Minister of Environment and Parks Jason Nixon issued a statement this week concerning ongoing caribou conservation efforts in Alberta. The statement was a direct response to an Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) report, with Nixon saying he was “pleased to see the federal government’s acknowledgement of Alberta’s strong caribou recovery plan and actions to date.”
Alberta entered an agreement with the Canadian government in October of 2020, when the Agreement for the Conservation and Recovery of the Woodland Caribou in Alberta (ACRWCA) was signed with ambitions to support the conservation and recovery of both southern mountain caribou and boreal caribou in the province.
Conservation Specialist Carolyn Campbell of the Alberta Wilderness Association (AWA) was part of the movement petitioning the Albertan government for more stringent restrictions. “[The] Alberta government passed an Alberta woodland caribou policy [and] the Cabinet approved it in 2011. [The policy] said maintaining caribou habitat, would be the immediate priority. And so [I] will say AWA really tried to be very regular after oil and gas lease leases were auctioned off every few weeks, in calling them out on all the acreage that was being auctioned off in Caribou range. And then when they started on the range plan . . . we immediately praised them for it.”
“In 2012- 2013 [AWA] were trying to be very, very consistent and calling out the government that it was violating its own intention for caribou to recover and to survive and recover because it was continually leasing large tracts of caribou range. There was a lot, tragically, that was leased in the A La Pêche [region] between about 2010 and 2013 until they stopped. So that in itself was a missed opportunity where they didn’t follow their own stated intentions,” said Campbell.
One facet of the ACRWCA is the creation of 11 sub-regional range plans, which includes the A La Pêche and Little Smoky territories as one sub-region. The report has a timeline in place for 2023 to “finalize subregional plans that consider all land uses, including footprint, recreational and access management plans, for [A La Pêche]”.
Gillian Chow-Fraser of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness society (CPAWS) went into detail as to what conservationists’ groups expect as to what these range plans entail.
“[It is] guidance from the federal government on what they’re supposed to include and this coming from the recovery strategy for woodland caribou that basically said it’s up to the provinces and the territories to develop these range plans, and they forecast out [up] to 100 years forecast of what that area is going to look like every decade for 100 years.
Over that 100 years, the government has to show how they’re going to achieve the federal recovery objectives, which are 65%, undisturbed habitat in each caribou range, and then, that kind of how you get the naturally self-sustaining population numbers.”
When the agreement was originally signed, Minister Nixon expounded on the need for balance between conservation and industry, one of the listed ACRWCA short term targets is to “enable resumption of subsurface mineral sales in woodland caribou local population ranges”.
In September 2016 petroleum, natural gas, oil sands, coal and metallic industrial mineral rights were all restricted in critical caribou habitats awaiting new operating practices. However, forestry continued uninhibited. This has affected the winter range of the A La Pêche, being one of a few southern caribou herds to still follow migratory patterns.
“Now the summer range of the A La Pêche is in pretty good shape [but] the winter range is kind of like . . . if you’re concerned about say safety, [for] kids, it’s not just kind of where they live for, for like part of the day but if it’s very, very dangerous for them to get to school, that doesn’t really help. So, the caribou really need to be able to migrate between safe summer range, which [it] largely is for the A La Pêche — and safe winter range which is not at all safe for them. And that’s where the wolf cull comes in, regrettably,” said Carolyn Campbell.
A main concern for caribou conservation is predation, notably from wolves. Infrastructure such as forestry roads that come along with large scale operations creates a highway for wolves leading into caribou habitat. According to Carolyn, the area is “actually not remote at all, it’s been very heavily disturbed”, and the herd is currently being “propped up now unfortunately by the very dire measure of [really intensive] wolf kill”.
Wolf culls in Little Smoky-A La Pêche have been ongoing since 2005.
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