When 500 migrating ducks land on a tailings pond in the Alberta oilsands and drown in toxic residue, does anybody hear?
That's what the International Boreal Conservation Campaign (IBCC) is trying to find out as it steps up efforts to protect the northern forest.
Volatile energy prices and international political conflicts have fuelled North American interest in tapping reserves in Alaska and northern Alberta. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), oilsands production is expected to triple, from 1.2 million to 3.5 million barrels a day, by 2020.
Jeff Wells, a scientist with the IBCC, says this jeopardizes the boreal ecosystem.
"There should be a moratorium on new projects until we can sort out how to deal with the huge footprint and impact the tar sands is having," Wells says, using the term "tar" rather than "oil" because he sees it as more precisely describing the thick, gooey bitumen that is extracted and processed.
The IBCC, a Seattle-based non-profit group that specializes in environmental science and is largely funded by foundations such as the Pew Charitable Trusts, maintains that governments should protect at least half of the Canadian portion of the boreal, which crosses the country just south of the Arctic.
"Canada has 25 per cent of the frontier forests on Earth that have never been touched by human hands," Wells says. "It's one of the last places where there's still an opportunity to maintain an ecosystem in an intact state."
Wells says highly invasive strip-mining and in-situ mining leave a trail of destruction that includes toxic tailings ponds, deforestation, drained wetlands, and a massive spider web of roads and pipelines. "When they strip-mine, the habitat is obliterated. Everything's dug up to get to the tar sands deposits."
David Pryce, vice-president of western Canadian operations with CAPP, disagrees with the premise of a moratorium and says industry is making significant gains mitigating the effects of oilsands extraction.
"It's more appropriate to look at how you actively develop the oilsands while protecting the environment. The challenge is how we strike the right balance in terms of extracting the resource and the benefit of that resource while protecting the environmental values that are there, not only for today but over time."
Pryce says the solution lies in science and technology-based mitigation. Roughly one-fifth of the oil is accessed at depths of 20 to 45 metres through strip-mining, and companies generally set the upper layers of soil aside for land reclamation as project areas begin to close down.
Extraction methods have also improved, Pryce says. With in-situ mining, for instance, drilling is now largely done diagonally. "It's a technology that evolved as environmental concerns around footprint evolved."
However, Wells counters that, despite the best efforts of industry, activity in the region threatens mammals such as the woodland caribou, which he says are becoming increasingly fragmented because they rely on unfettered mature forests and are easily driven away by human activity.
"Every model that's looked at what would happen to them has been clear they'll be gone if the tar sands continue at the same rate. They'll be extirpated from the area," Wells says, adding that roughly 3,000 of these animals live in northern Alberta, and one-third of the 17 known herds in the region are already facing decline.
Bird populations and migrations are also vulnerable. "More than 250 species breed in the region," Wells says, noting the black-throated green warbler, on Alberta's special-concern list, is particularly at risk. "We think it will decline by 30 to 50 per cent if the tar sands continues on its current path."
The bay-breasted warbler, the Canada warbler, and yellow-bellied and olive-sided flycatchers are also at risk, as are waterfowl such as ducks, buffleheads, surf scoters and loons. "There's a whole suite of ducks that only breed in the boreal, with 80 to 95 per cent of their global breeding range there," Wells says. "In some cases they (crews) are draining entire lakes to get at the deposits underneath. This habitat is being erased."
Pryce responds by pointing to a caribou recovery team set up by the provincial government and involving industry and other willing partners to look at wildlife trends in order to find ways to help various species.
"If you talk about active management, you might manage the prey that go after the caribou as access (to development) opens up, or you look at poor habitat areas for measures for protection," Pryce says.
While roads and pipelines are needed to support the oilsands operations, oil, gas and forestry companies collaborate on common transportation corridors to reduce the impact on wildlife, Pryce says.
Companies have also installed pipeline crossings to facilitate mammal migrations.
Tailings ponds, which can be several square kilometres in size and resemble small lakes, have also drawn the IBCC's attention.
Wells points to a dramatic incident this past April, when an estimated 500 ducks landed on Syncrude's Aurora tailings pond. "There were only about seven left to even show they had landed there," Wells says, describing a scenario where the birds landed, were coated in toxic waste, and died, most sinking from the added weight.
Oil companies have used noise-emitting cannons to scare birds and keep them away from the tailings ponds, but Wells says these don't always work.
Syncrude spokesman Mark Kruger says his company's deterrent systems didn't fail in this case.
Rather, their deployment, scheduled for just before the spring migration, was delayed by a severe snowstorm.
By the time the storm subsided and crews were ready to set out the cannons, the birds had already begun to pass through the area, says Kruger.
When workers arrived at the Aurora pond to set up, they found the dead birds.
"We were truly shocked and saddened by this incident," Kruger says, adding that the company records an average 25 waterfowl deaths a year and has never experienced anything of this magnitude.
"This isn't indicative of how Syncrude operates. Our system has worked for over 30 years, and we're trying to find out how can we prevent this from happening again."
CAPP's Pryce says oil companies are generally doing a good job preventing such incidents.
"Companies know they're under the microscope and are doing their best to minimize these things, but occasionally incidents happen. This case is unfortunate, but not unique. It's a problem that exists across all sectors of the economy - that there are impacts as a result of disturbance."
Simon Dyer, oilsands program director with the Pembina Institute, an Alberta-based non-profit group that specializes in environmental policy research and education, says the effects of current and projected development are clear.
"The future of the herd of woodland caribou on the east side of the Athabasca has declined by 65 per cent in the past 16 years largely as a result of cumulative impacts of in-situ development and forestry," says Dyer, who is a wildlife biologist.
"One of the benefits of Alberta's robust economy is we're seeing some of the best wildlife research occurring anywhere, but unfortunately we're just documenting the decline of species."
Dyer describes operational best-practices such as directional drilling as positive steps toward reducing the environmental impact, and he points to research on dry-tailings technologies that would create a waste product that could be removed.
However, he says there are no incentives for companies to implement this.
"It's thought to be more expensive, and the government is willing to approve projects with the old technologies. So companies don't want to risk a technology that has never been demonstrated commercially."
Ultimately, Dyer maintains that serious land-use planning should be a precondition to all project approvals.
"Letting development proceed at the pace and speed projected just by industry and government alone is not acceptable. Government and industry like to talk about improvements to the footprint of specific projects, but the real issue is the cumulative impact."
However, Pryce describes Alberta government land-use planning and accumulative effects management policies as rigorous and evolving.
"Industry is well experienced with the process. We provide the information they ask for and we follow the policy expectations. In doing this, our expectation would be that we have met the conditions and should have a reasonable expectation of a project proceeding."
(Saul Chernos can be reached at chernos@businessedge.ca)