A male caribou trudges through disturbed habitat in Alberta’s north. Alamy photo
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,” said Narváez-Torres. “It’s one of their main threats in our province.”
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,” Narváez-Torres said.
“This all stems from habitat loss,” she explained, which comes in many forms. Human encroachment, wildfires and logging, along with oil and gas development, can all be part of the mix, depending on which of the 15 caribou ranges is looked at.
Rebecca Schulz, Alberta’s minister of environment and protected areas, acknowledged that fixes aren’t simple. “This is one of the more challenging areas of work my department does. It is exceptionally complex,” she said.
“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 said.
Premier Danielle Smith announced in January the government aims to double Alberta’s production of oil and gas.
Schulz said 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 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 status in their habitat.
On its Web site, the northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society says achieving that will be “no small feat, with some caribou ranges in Alberta more than 90 per cent disturbed.”
Narváez-Torres pointed to mountain caribou populations in the Red Rock-Prairie Creek range. Its entire winter-range portion is within a subregion of Alberta lucrative for the logging industry called Upper Smoky. The subregion extends south from near Grande Prairie to south of Grande Cache.
Logging practices are critical to caribou self-sustainability, Narváez-Torres said. “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 on-line public engagement ended earlier this summer. Schulz said 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. “It 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 alone, 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 trees planted in the right way and the right places. Heavy equipment is brought in, and soil has to be properly prepared for drainage. Criteria like trees reaching a certain height have to 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 planting trees prioritized for impact on caribou ranges in Alberta, many of which are close to the province’s northern border. The projects help create jobs for rural and Indigenous communities while supporting long-term caribou recovery efforts, the June news release says.
Finding the right balance involves differing tactics, depending on where the caribou are located, said 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 of the province, and, quite frankly, different geology, different industry and different patterns when it comes to wildlife,” the minister said.
Fine-tuning happens within the appropriate subregional plans, Schulz said. So far, two of 11 are complete and approved — Cold Lake in east-central Alberta and Bistcho Lake in the northwest.
A male caribou trudges through disturbed habitat in Alberta’s north. Alamy photo
