Toxics Watch Society of Alberta

Gov't urged to control industry to save caribou

Jim Farrell
The Edmonton Journal

Thursday, February 14, 2008

CREDIT: Jim Farrell, Journal Photo
Local ecologist/lawyer Linda Duncan and others stage a protest on Wednesday.
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development should kill oil and gas development in the foothills rather than wolves in order to protect the endangered Little Smoky caribou herd.

That was the message two dozen protestors delivered Wednesday outside the department's Edmonton headquarters.

"I'm damn angry," said Rocky Notnes, an outfitter and guide in the Hinton area. "There are now three wells on the trails where I take my clients. You fly over the area these days and it looks like a pin cushion."

In 2006, a team was set up by the province to protect the best remaining patches of habitat for woodland caribou, said Helene Walsh, a biologist and a member of he Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. One of the most sensitive of those areas is home to the 80 caribou in the Little Smoky herd.

The committee has accomplished nothing, said Walsh, who was one of the protesters.

Instead of protecting the area, the government is killing wolves while allowing increasing amounts of industrial activity.

Dave Ealey, a spokesman for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, defended the killing of more than 100 wolves as an effective means of protecting the herd.

"Our objective has been to control the predator population, and the density needs to be brought down to less than six wolves per 1,000 square kilometres to allow the caribou to have good calf survival and good over-winter survival," Ealey said.

"Right now, the density is higher than that."

But the government is doing more than that while trying to balance environmental and economic interests, Ealey said. They are encouraging companies to decrease their impact on the land by having different companies use the same road systems instead of each company constructing and using their own roads.

That won't work, said protester Linda Duncan, a lawyer and environmental activist who has run federally for the NDP. The only thing that will work, she said, is following the dictates of the federal Endangered Species Act and formulating a comprehensive plan to protect the caribou.

Walsh said that instead of doing that, seismic lines are being cut throughout the area in preparation for the drilling of 50 wells.

Roads are being cleared and old-growth timber that bears the lichen eaten by caribou is being cut.

New growth attracts increasing numbers of deer and moose. That leads to a larger wolf population and those wolves kill off the few remaining caribou. The ecological balance is being thrown off-kilter, Walsh said.

jfarrell [at] thejournal [dot] canwest [dot] comm

© The Edmonton Journal 2008