But proponents of northern forest ecosystem defense face ‘laggards’ in west

BY GARY PARK FOR GREENING OF OIL

A movement to protect Canada’s vast boreal forest from resource development is making headway and court action is threatened unless the Canadian government delivers on a commitment to protect the Woodland caribou in northern Alberta’s boreal region, with consequences for oil and gas development that are not yet clear.

Pew Environment Group, a United States-based public interest group, even suggests Canada’s boreal is destined to become the world’s best-protected ecosystem, with 80 percent of the 1.4 million square miles still intact.

“We think it’s on track to be way beyond what anybody’s anticipating for those other places,” he said.

But Kallick left no doubt that the road ahead is daunting, covering a spectrum of measures from completed and approved new national parks to lands that are subject to a Forest Products Association agreement signed recently by 21 member companies and nine environmental organizations.

The pact is expected to result in more sustainable harvesting practices and protection of habitat for 1.78 million acres of forest, with new logging and road construction suspended on about 72 million acres.

Pledge to protect Woodland caribou

Signatories have also pledged to develop conservation plans for endangered Woodland caribou, which four Alberta First Nations – Beaver Lake Cree, Enoch Cree, Chipewyan Prairie Dene and Athabasca Chipewyan – are determined to protect by court order unless the Canadian government meets its deadline of late August to protect through an emergency order.

Although the current focus is on the forest industry, the boreal is a flashpoint for critics of Alberta’s oil sands sector and is attracting the spotlight as shale gas development gains momentum in northern regions.

Boreal protections could also conceivably impact oil and gas infrastructure for Arctic developments, such as the proposed Mackenzie natural gas pipeline that would run south through sub-Arctic forests to reach market.

Kallick said that if the governments of Ontario and Quebec are successful in protecting 50 percent of their northern forests from industrial development, he hopes other governments and industries will “come up with similar kinds of conservation plans.”

If that happens, “we are looking at by far the most protected and intact forest landscape in the world remaining so for all time,” he said.

Kallick said several conservation biologists believe that if 50 percent of the forest is strictly protected from development and development of the rest was done carefully, the ecosystem would remain productive and resilient to change, including climate shifts.

He said the Ontario and Quebec forest agreements are the “biggest pieces on the table right now,” and Pew is eager to see the pattern repeated in Saskatchewan, northern Alberta, Manitoba and the Yukon.

Laggards are Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba, Yukon

However, he noted that the remaining jurisdictions cover one-third of the boreal and “are the real laggards in this process.”

Stewart Pimm, a conservation biologist, said there are “no more than about half a dozen places around the world that have extensive tracts of untouched forests,” whose protection is vital in Canada because the ecosystem stores huge volumes of carbon.

“There really is some good news that countries around the world, governments and the private sector, are beginning to realize these issues are important and we should be doing something about them,” Pimm said.

“When you protect these big areas, you’re protecting the big scale that Mother Nature intended and you take care of a lot of management areas in one fell swoop,” he said.

Avrim Lazar, chief executive officer of the Canadian Forest Products Association, said industry and environmental groups have much work to accomplish with provincial governments, who own the resources within their own boundaries.

Core of the oil sands and aboriginal ultimatum

Larry Innes, executive director of the Canadian Boreal Initiative, said the legal rights of First Nations must also being taken into account.

“The huge advantage we have in the boreal is that we have communities that have maintained a relationship with their territories for thousands of years and have a pretty good sense of what’s important in terms of maintaining that relationship,” he said.

The four Alberta First Nations, backed by research showing two herds of Woodland caribou have dropped in size by 70 percent over the past 14 years, told Environment Minister Jim Prentice that he has until Aug. 29 to recommend that the federal cabinet comply with Species at Risk legislation introduced three years ago to protect the caribou and their habitat “from any further industrial development in the full ranges of remaining herds in northeastern Alberta (or in a wider area).”

That region represents the core of the oil sands industry.

Jack Woodward, an attorney for the coalition of First Nations, said his clients are “not standing in the way of action … they are demanding immediate emergency protection for the caribou until long-term habitat protection is in place.”

Al Lamerman, chief of the Beaver Lake Cree, said the coalition wants an immediate halt to the “destruction of our lands ... that sustain our caribou and our people. Our traditional land is dwindling. We need habitat for our animals to ensure there is a healthy surplus.”

Chief Vern Janvier of the Chipewyan Nation, said Alberta is giving top priority to the oil industry “and everything else can be sacrificed.”

The Chipewyan Dene have already started legal action against the Alberta government, claiming MEG Energy’s planned Christina Lake oil sands development will endanger their hunting and fishing rights. 

Contact Gary Park via publisher@greeningofoil.com