EDMONTON, Alta. — In the wake of the news that sage grouse populations in Alberta might never recover from habitat loss, some Alberta conservationists say that the provincial government may be to blame for the state of our threatened species.
“I would say that the administration of Fish and Wildlife right now in Alberta is in a shambles and nobody knows what the hell is going on,” says Mark Boyce, the Alberta Conservation Association’s (ACA) Chairman for Fisheries and Wildlife, who has been researching sage grouse for decades.
“You talk to people who work for these agencies, and they don’t even know what their responsibilities are, because of this division.”
The provincial government’s environmental ministries were reshuffled after the last election, dividing Fish and Wildlife among the various ministries. Hunting and fishing now occupy a branch under the Ministry of Forestry and Parks, while the Endangered Species Conservation Committee (ESCC) and other wildlife management services are governed by the Ministry of Environment and Protected Areas (EPA).
Despite the ESCC being a part of the EPA, Forestry and Parks Minister Todd Loewen acts as chair of the ESCC, further adding to the confusion.
The EPA did not respond to requests for comment.
Darren Bender is a member of the ESCC’s scientific subcommittee, tasked with assessing the status of species at risk in the province and determining whether they are threatened, endangered, or secure.
“It definitely affects our work,” says Bender, a professor of geography at the University of Calgary.
“I’ve noticed over the years that every election cycle, as soon as a new government comes in, it seems like there’s always a period for about a year when there’s very little work that gets done.”
“Some years we might meet and do assessments for five, maybe even six species, but some years we do one or even none, depending on the current government.”
For conservationists, this situation complicates an already difficult job. According to the ACA’s Brad Downey, who oversees conservation efforts in the grasslands in the south of the province, those grasslands are “one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world, even more than the Amazon rainforest.”
“In the case of the sage grouse, it’s a real canary in the coal mine kind of thing,” says Boyce, who is also a biology professor at the University of Alberta.
“We have a fairly limited amount of silver sage steppe-type grasslands in Alberta, and those come with a whole host of species. There’s the swift fox, leopard frogs, rattlesnakes, kangaroo rats, that are all endangered or threatened, and quite a long list of endangered plants like the yucca.”
“The challenge is to ensure that the grazing leases are managed well and I’m not confident that the province has any capability of doing that because they’ve fractured public lands into two bits, and the two groups don’t interact that well.”
Boyce, Bender, and Downey all agree that habitat loss is the greatest threat to species at risk and that the oil and gas industry is the largest culprit in that loss of habitat.
“We know that the [sage grouse] really avoid industrial development,” says Boyce. “A pumpjack, for example, will deter the birds out for a couple of kilometres. They just don’t go near those things.”
“And when we tried to protect the grouse around 20 years ago, the province of Alberta refused to do anything about it because it interfered with oil and gas development.”
“It’s death by a thousand cuts,” says Downey.
René Belland is a forestry student at the University of Alberta and an avid hunter and fisherman. In his opinion, the solution might not be to protect specific species but the ecosystems they inhabit.
“I think if we focus too much on one or two threatened species then we might lose the rest of the species in their habitat,” says Belland. “I think it’s better to focus on that habitat as a whole and that will help the species, and the ones that survive survive. Maybe you can’t save them all.”
“And really, these species are hardier than I think we give them credit for.”
For Bender, the issue is similar.
“A lot of attention often gets paid to what we call the ‘charismatic megafauna,’ your grizzly bears, your woodland caribou. They tend to attract a lot more attention, and this being a process that’s run through the government, it’s probably influenced by politics. Some species get a lot more attention than others.”
“We’ve seen limited conservation resources, being very focused on these species, and it necessarily means that I think other species are not getting what they would have otherwise. But it’s all about habitat loss, and these habitats are necessarily home to all kinds of species that need protection as well.”