2011-06-23 AWA Wilderness & Wildlife Defenders: Lower Athabasca Regional Plan
The neglect of land impacts from oil sands development in the government’s proposed Lower Athabasca regional plan has recently drawn international criticism. If you have not already done so, please add your voice to ensure that this regional plan actually manages cumulative effects of development as promised.
Background
The Lower Athabasca region in northeast Alberta is the first to have a regional
plan developed under Alberta’s Land Use Framework. The draft plan unveiled
in April falls far short of responsibly managing impacts to land, wildlife habitat
and species diversity, which was supposed to be one of the main reasons for
regional planning! It has no land disturbance limits or biodiversity plan. It
would only protect an additional 4% of woodland caribou ranges in the region
(only 3% are protected now). It proposes conservation areas only where there
are no oilsands reserves, not based on ecological significance, and would
permit conventional oil and gas and commercial forestry in some of these
areas.
The Issue
Recently an international group of conservation organizations called on the
Alberta government to address the serious deficiencies of the plan, including
air quality, water quality and quality and biodiversity shortcomings.
In addition, the respected Global Forest Watch Canada organization , released
a report concluding that “the prospect of ten of these eleven caribou herds
supporting self-sustaining local populations in LARP [the Lower Athabasca
Regional Plan] in the near future appear to be very, very low, and the prospect
of the 11th herd supporting a self-sustaining local population in LARP in the
