Guest post by Lorne Fitch: 20 reasons Albertans should be concerned about conservation

Professional Biologist, author and educator Lorne Fitch, a frequent contributor to this blog on environmental and conservation topics, returns with a disturbing list of reasons Albertans should be concerned about the state of conservation in Alberta. The current troubling state of affairs is the result of the policies and attitudes of both the United Conservative Party provincial government and the Liberal federal government in Ottawa under the leadership of Mark Carney. How many reasons are there for citizens to be concerned about the pathway of conservation in Alberta? Mr. Fitch provides a list of 20. DJC 

By Lorne Fitch

One doesn’t need much insight or analysis to conclude that conservation, the protection of our natural environment, is not a priority in Alberta. 

You don’t even need to be much of a conspiracy theorist. In fact, the evidence points to a concerted effort to thwart conservation efforts, even to contend they are unnecessary and impede economic development. 

Evidence to the contrary – that we are quickly sacrificing our wild heritage and the ecosystem attributes contributing to our well-being – is dismissed out of hand. A resource extraction and development mantra is deafening. Subsidies, perks, incentives, and political support for economic development run rampant, while conservation efforts, environmental protection, research, and monitoring are starved of funding.

Failure to protect, conserve, and steward our natural assets is like running with scissors. It is racing toward an obvious hurtful fall for all of us, one that is completely avoidable.

How many reasons are there for citizens to be concerned about the pathway of conservation in Alberta? Let us count some of them:

1. The questionable axing of many long-standing conservation initiatives in Alberta (for example, the Alberta Water Council and the Alberta Clean Air Strategic Alliance) and the drying up of operational funding for other non-government initiatives by the UCP Government.
2. The failure of the UCP to fund internal departmental environmental monitoring and research, especially on critical issues related to water quality, species at risk recovery, and work on climate change.
3. The UCP’s chicanery related to decisions about coal mining in the Eastern Slopes, especially allowing the zombie Grassy Mountain mine to be revived with new coal exploration. This despite the opposition of the majority of Albertans to coal mining.
4. Since 2022, five independently reviewed scientific papers have demonstrated the extensive, pervasive, lingering, and damaging negative impacts of coal mining in Alberta.
5. The decision by the CEO of the Alberta Energy Regulator to forgo a scheduled public hearing on Mine 14 near Grande Cache and to provide regulatory approvals for the mine after an apparent political intervention by the mine owner. Similarly, the AER has approved expansion of the Vista coal mine near Hinton, again without a regulatory hearing or an environmental impact assessment.
6. Another “unfettered” decision by the AER to secretly change the rules to limit who is “directly affected” by developments and preclude public participation in hearings.
7. The “failure” of the Water Not Coal petition to make it through the impossible and suspect hurdles of the Elections Alberta statistics labyrinth. Over 200,000 Albertans signed the petition in good faith.
8. To counter the federal government’s “A Force of Nature,” a strategy to extend landscape protection nationally, the UCP’s erroneous contention that 60 per cent of Alberta is already “protected.”
9. Regional planning efforts for entire watersheds have stalled in Alberta, with no broad-based, long-term perspective to define land use outcomes, in the public interest.  Instead, subregional planning for the Upper Smoky, Red Earth, and the Caribou Mountains follows the dictates of industry to maximize short-term economic activity at the expense of watershed protection, biodiversity concerns, cumulative effects, ecological thresholds, and recreation.
10. Building commercial resort developments in provincial parks is now permitted, despite impacts on water, biodiversity, and other recreational pursuits. It is doubtful most Albertans will be able to afford to stay in such upscale developments.
11. The inability of regulatory agencies in Alberta to exert even minimal enforcement of guidelines for logging in Eastern Slopes forest watersheds that harbour species of trout that are at risk are the water supply for most Albertans. Sustainable forest management has been perverted to maximum timber harvest.
12. An obviously illegal logging bridge constructed over the Highwood River in critical habitat for bull trout was ordered removed by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, yet no charges were laid under the national Species At Risk Act. DFO has subsequently permitted the construction of another bridge in the same location.
13. Instead of following the “avoidance” principle set out in DFO guidelines for species-at-risk trout protection, the department is instead issuing permits to the logging industry to destroy critical trout habitat, as long as there are “offsets” to compensate for the loss. No evidence or monitoring is provided to validate the effectiveness of such decisions.
14. There is a rollback of federal legislation and weakening of the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, and other environmental guardrails to facilitate “accelerated economic development.”
15. Wildlife management changes that are of more to benefit commercial interests than to provide recreational benefits to Albertans or achieve conservation objectives.
16. Irrigation expansion fever dreams, including five proposed new onstream dams and four off-stream reservoirs at mind-blowing financial and environmental costs. This is leading us, inexorably to “water bankruptcy.”
17. AI data centres allowed to proceed with essentially no environmental oversight despite real concerns over water availability, power consumption, cumulative effects, and effluent releases.
18. Complete antipathy on the part of the UCP government to renewable energy, technology that provides a clear pathway to coping with climate change. 
19. Despite the evidence linking burning fossil fuels and climate change, leading to greater incidences of wicked weather, wildfires, drought, flooding, heat domes, and health risks, Alberta continues to push for more oil and gas extraction. Connecting the evident dots seems insurmountably difficult.
20. Finally, the wildly improbable fig leaf of carbon capture and underground storage, a politician’s wet dream to evade the reality of exacerbating climate change from expanding petroleum extraction and combustion.

Lorne Fitch, P. Biol., is a Professional Biologist, a retired Fish and Wildlife Biologist and a past Adjunct Professor with the University of Calgary. He is the author of Streams of Consequence, Travels Up the Creek, and Conservation Confidential.