Province plugs predator pathways through seismic line tree planting

ABA29N A bull Woodland Caribou in springtime. Image shot 2007. Exact date unknown.

About 1.8 million kilometres of crisscrossing seismic lines, some dating from the 1940s, act as convenient corridors in Alberta for predator and prey alike.

Too convenient, really. Especially for the province’s 2,000 or so woodland caribou, a threatened population whose ranges are exposed to the increased predation that the lines enable.

Seismic lines attract moose and deer, and they in turn lead predators deep into caribou country, explains Pamela Narváez-Torres, a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association.

“Predation by wolves and bears has become a big issue for caribou,” says Narváez-Torres. “It’s one of their main threats in our province.”

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The biologist and her association support provincial government efforts to restore the boreal forest, including an announcement earlier this summer of $55.8 million towards planting five million trees along so-called legacy seismic lines by 2030.

In a news release announcing the latest funding, the province calls caribou populations “finally stable or even growing.”

But Narváez-Torres notes that it takes ongoing human intervention to keep the situation that way. The ultimate standard for her organization is caribou self-sustainability, and seismic line restoration alone isn’t enough.

“We support any restoration activities that could help species thrive or survive or be self-sustaining. But there might be other issues happening,” says Narváez-Torres.

“This all stems from habitat loss,” she continues, and that comes in many forms. Human encroachment, wildfires, logging, and oil and gas development can all be part of the mix, depending on which of Alberta’s 15 caribou ranges you’re talking about.

Rebecca Schulz, Alberta’s minister of environment and protected areas, acknowledges that fixes aren’t simple. “This is one of the more challenging areas of work my department does. It is exceptionally complex,” she says.

“There are a variety of views and perspectives about trying to strike a balance and ensure that we’re still able to create jobs, to double energy production, to mitigate wildfire risk, which became even more important after the wildfires that we saw last year in Jasper,” Schulz says.

Premier Danielle Smith announced in January that the government aims to double Alberta’s production of oil and gas.

Schulz says habitat restoration is one of three approaches the province takes. Also important are management of predators and, through things like the penning of pregnant females, the management of caribou populations. Predator management can mean lethal or non-lethal means to limit their exposure to caribou.

Penning results have been mixed. “Some of those projects didn’t work out as planned, but some of them do show promise.”

Restoring seismic lines ticks two boxes – habitat restoration and predator management.

In 2020 Alberta and Canada signed a five-year agreement to support the conservation and recovery of the caribou to naturally self-sustaining status in 50-100 years. That would mean achieving and maintaining at least 65 per cent undisturbed levels in their habitat.

On its website, the northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society says achieving 65 per cent will be “no small feat, with some caribou ranges in Alberta more than 90 per cent disturbed.”

Narváez-Torres concurs. “We’re very, very far away from getting to that goal of 65 per cent undisturbed habitat.”

She points to mountain caribou populations in the Red Rock-Prairie Creek range. Its winter-range portion is within a subregion of Alberta lucrative for the logging industry called Upper Smoky, extending south from near Grande Prairie to south of Grande Cache.

Logging practices are critical to caribou self-sustainability, Narváez-Torres says. “When you allow clear-cutting of the caribou’s winter ranges, having seismic lines restored there doesn’t really help that much.”

The province is getting close to approving a plan for the area, after an online public engagement ended earlier this summer. Schulz says its completion could come as early as this fall.

The subregional plan so far “reflects ongoing commitment to responsible resource development,” says the introduction in the current draft. The plan “seeks to maintain a strong economy, resilient communities, and healthy ecosystems.”

Since 2019 more than 4,500 km of seismic lines have been assessed and treated in caribou ranges, including 2,400 km in the past 18 months, the province says. The government uses the word “treated” because the process goes beyond plopping trees into soil.

Restoring the lines draws on local, often Indigenous knowledge and scientific expertise to get the right species planted in the right way and the right places. Heavy equipment is brought in, and soil is properly prepared for drainage. Criteria like trees reaching a certain height must be attained before an area is considered restored.

The latest funding — the Alberta portion of a partnership with Natural Resources Canada — has the government working with communities and other groups to plant trees prioritized for their impact on caribou.

Many of the ranges are close to the province’s northern border. The projects help create jobs for rural and Indigenous communities, the June news release says.

Finding the right conservation balance involves differing tactics, depending on where caribou are located, says Schulz, the UCP member for Calgary-Shaw.

“It’s not a blanket approach across the province, because we do have different types of caribou in different areas, and, quite frankly, different geology, different industry and different patterns when it comes to wildlife,” the minister says.

Fine-tuning happens within appropriate subregional plans, Schulz says. So far, two of 11 are complete and approved — Cold Lake in east-central Alberta and Bistcho Lake in the northwest.

Elk, moose, deer and caribou are cousins in the Cervidae family. Perhaps 110,000 individuals of the woodland subspecies exist in Canada. Boreal and southern mountain populations of the woodland caribou are designated as threatened under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and Alberta’s Wildlife Act.

Forest improvements are partially funded through timber damage assessments on Crown land paid to the government, informally known as stumpage fees. In 2024-25, the province collected more than $63 million through the fees.

Although mostly paid by logging companies, oil and gas, mining and other companies are assessed for other users as so-called disposition holders.

“Industry’s footprint has shrunk drastically,” the minister emphasized. “The amount of space and roads that are needed now is significantly less than it was years ago.”

That applies to modern seismic work, too. Bulldozers are rarely used anymore, and the width of more recent lines is generally a few metres at most. Conventional lines are more like five to 10 metres wide.

When the Upper Smoky plan is finalized, Alberta will have nine more subregional plans to complete. Schulz can’t give an exact timeframe, but two to three years is reasonable.

“It’s one of the things that the premier put in my mandate letter, was to speed up land use planning, while, of course, making sure that we still have the time to engage with local communities,” she says.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty when those plans are not complete, and so we’ve been working really hard to speed those up.”

George Lee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Macleod Gazette