Boreal Owl
Alberta
History
The Wilderness Committee opened its Alberta office up in Edmonton in the winter of 1992 to address the tremendous threats to Alberta’s vast northern boreal forests. At that time, like now, the threats were coming from both industrial forestry and oil and gas development. These activities had already had a devastating effect on the land, fragmenting and destroying more than 25 percent of Alberta’s wilderness. The office was opened up under the leadership of Gray Jones and he was up against a challenging political environment, especially as rising fuel prices were putting pressure on yet undeveloped oil and gas reserves in northern Alberta. With the help of many energetic and committed people, the WCWC Alberta Chapter became an effective grassroots organization dedicated to wilderness preservation in the center of resource crazy Alberta.
Campaigns
Boreal Forest
The Boreal forest region which comprises 48 percent of Alberta, is a vast forest ecosystem that it shares with most of the rest of Northeastern Canada and Alaska as well as with the northern part of Scandinavia and large parts of Russia. The boreal forest has many vital environmental attributes that will be lost if the forest continues to be destroyed by industrial development at the current rate. Canada's boreal region encompasses more than 90 percent of the country's remaining large intact forestlands and more than four million people live in the boreal forest ecoregion. In terms of global forest cover it represents 25 percent of the world's remaining large intact forests with pine, spruce, aspen, poplar and larch being the dominant tree species. An important character of the boreal is the wetlands that covers 30 percent of the landbase – including bogs, fens, marshes, a vast number of lakes and some of the largest rivers in Canada.
The Wilderness Committee Alberta Chapter has been involved with several campaign activities in the Alberta Boreal Forest over the past ten years.
Wilderness Won
In the mid-nineties we spearheaded a successful campaign in collaboration with other groups to have 5,000-sq. km. of wilderness protected in the Caribou Mountains in northern Alberta. This area is one of the last large roadless wilderness areas in Alberta, and provides one of the most important habitats of the magnificent, but endangered, mountain caribou due to the abundance of lichens in the area – a food source on which the caribou is dependent. This area was formally established as the Caribou Mountains Wildlands Provincial Park in 2001 by the provincial government. In 1998, the Alberta Chapter was involved in campaigning against global warming and it managed to put the link between global warming and vulnerability of the boreal forest due to increased levels of CO2 on the political agenda.
The Big Horn Wilderness, which is east of Red Deer, was another project the Alberta chapter has been working to protect, and which reached an important milestone when an agreement was reached to halt the construction of new roads.
Through the nineties, the Wilderness Committee fought a hard battle along with other environmental groups for Wood Buffalo National Park – a park that is renowned for it internationally significant natural features such as free-roaming wood bison herds and vast extents of boreal forest. The fight was first fought against ongoing logging within the park and later against a proposed winter road through the park. Due to the efforts of the Wilderness Committee and others logging was halted in 2001. The efforts to stop the logging road from being constructed within the park have not yet been successful.
Species at Risk
The cumulative effect of farming, oil and gas development, mining, forestry, industrial tourism and the establishment of urban settlements and roadways have for long posed a tremendous threat to vulnerable species in Alberta. The Wilderness Committee’s Alberta Chapter has for years been actively involved in campaigning to stop the ongoing grizzly hunt in Alberta.
Grizzly bears in Alberta are currently designated as “May be at Risk” according to the “General Status of Alberta Wild Species 2000”, but environmental groups claim that this astonishing species should be designated as “Threatened” and that the Spring 2004 grizzly hunt should be banned. Government scientists have themselves found that the grizzly bear population is extremely low – it is estimated that 500 bears exist in Alberta - and that management decisions should be made with great caution in mind. The Alberta government continues to ignore these suggestions, including those that comes from the government’s own Grizzly Bear Recovery Team.
Other Campaigns
Other campaigns we've worked on over the years include:
- Fighting sour gas flaring
- The Athabasca Tar Sands
- The Cheviot Mine
