Jasper National Park is an area of unique alpine flora that survived the last ice-advance and was not destroyed by glaciation. It contains an abundance of rare wildlife, including timber wolves, grizzly bears, and bighorn sheep. This Alberta park is also home to delicate mosses needed to contain the ecosystem. Please read the report and find out why the Wilderness Committee wants you to oppose the proposed Cheviot Mine.

Preserve Our Mountain Parks

Wilderness Committee Educational Report Vol.16 - No.03, Winter-Spring 1997

Open mine. WCWC File photo

Grizzly Bear. Karvonen Films, WCWC File photo

FACTS ABOUT THE CHEVIOT MINE


  • Carinal River Coals, [CRC] is "Consolidated Coals" of Pittsburgh and Luscar Ltd. Ex-premiere of Alberta, Peter Lougheed is chairman of Luscar Ltd.
  • The Cheviot mine will be a strip mine. Strip mining has been banned in other countries in favour of underground mining which occurred in Mountain Park in the 1930s and 1940s.
  • CRC does not consider underground mining to be economically feasible in the case of the Cheviot mine.
  • The reasons for not considering underground mining would seem to be simply that it takes too long and the coal would not be worth enough on the world market by the time it was dug out by underground mining techniques.
  • One section of the mine is less than 3 kilometres away from Jasper National Park.
  • There will be 32 of these pits dug in a corridor that is 23 kilometres long and 3.5 kilometres wide.
  • 80 percent of the rock has to be removed before the coal can be removed.
  • The coal being removed is coking coal. The market for coking coal has been steadily declining due to the development of new technologies.
  • Australian mines that are currently being developed are much closer to the Asian markets that CRC wishes to sell coal to. The coal from these mines will also be much less expensive than the coal removed from the Cheviot mine.
  • CRC's own assessment of the Cheviot mine proposal acknowledges that there will be "unmitigable losses to carnivore habitat."
  • CRC has offered to make money available for regional research but they refuse to say how much money or who will decide how much is necessary to compensate for "unmitigable losses to carnivore habitat."
  • CRC's own study indicates that reclamation of the land will take 15 to 20 years. This same study also notes that it will 40 to 80 years before the vegetation in the area even resembles existing plant communities.
  • In particular Grizzlies are endangered by the Cheviot mine proposal. There are, by government counting techniques, around 300 Grizzlies in Alberta. Most experts put the number at less than 500.
  • The proposed Cheviot Mine immediately east of Jasper National Park would trap a large number of Grizzlies. These trapped Grizzlies become in-bred with the result that their health is severely compromised and their life spans extremely shortened.