary of Vancouver-based Weststar Resources -- are currently under review by the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB). These licenses are held for several coal mining projects, involving 267,645 acres of Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. Concern has been raised regarding these projects by The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) because the proposed development areas include unique fossil sites that could be damaged by the projects. The SVP is made up of 2,000 of the world's leading fossil scientists, and have worked on sites on Ellesmere Island.

Ellesmere Island is the most northern tip of Canada. It is largely covered by glaciers and ice caps and is largely inhospitable to life, though this was not always the case. During one of the warmest periods in Earth's history, this island was home to a wide range of plants and animals. It was covered by forests and was home to a wide range of animals like turtles, alligators, horses and beavers. As the climate cooled, the animals moved south, but their remains were left behind as fossils buried under the ice. Sites like the ones near Strathcona Fiord contain fossils from this period and they are world-renown for the richness and age of the fossils. As the planet moves into another warming trend, these fossils could prove extremely important by showing us how life was adjusted to a warmer Earth.

CSCC currently hold eight mining licenses on Ellesmere Island, three of which are in the Strathcona Fiord region of the Island. If these areas gets mined, many of these fossils could be damaged or destroyed in the process. With the planet undergoing a warming trend and no sign of significant changes to push business as usual, this knowledge will be valuable when dealing with an altered climate. As SVP President Blaire Van Valkenburgh said, "Destruction of these fossil sites will strongly affect our ability to understand how global climate change will impact these regions over the coming century,".

If the value of these fossils are not enough to put a halt to these proposed mining opperations, what they're extracting should be. If these projects go ahead, coal will be extracted and burned which will exacerbate the warming the planet is undergoing. Coal is one of the dirtiest forms of power generation, and releases much more CO2 than the alternatives. It seems absurd to continue with this method of energy production when there are many other options which are less destructive. If we're going to but an end to dirty energy production, we should start by not extracting the fuel that drives them; and we should definitely start by stopping a proposed project before any major investments in infrastructure have been made.
 

https://vertpaleo.org/news/index.cfm
http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Paleontologists+concerned+abou...
http://www.weststarresources.com/s/NunavutCoal.asp