International pressure mounting to protect Alberta’s Castle wilderness

CALGARY — The international conservation community warns that Alberta’s population of grizzly bears is in increasingly dire straits in the Castle wilderness just north of the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park. As a result, clear-cut logging slated for the Castle this summer is receiving international scrutiny. Read more »

Posted May 9, 2011 by AEN

Woodland Caribou herds declining toward extinction in Alberta

Rural and provincial conservation groups today distributed copies of a new provincial government recovery plan for Alberta’s endangered woodland caribou. The ‘Action Plan for West-Central Alberta Caribou Recovery’ authorizes ongoing logging and oil and gas development in the caribou home ranges north of Hinton and Grande Cache. The groups also displayed more than two dozen Alberta government and science reports, consultations and recovery plans for caribou released since the late 1970’s, showing industrial impacts on forests and wildlife as the root cause of caribou decline.

The groups highlighted the fact that the government did not act on the previous plans written since the 1970’s, while at the same time Alberta’s caribou population has declined by almost two-thirds, from a high of an estimated population of 7,000 - 9,000 in the 1960’s to an estimated 3,000 today. Last year, a Canada-wide scientific review found that Alberta’s herds of woodland caribou were the most in danger of extinction among all provinces. Logging and oil and gas allocations increased rapidly during the 1980’s and 1990’s and now blanket Alberta forests. Read more »

Posted November 26, 2009 by Anonymous