Alberta' s image on the international stage is getting a rude slap from one of the world's most respected magazines just as the provincial government is preparing to showcase its environmental legacy to journalists on the eve of the G-8 summit in Kananaskis next month.
In an article on management of the boreal forest in the northern hemisphere, the June issue of National Geographic cites Alberta's forest management record as "a prime example of (the) deleterious effects" of oil, gas and forestry developments.
"The volume of logging in Alberta has increased tenfold since 1960, when 96 per cent of the province's boreal forest was essentially wilderness," the article says.
"Today, after an oil and timber boom spurred by the United States' appetite for natural resources, the situation has reversed, with less than 10 per cent of the province's boreal forest existing in swaths larger than a few square miles."
The article points to a nine-year study by the University of Alberta to demonstrate how the effects of an estimated half-million miles of roads, pipelines and 15-foot corridors -- used for seismic testing for oil and gas deposits -- are now beginning to come to light.
U of A researchers have documented a 20 to 50 per cent decline in some migratory bird populations in fragmented forest areas, "probably because of habitat disturbance," according to National Geographic.
"Big mammals also have suffered as their habitat has been whittled away."
The grizzly bear population in the Swan Hills region has fallen "from about 400 to 80 in the past half century," the article says. "Woodland caribou, which need large tracts of forest and eat lichens found in older stands, are in decline, with some herds on the verge of extinction."
The tone of the article is not the one that the provincial government has been conveying to wire services and other media in meetings and handouts being circulated in the weeks before G-8. The province has been trying to use the occasion of the G-8 summit to promote Alberta's wildlife and wilderness and tourism opportunities.
John Lear, a spokesman for Alberta's Sustainable Resources development department, said he didn't know if the government had seen the article.
"Obviously, we'd like to have a look at the report and see what National Geographic is looking at in the way of development in Alberta and its possible effects on the forest and so on."
David Boyd, a University of Victoria law professor who is just completing a book on environmental law in Canada, says he isn't surprised by the article.
He notes that in a recent report card of the environmental records of provincial, territorial and federal governments across Canada, he gave Alberta and Ontario the worst possible mark -- an F minus.
"Alberta is unique among Canadian provinces in that it allows industrial activity in its protected areas. It is also the one province where ownership of trees in forestry management agreements is transferred to the forestry companies. Everywhere else, the trees belong to the Crown until they are cut down.
"This could make it very difficult for Alberta to change its forestry practices if it decides that it needs to focus more on conservation in the future."
Boyd says his book, Unnatural Law (University of British Columbia Press), will be very hard on Alberta.
"I don't want to single out Alberta, because the environmental records of most provinces are not good ones. But the province is on the bottom of the list, which saddens me because I lived in Calgary for nearly a quarter of a century."
People interviewed for the National Geographic article include two former Alberta Environment department scientists, several University of Alberta biologists and one former law professor from Edmonton.
"The National Geographic article appropriately highlights Alberta as a prime global boreal example of deleterious effects of resource extraction," says Peter Lee, a former Alberta Environment manager who now works for Global Forest Watch Canada.
"But the article understates the staggering, almost unbelievable, pace and scale of industrial disturbances in Alberta's northern forests. Our mapping project across Canada's and Russia's boreal biome is beginning to document those disturbances using real pictures from satellites over the last decade.
"We have found that under current management practices, Canada's harvesting rates in general appear unsustainable over the long term.
"Canada's most species-rich and productive forests are being extensively modified by development activities; almost 90 per cent of cutting in Canada is by clear cutting; and 90 per cent of all cutting still occurs in frontier forests."
Now director of the Canadian Boreal Trust, Stewart Elgie, a former U of A law professor, told National Geographic that his organization is trying to reverse the process which has been allowing economic development to carve up forests and then trying to save the scraps that are left.
"Most of the world's forests are islands of wilderness in a sea of development. We'd like to flip that around in the boreal forest and have islands of economic development in a sea of wilderness."
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