West Athabasca Watershed Bioregional Society

CALGARY – Ecojustice lawyer and climate program director Alan Andrews issued the following statement in response to Minister Wilkinson’s decision to designate Coalspur’s Vista coal mine expansion for a federal impact assessment: Read More

Representing tens of thousands of members and supporters across the province, Alberta’s conservation community is today calling for strict limits on off-highway vehicles (OHVs) on public lands, and a ban on OHVs in parks and protected areas across Alberta’s Eastern Slopes. Read More

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