Group names Canada's most-threatened rivers

A massive hydro development in northern Quebec has put the Rupert River on the map as one of the most endangered waterways in Canada, an environmental group says.

The river, which plunges from giant Mistassini Lake to James Bay, is the site of a development that will see five dams built, diverting 92 per cent of the Rupert's flow, Earthwild International says.

Earthwild's list of the country's most endangered rivers: Rupert River, Kipawa River, Quebec Petitcodiac River, New Brunswick Main River, Newfoundland St. Lawrence River, Quebec Okanagan River, B.C Peel River, Yukon and Northwest Territories Fraser River, B.C. Berens and Albany Rivers, Manitoba and Ontario Detroit River, Ontario Cornwallis River, Nova Scotia

The Rupert shares the most-endangered-river status with the Kipawa River in Quebec, a short stream that flows into the Ottawa River and is the site of a hydro development.

The B.C. environmental group has identified the 10 Canadian rivers it says are the most vulnerable to disruption.

Logging, and the roads that will be built to take the timber out, threatens rivers in Ontario, Newfoundland and Manitoba; urban development and pollution threaten the Fraser in British Columbia, the St. Lawrence in Quebec and the Detroit in Ontario.

Dams and causeways are threatening the Petitcodiac in New Brunswick and the Okanagan in B.C.; oil and gas exploration is a concern for the Peel in the Yukon and Northwest Territories.

As for the Cornwallis in Nova Scotia, "the river has become little more than a farm sewer" over the past 40 years, Earthwild says.