Three local organizations seeking maximum wilderness protection in the Peel River watershed have hired a local firm to survey Yukoners on the issue.

Karen Baltgailis, executive director of the Yukon Conservation Society, said today the society, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and the Tourism Industry Association hired Datapath Systems of Marsh Lake to do the work.

The three organizations have been working with the company for about a month to develop a telephone poll that is objective, she indicated.

"For this to be useful, it has to be completely unbiased and completely professional, and that is why we hired Datapath."

Baltgailis said she believes the majority of Yukoners support significant protection of the Peel watershed, and she suspects the survey will show as much.

The results, she added, will be useful in producing a balanced view of where the majority sits, and will be of assistance when the time comes for Premier Dennis Fentie and company to make a decision.

"I think the Yukon people are far ahead of the Yukon government when it comes to seeing the need for significant protection of the Peel," she said.

Baltgailis said it's no secret Fentie is in favour of large-scale mining and oil and gas development.

The proposed land use plan for the vast Peel River watershed has ignited a passionate debate among Yukoners; those looking for maximum wilderness protection of the 68,042 square kilometres, and those seeking unfettered access to the resource-rich area.

The three affected first nation governments and the Yukon government have until Friday to make final submissions on the draft land use plan produced this past spring by the Peel Watershed Planning Commission.

The general public had until June 30 to file comments, resulting in 1,546 submissions.

Almost 1,000 were generated by the pro-mining sector as a result of a standard two-paragraph declaration of support developed and circulated by the Yukon Chamber of Mines.

The planning commission is expected to deliver its final recommendation on a land use plan for the Peel watershed this fall.

Baltgailis said the survey was not commissioned in response to the recent pro-mining lobby effort, but was already being contemplated prior to the June 30 deadline for public comments.

Because 97 per cent of the area is territorial Crown land, the Yukon government will essentially have the final say on whether to accept, reject or alter the commission's final recommendation.

Fentie has been accused of poisoning the planning process with political interference by instructing Environment Yukon to water down its submission to the commission, particularly the submission from the parks branch.

Fentie, on the other hand, defended his instructions to senior staff as fulfilling his role to ensure that when making submissions, government departments live by the letter of the law set out in the Umbrella Final Agreement, the blueprint for negotiating land claims settlements in the Yukon.

Mayo's First Nation of Nacho Nyak Dun and the Tr'ondek Hwech'in First Nation of Dawson City have already indicated the final draft plan produced by the commission falls significantly short of the level of wilderness protection they want to see.

Donna Larsen of Datapath Systems explained this morning it would have been preferable not to have any public discussion of the Peel survey until after it was complete.

She is confident, however, that she will still be able to provide an unbiased result.

The survey involves 500 random telephone calls, with respondents given the option of answering the questions on the phone or by e-mail, she explained.

Larsen said if they choose e-mail, they're given a password that allows them to answer the questionnaire on-line.

She said she is adding a question today to ask respondents if they've read about the survey in the newspaper.

"At the end of the day, it may not be 500 completed surveys because I may have to discard some of them, but I have a couple of ways of figuring that out."

Larsen emphasized she was only talking about the poll because her clients have given her permission to do so. The code of ethics which governs the survey industry prevents the company from disclosing the identity of a client or the results, she said.

The survey began July 18, and will likely wrap up on Saturday, Larsen said.