Alberta earns failing grade in conservation: report

The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative's wildlife overpass over the Trans Canada highway near Exshaw, Alta., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

A report card on Canada’s biodiversity conservation progress gives Alberta a failing grade of D-.

In 2022, Canada and 195 other signatory nations, adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which sets targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

The framework includes protecting 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030.

A new report from the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) evaluated the progress of federal, provincial, and territorial governments. It notes major commitments have been made in federal land and ocean protections, and by Nova Scotia, Quebec, and the Northwest Territories.

Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario are lagging behind other jurisdictions and have “demonstrated little or no commitment to protecting more of their land and have shown minimal interest in pursuing effective and equitable processes for establishing protected areas,” the report says.

About 15 per cent of Alberta’s lands and waters are protected. Up until 2020, the province was “actively participating with the federal government” to advance conservation but has since “really walked back some of their commitments to internationally agreed on protection targets,” said Tara Russell, program director for CPAWS Northern Alberta.

Major concerns raised in the report are threats to headwaters and mountain ranges posed by the province’s new coal policy development, changes to the Parks Act and Public Lands Act that allow for creation of different regulations for different parks or public lands, legislation allowing for protected area designations to be rescinded for all-season resort development and conservation agreements that are failing to “protect and recover caribou populations.”

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Despite these setbacks, Russell said conserving 30 per cent of Alberta’s land and water is “absolutely is a viable target.”

“And I think there’s so much opportunity in Alberta to improve conservation,” she added.

Russell gave the examples of proposed expansions to the Gipsy-Gordon Wildland Provincial Park and Kitaskino Nuwenëné Wildland Park as “low-hanging fruit” for conservation.

Together, the expansion projects would protect a little less than 200 square kilometres of land. And, having already gone through planning stages, the projects are only waiting for an Order in Council to formally designate the land to the parks.

“It’s like an administrative task that needs to occur now to protect that,” Russell said.

In the case of the Kitaskino Nuwenëné Wildland Park, the protected area has been awaiting the final sign-off from council since 2012.

“It’s such a clear example of how conservation is not a priority,” Russell said.

“I understand it is difficult to get new parks and protected areas in place, and we absolutely need to go through those difficult processes as a province, but we’re also not taking advantage of these very clearly low-hanging-fruit opportunities.”

Brett McKay, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, St. Albert Gazette