Shell suspends drilling

Published: August 13, 2008 8:00 AM

by Interior News, Smithers

Shell Canada has suspended drilling in the Klappan Valley to allow for further environmental reviews and consultations with stakeholders.

“This is a voluntary suspension of our plans,” said Shell spokesperson Laurieanne Lynne. “We’re not going to undertake any drilling for the remainder of 2008, but there is some work that will continue.”

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Published: August 07, 2008 8:00 AM
Updated: August 07, 2008 8:31 AM AMANDA FOLLETT AND CATHY ELLIS BOW VALLEY
This year’s August long weekend was the deadliest on record for bears in the region with at least three killed by trains and vehicles in Banff and Kananaskis.
In Banff National Park, a medium sized adult black bear was struck and killed on the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early hours of Saturday (Aug. 2) east of Lake Louise near Protection Mountain.

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Dean Bassett The Canadian Press

August 6, 2008 at 5:37 AM EDT

FARNHAM GLACIER — Residents blocking a construction project near Invermere say they’ll stay put until a controversial development near West Farnham Glacier receives permits and a signed development plan from the province.  Protesters stopped road-building equipment about 50 kilometres from Invermere along a forest service road that leads into the West Farnham Glacier on the weekend.  Wildsight, the region’s main environmental watchdog, says the road construction is a back-door attempt to move a long-stalled project at Jumbo Glacier along under the guise of a proposed lift and athletes’ training facility.

“Machines are tearing up the alpine in Farnham Creek headwaters as we speak… ,” said Dave Quinn, Wildsight’s Purcell Mountain program manager.

The facilities are part of the proposed Jumbo resort master plan, which remains unsigned at the provincial level.

According to Wildsight, the road construction is taking place through the Farnham Creek headwaters in an alpine area near West Farnham Glacier, adjacent to Jumbo Glacier. If built, Wildsight believes the road will give Glacier Resorts Ltd. an opportunity to build ski lifts inside the proposed boundaries of the resort.

The Calgary Olympic Development Association has operated an athletes training camp on the adjacent East Farnham Glacier since 2005.

Mr. Quinn said four to eight people camped in the area over the past weekend.  Opponents surmised the activity might be an attempt to revive a stale agreement. Mr. Quinn noted that after 20 years the Jumbo Glacier Resort proposal still doesn’t have the necessary rezoning to go ahead. The government says Wildsight’s worries are misguided.

“It’s a matter of improving facilities for Canadian skiers,” said Peter Walters, executive director of tourism operations for the ministry.

Mr. Walters said the road construction has nothing to do with fulfilling the environmental assessment requirements. However, he conceded the proponent must show substantial work on site by October, 2009.

Mr. Walters said the road is an extension of an existing one to serve a new ski training area on the Farnham Glacier.

With respect to the master development agreement, Mr. Walters said the proponent and provincial government continue to work with representatives from the Ktunaxa and Shuswap First Nations on an accommodation agreement with respect to Jumbo.

At that point the province will be in a position to approve the master development plan.

Even if the road work falls within existing agreements, NDP MLA Norm Macdonald says, the protest is an example of the deep distrust local residents have for the B.C. Liberal government, particularly concerning the Jumbo project.

Remote Kamchatka faces ecological meltdown as fish stocks are obliterated

A grizzly bear fishes for salmon. Photograph: Daisy Gilardini/Alamy

Sitting in his snug log cabin next to the swirling Bystraya river, Alexander explained when he went fishing.”Sometimes we do in the day. Sometimes we do it at night. There’s no set time,” he admitted, passing round a tub of mouth-wateringly delicious wild salmon and a chunk of brown bread.

“In the winter we dig holes in the ice and fish. We also shoot geese,” he said, showing photos of himself cradling his rifle in a large snow hole, next to his floppy-eared retriever Bzhik.

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Grizzlies at ‘great risk,’ hunting ban urged
Conservationists press premier on matter

Kelly Sinoski
Vancouver Sun

Monday, July 28, 2008
As hunters prepare for the fall season, conservationists are calling on the provincial government to keep the grizzlies out of the hunt.

A coalition of scientists, conservationists and animal advocates sent a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell Monday, suggesting it ban grizzly hunting  because the population is at “great risk” and needs to be protected.

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080729.BCGRIZZLY29/TPStory/Environment

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

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The Conservation Framework will rank each threatened species and determine what action is needed to protect them

MARK HUME Globe and Mail, July 10, 2008VANCOUVER — With more than 1,600 species identified as being a “conservation concern” and habitat degradation increasing, the British Columbia government has decided to try an innovative approach to protect biodiversity.At a press conference yesterday at VanDusen Botanical Garden, where thousands of protected plants flourish in an idyllic landscape, government officials released a detailed status report on provincial species that are threatened in the wild.At the same time, the government unveiled a new action plan, the Conservation Framework, for saving those endangered species. The plan is to be implemented over the next three years.The status report, Taking Nature’s Pulse, found that 43 per cent of species (1,640) are threatened enough to be of concern, as are four “biogeoclimatic zones” that represent about 5 per cent of the B.C. land base. It also found that 54 per cent (2,055 species) are secure.The groups with the highest proportion of species of concern were mosses, followed by reptiles and turtles, ferns, flowering plants and freshwater fish.Some species of special concern, because their global range is found mostly in B.C., include the Cassin’s auklet, the Cowichan Lake lamprey, the Vancouver Island marmot and the Pacific water shrew.The Conservation Framework proposes to use a complex formula to prioritize or rank each species. Those species will then be sorted into “action bins” that determine what strategies will be used to protect them. Actions including everything from moving to a captive breeding program, setting aside habitat, controlling predators, and simply reducing the harvest levels.Dr. Fred Bunnell, a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia and a scientific adviser to the Ministry of Environment, said no other jurisdiction has used an approach as detailed as the Conservation Framework.But he said a number of states and provinces are looking at the approach and may soon adopt it.Dr. Bunnell praised the science that went into preparing both the status report and the Conservation Framework, but he warned the plan won’t work without more support from government.“It needs a carrot and a big stick. … Without it, it’s just another Kyoto,” he said, referring to the international convention on climate change that failed to meet its goals.Dr. Bunnell said a carrot would be adequate funding to implement the Conservation Framework, and the stick would be legislation that made protecting endangered species mandatory.Devon Page, Ecojustice executive director, agreed with Dr. Bunnell’s assessment.He said he fears the new policy is just an empty promise.“There’s no carrot here and no stick - that’s the problem,” he said.“The science here is great. What they’ve come out with is groundbreaking, but government’s response to the plan is lukewarm,” he said. He noted the province has earmarked only $1.2-million this year for a test implementation of the Conservation Framework.“That’ll buy you a house in Vancouver,” he said. “When you think of the billions of dollars going into the Olympics and the hundreds of millions going into Gateway [highway and port expansion], this is just a ridiculously small amount of money.”Dr. Faisal Moola, director of science at the David Suzuki Foundation, said he’s concerned the Conservation Framework will fail because the government will rely on existing regulations. They haven’t succeeded in protecting species in the past, he said. He said without endangered-species legislation, which would require the government to protect habitat where needed, the Conservation Framework won’t work.“With the fate of thousands of species hanging in the balance and global warming threatening to tip the scales, we were really hoping for [an endangered species] law,” Dr. Moola said.But Chloe O’Loughlin, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, praised the government.“What we have for the first time is hope,” she said. “No, it’s not adequately funded, no it’s not backed by legislation, but it’s a major step forward.”Ms. O’Loughlin said the status report and the Conservation Framework emerged from a collaborative effort between government and environmental organizations, with input from some 50 scientists.“It’s a pretty remarkable effort, and we now have the decision-making tools in place to make a difference,” she said.  

Waiting for the ark
B.C. needs a law to protect its endangered wildlife
 
Faisal Moola and Devon Page
Special to the Sun

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By Cathy Ellis - Rocky Mountain Outlook - July 03, 2008

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   Ian McAllister photo

Several years ago, the B.C. Liberal government lifted a ban on hunting grizzlies, but critics say the decision was based on faulty science.
<http://www.straight.com  By Andrew Findlay
Publish Date: June 26, 2008
The Zodiac glides along the water, nudging up against the bank of a river that flows into the heart of the Fiordland Recreation Area on the central coast. The passengers step out and wade through a lush estuary blossoming with purple lupines and knee-deep in Lyngby’s sedge, a favourite springtime food of coastal grizzlies. Here and there, the fertile alluvium is freshly overturned where a grizzly has clawed the ground to uncover succulent silverweed roots. A quick scan of the broad floodplain with binoculars reveals two grizzlies methodically eating their way along the forest’s edge, their distinctive shoulder humps shimmering with blond-brown fur. Camera shutters click furiously.
More and more foreigners are paying top dollar for the opportunity to see a magnificent grizzly in the wild. British Columbia, though, still permits the sport killing of an animal that is highly evocative of what remains of our wilderness and is regarded as a keystone indicator of ecosystem health. Last year, a record-setting 430 grizzlies died for sport, for animal control, or from poaching, yet the complex science used by government to establish hunting quotas remains at the heart of one of the most controversial wildlife-management issues in Canada. That’s why environmentalists, First Nations, and bear-viewing companies believe the province is risking international shame over the hunting of grizzlies, considered by the federal Species at Risk Act, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, and the B.C. Conservation Data Centre to be a species of special concern.
A recent public-opinion poll that says most British Columbians—73 percent—want the provincial government to end the hunt is adding fuel to the controversy. The poll was commissioned by Pacific Wild, a nonprofit group started last year by Ian McAllister after his split from the Raincoast Conservation Society, an environmental group he helped found more than 15 years ago.

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Governors’ talk on habitat lacks teeth

By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST

June 15, 2008

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By Associated Press

WASHINGTON(AP) - Officials from northern Canada were in Washington on Monday to make an unpopular argument: Let U.S. hunters continue to kill polar bears for sport.

The politicians from Canada’s Northwest Territory asked Interior Department officials to allow U.S. sportsmen to still bring back polar bear hides after their hunts in Canada’s Arctic region, despite the increased protection now afforded the bear under the Endangered Species Act.

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Globe and Mail Article – Exclusive by Mark Hume    June 10, 2008Bear Matters Note: please vote for this article at bottom of page at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080610.wbcbear10/BNStory/National/home MARK HUME From Tuesday’s Globe and Mail

June 10, 2008 at 4:00 AM EDTVANCOUVER — Seven years after the British Columbia government lifted a moratorium on the sport hunting of grizzly bears, a growing number of people want to see the practice banned again.According to a poll to be released today, 73 per cent of British Columbians support an end to the trophy hunting of grizzlies, a substantial increase from the 52 per cent who were opposed in 2001, when the hunt resumed after the newly elected Liberal government overturned a moratorium imposed six months earlier by the NDP.“That’s a 21-point increase since the moratorium was lifted,” said Ian McAllister, director of a non-profit wildlife conservation group, Pacific Wild. “It was an unpopular decision when the government lifted the ban and it’s even more unpopular now.“The people of B.C. are generally more interested in the environment than they were in the past and I think we’re seeing that reflected in the increased numbers,” Mr. McAllister said of the poll, which was commissioned by his organization. “I think the message here is clear: Just ban the hunt.” Mr. McAllister said he hopes the poll, together with voter pressure during an election year, will persuade the provincial government to reinstate the moratorium.“People are getting frustrated over this issue,” he said. “The government has failed to protect grizzly bear habitat … and people are getting tired of hearing about bears being killed for sport.

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