Delayed Alberta report shows little caribou progress despite federal deal
CTV
An Alberta government document suggests the province has made little progress in protecting its 15 threatened caribou herds, despite having signed an agreement with Ottawa that promised it would.
An Alberta government document suggests the province has made little progress in protecting its 15 threatened caribou herds, despite having signed an agreement with Ottawa that promised it would.
That document, released three years late on Jan. 19, is the first report into the so-called Section 11 agreement between the province and Environment Canada. The 2020 agreement was made under threat of the federal government stepping in to protect critical habitat for the herds, which are in many cases almost entirely disturbed by resource development.
The report considers the deal's first two years. But even that limited time frame suggests a long list of problems, from the slow cleanup of seismic lines to the ongoing growth of industrial footprint to the lack of range planning that would let the species survive in some of Canada's busiest landscapes.
"There's not much here that is encouraging in the data," said Phillip Meintzer of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
Despite the agreement's focus on habitat protection, human disturbance increased in 23 out of 28 caribou subranges between 2018 and 2021. The average amount of critical habitat undisturbed by industry or wildfire in an Alberta caribou subrange is 19 per cent, when federal guidelines say caribou need 65 per cent to be self-sustaining.
Of those 28 subranges, seven have more than 10 per cent of their area under some form of protection. Nine have no protection at all and the rest average about three per cent.
Forestry, energy, agriculture, recreation and homes all chip away at caribou habitat, but they also provide jobs that thousands of Albertans depend on. Range plans laying out how those uses can coexist with caribou are a major objective of the agreement.
