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At the risk of potentially permanent impacts on important Alberta wildlife species, extractive industries are spearheading an unscientific effort to further tamper with nature, targeting Alberta’s wolves for declining woodland caribou health. In reality, scientists have demonstrated that habitat destruction and industrialization are the real threats to the caribou and the entire ecosystem. This classic case of misguided 'wildlife management' is meant to obscure irresponsible industrial development, not to protect iconic Canadian wild species.

Stop Unethical Oil in its Tracks. Sign DeSmogBlog's email petition calling on Environment Canada to reject this anti-science attack on wolves. Let's hold industry accountable for damaging the boreal forest ecosystem, not scapegoat innocent wolves.  

Photo Credit: Neven Bjelic

Sadly, Alberta’s history of covering over regrettable and irresponsible wildlife management runs about as far back as its history of industrial development – a correlation all too evident in the recent caribou recovery charade. 

The Caribou 'Recovery' Backstory

Caribou numbers have been in decline in the province since the early 1960s, although knowledge of their diminishment dates back to the 1920s. But it took until 2001 - after nearly two decades of prodding by the province’s scientists - for the Alberta government’s Endangered Species Conservation Committee (ESCC) to designate the woodland caribou a ‘threatened species.’ The designation, long avoided by the government, invokes a host of legal obligations, most notably, to the province’s Wildlife Act and the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA).  


The ESCC currently refuses to demote caribou to a critically endangered status despite encouragement from leading scientists, and accusations that it is stalling critical protections intended by the Wildlife Act. The Alberta Wilderness Association, one of the key environmental bodies fighting to preserve Alberta’s caribou and halt the needless killing of wolves, has accused the ESCC of protecting industry interests, citing this as the cause behind the ESCC’s continuous failure to act. 

After the ESCC hesitantly listed the caribou species as threatened (a less formidable title than endangered), the Alberta Woodland Caribou Recovery Team was formed. By 2004 the team had developed a thorough working plan to recover caribou populations, making recommendations that covered all sides of the caribou issue, from protecting habitat to minimizing human activity. And each of the team’s recommendations were adopted – but with one surprising exception. 

The Alberta government refused to consent to a key recommendation for “a moratorium of resource development allocations in the range areas of caribou populations at immediate risk of extirpation.” This recommendation isn’t asking a lot: just the halt of mineral and timber allocations in specific regions where the caribou were facing complete desolation. But Alberta’s leaders refused to tolerate any setbacks to forestry or oil and gas development.

Industry Takeover

Photo by Kris Krug

The recovery team was unceremoniously disbanded the following year. The dismissal of the team - and its recommendations - while at odds with the intended purpose of the recovery plan, might best be explained by the presence of some powerful industry voices at the strategy table: Alberta Energy and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), Canada’s largest contingent of petroleum lobbyists. Representing CAPP’s interests on the recovery team were Devon Resources and Talisman Energy.

But nothing explains that twist in the story better than Alberta's staunch fidelity to continued industrial development. And nothing stands to threaten that blind committment more than a band of respected scientists officially recommending a moratorium on certain activities. 

Since 2004, Alberta has made no progress on the issue – the tar sands expansion continues with reckless speed while caribou populations continue to decline.

Alberta’s refusal to consider limiting tar sands expansion – even where caribou herds are facing imminent extirpation (localized extinction) – has led to a wholly unscientific alternative: a concerted effort to shift blame onto the wolves.

In the wake of the recovery team’s dispersal, the Alberta government launched a new official ‘multi-stakeholder’ body tasked with overseeing the province’s Caribou Recovery Strategy: the Alberta Caribou Committee. Then Minister of Sustainable Resource Development, pro-hunt David Coutts, formed the ACC to take over the responsibilities of the Recovery Team.

Science Under Attack

The Alberta Caribou Committee (ACC) describes itself as a “community of Government, Industrial, and Academic partners” working to “integrate industrial activities in northern Alberta with the conservation of caribou and caribou habitat.”

This proposed ‘integration’ of conservation and industrial activities, however, means that independent scientific research is directed by heavy-handed industrial interests and a political agenda. 

Internationally renowned biologist Paul Paquet describes the shared interest of industry and government in Alberta as a threat to scientific integrity. 

There’s a real lack of independence there and there isn’t even independence of most of the government scientists. Most are in a position where they have to represent a provincial concern rather than a scientific one or they’re compromised in some other way,” Paquet told DeSmogBlog. “Its unfortunate.”

Scientist have found themselves fighting for caribou preservation in an impossible set of circumstances, where industry refuses to slow the pace of timber and tar sands development, and the government facilitates this growth in any way possible. 

But perhaps that has something to do with the composition of the ACC

Who Calls the Shots?

The Alberta Caribou Committee is so heavily dominated by timber, oil and gas interests, their public list of members reads like an industry convention brochure: 


Take a look at the Alberta Caribou Committee's website list of sponsoring 'partners':

Notice an overwhelming number of oil and gas and forestry interests entrusted with this 'wildlife recovery' effort?

The list of 'partner' funders of this organization includes, among funding members: EnCana, Canadian Natural, Suncor, and Husky Energy. Energy companies interested in becoming a ‘contributing partner’ are directed to contact a representative from TransCanada Pipelines

Recommendations made by the ACC are done so under the direction of a governance board, also stacked in favor of industry and government interests. The board reports to the Minister of SRD, Frank Oberle. From 1988 until 2004, Oberle worked as a management forester and senior forestry advisor for Daishowa-Marubeni International Ltd., one of the industry members of the ACC. Currently Oberle is an MLA from the Peace River region of Alberta - a constituency heavily involved with the tar sands industry, with a bad caribou track record

With such close steps between industry and the caribou recovery strategy, it's as if industry interests are both calling the shots and pulling the trigger.

This wolf cull seems designed as a concerted effort - at the provincial and federal level - to conceal the cumulative social and environmental impacts of rapid tar sands expansion, keeping the decision-making power in the hands of a small group of industry and government representatives with an embedded industrial agenda.

It appears the government and industry are willing to export Canada's natural resources at whatever cost to our society - and it looks like wolves and caribou just got added to that list of expenses.

The question is, are we willing to pay the steep price of our health and heritage to supply polluting fuels to other countries who don't always share our principles of democracy? 

The public comment period surrounding the proposed caribou recovery plan is set to close February 22nd.


Part 1 in a series on Unethical Oil, please bookmark and follow DeSmogBlog for more.

Image Credits: ShutterstockIrina Afonskaya | Intraclique LLC | Neven Bjelić | Kris Krüg 


I came across this and it smacks of Unethical behavior.


Our previous PM Paul Martin worked very hard for Canada’s First Nations peoples.   He backed the Kelowna Accord http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelowna_Accord , and currently he’s running the Martin Aboriginal Initiative http://mai-iam.ca/ out of his own pocket.

In contrast Harper has labeled First Nations, “Adversaries”, and is planning to ram rod a pipe line through their lands no matter what.


Just so I understand Ethical Oil.. We’re not supposed to buy it from unethical countries… but we’re allowed to sell it to them…

and Systematically Discriminating our Adversarial Aboriginals by forcing an oil pipe accross their lands as is considered Ethical.

Look at all those yummy links. Great post Carol. Thx for using my photos. 

Sad story. I’m letting my sadness turn to outrage… 

Rally the troops. Let’s take a stand! :)

Immoral, unethical, and a crime against nature.
Wildlife “management’ is a farce.
The wolf kill defies the science.
If government scientists and wildlife officers had any integrity, they would resign en masse.
The corruption extends beyond industry and government to the scientific community itself.
Independent university scientists co-operate with the government on wolf control:
“Senseless slaughter of wolves”
The irony is that wolf culls don’t even work.
The wolves just up their reproduction rates in balance with available resources.
Killing wolves and clearcuts increases the deer population, which outcompetes caribou.
How do these people look themselves in the mirror?

Canadian scientists and science journalists are fighting back! A letter to Harper, and an excellent symposium at the AAAS meeting about muzzling of government scientists.

Some links here:


The symposium plays here:


I’ve been out of the loop lately and back trying to get caught up.

Another amazing story, Carol!! Kudos to you.

Yes, oilman, I think you’ve got the gist of ethical oil. It’s okay to produce tar sands under unethical conditions as long as we agree with the premise that Canada is the ‘boy scout’ of the world and would never in a million gazillion years ever do anything to hurt the environment or treat people unfairly.

I’m not sure if I quite follow the logic of the story though. Wolves need to be killed because the tar sands are negatively affecting caribou heards? And since wolves prey on caribou, the government is worried about the caribou herds, but not the wolves? Why? Since when does the government care about any wildlife? Why doesn’t the government just kill all the caribou and all the wolves and any other creatures that get in the way of the tar sands and be done with it?

Well… the oil sands are essentially a pit mine the size of Florida.  They aren’t doing it all at once, but piecemeal.  The result is declining territory for the Caribou. 

Declining territory for Caribou = declining numbers of Caribou.

Solution?  Kill those dastardly wolves who eat Caribou.