Sometimes, when you’re fighting a big oil company, and you’re a small member-supported nature conservation group, it can feel a bit like a David and Goliath story. You can guess who David is, and which one is the scary giant.

Our opposition to Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline project, which would carry oil through pristine wilderness and First Nations homelands to a port at Kitimat, British Columbia, has often felt like a case of the little guy up against Big Oil. It hasn’t helped that our Government has spent so much time demonizing Canadian environmental charities who dare speak out against this project, while publicly cheer-leading the pipeline before a joint review panel has even done its work.

That’s why Nature Canada, and joint intervenor BC Nature, were so pleased to receive an email a few weeks ago from a man named Chris Tollefson. Chris is the executive director of the Environmental Law Centre, a non-profit society run in partnership with the University of Victoria Faculty of Law. The centre operates Canada’s first public interest environmental law clinic program — which means they provide pro bono legal representation to conservation groups like us. Suddenly, little David had a friend.

So BC Nature and Nature Canada have enlisted the help of the Environmental Law Centre to ensure the interests of birds and wildlife are well represented in the final stage of hearings this Fall.

From the beginning we have argued the Northern Gateway Pipeline project poses unacceptable risks to B.C.’s wildlife, and that a spill would cause irreversible harm to the livelihoods of many coastal and aboriginal communities and the area’s unique marine ecosystems. We need to continue to press our case, so the Environmental Law Centre’s offer to help comes at a critical time.

The northern BC coast, islands and offshore waters comprise a globally important area for marine animals, including orcas, humpback whales, sea otters and Stellar’s sea lions, all federally listed as species-at-risk.   In addition, 30 Important Bird Areas would be at risk from oil spills, as would the salmon of the Skeena, the salmon and critically endangered sturgeon of the upper Fraser watershed, and, in eastern B.C., mountain caribou – a critically endangered ecotype of caribou.  This is to mention only some of BC’s better known iconic species – just the visible tip of the iceberg of ecosystems threatened by the Northern Gateway Project.

According to Chris Tollefson, what happens this Fall will very much resemble a courtroom situation, where lawyers question opposing witnesses to try to get straight answers to hard questions about this project.  Getting ready for this stage of the hearings, especially for groups unfamiliar with the litigation process, will take considerable preparation.

Final hearings into the proposed 1,177 kilometre pipeline begin September 4 in Edmonton. With the Centre’s help, BC Nature and Nature Canada will be questioning Enbridge on the evidence the company has submitted on the impacts of the project on birds, bird habitat and endangered species. Enbridge will also have a chance to cross examine the witnesses we retained to analyze and raise questions about the proposal. (You can read their evidence here and here.) All of this will take place at hearings in Prince George and Prince Rupert, set to run from October 1 through to December 18, 2012.