Liz Barratt-Brown's Blog: Saving Wildlife and Wild Places

The hunt starts today: British Columbia parks are grizzly game reserves

2010-04-01T20:32:27Z

Spring is here. After a long hard winter, it is time to get out into the sun again, take a deep breath, stretch our legs and revel in the awakening of the earth. This is true whether you are a human or a bear.

But sadly, in one of the last best grizzly bear strongholds in North America, emerging from their winter hibernation could mean confronting trophy hunters instead. Bears are killed by trophy hunters in British Columbia parks, sometimes still sleepy and groggy with hunger as they emerge from their dens.

In a report released today by the David Suzuki Foundation and NRDC, grizzly bear kills are documented in 60 Provincial parks, including on the B.C.- Alberta border near the Flathead River area of Montana, one of the last areas of significant grizzly bear populations in the United States. Most people consider bears to be safe in parks but, as an indication of how scant protection is, the report documents kills in 47 of their 58 population groups across B.C. The report is accompanied by a map showing bear kills and photos - both beautiful and beastly - of the grizzly and the hunt.

In the lower 48 states, grizzly bear hunting has been banned outright. This ban was enacted in response to our driving the grizzly to the edge of extinction. In 1975, when grizzlies were listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, some 1500 bears remained in the lower 48, where there had been a previous population of 100,000 individuals. One of the first things that happened under these federal protections was a prohibition on grizzly bear hunting. A basic principle of first aid is to “stop the bleeding” and the decision to ban the hunt proved to be an essential emergency room measure.

With the help of the hunt ban, along with other efforts to reduce human-caused mortality and protect habitat, the population here is slowly growing. For example, Yellowstone’s grizzlies are now estimated at roughly 500-600 bears, up from as few as 200 in 1975. But the future of Yellowstone and the other four remaining grizzly populations in the lower 48 states is still very precarious due to other factors, including habitat fragmentation, climate change, and often deadly confrontations with humans.

B.C. has the chance to do it right. By banning the trophy hunt, starting with provincial parks and protected areas, it can make a huge difference in the possibility of survival of this iconic species into the next century. Since 88% of the death at human hands is due to the trophy hunt, a huge reversal in population decline could be achieved by better protecting the bear. This will not only protect the bears in B.C. but would help immensely to restore populations in the U.S., where 4 out of 5 of the existing isolated populations lie along the B.C. border.

In B.C. today, there are believed to be about 16,000 bears. Over 11,000 have been killed by trophy hunters since 1977. One of the highest years for kills coincided with a B.C. government finding that populations were lower than anticipated. It also finds a pattern of kills exceeding hunt limits – set on these overestimated population counts. Today’s report goes into great detail about why these flawed estimates are and will likely continue to be detrimental to the bear unless the hunt is stopped.

So what can be done?

Most importantly, you can let the British Columbia government know that the grizzly bear should be safe from trophy hunting in its parks and protected areas.

Premier of British Columbia

Hon. Gordon Campbell

E-mail: premier@gov.bc.ca

Phone: (250) 387-1715

In the longer run, comprehensive protected areas need to be established for the grizzly, where bear populations can flourish that are large and resilient enough to survive rapidly changing conditions, including impacts resulting from climate change and ongoing habitat fragmentation and development. An influential group of bear scientists sent a letter today urging that significant land be set aside to protect the grizzly. This is especially important in the Flathead River area which straddles the U.S./B.C. border, where grizzly bears are still listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act on the U.S. side. .

And we must work to stem the U.S. and international trade in bear parts, through the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and by working directly with companies like eBay. If hunters were banned from bring home the coveted trophy parts, there would likely be a precipitous drop in kills.

You can help make spring safe again for the bears and really for us, because who can fully enjoy the spring knowing that these magnificent creatures – reminders of a past in which nature was larger than us – can be killed in the very parks that should be their sanctuaries?

Spirit Bear is next “trophy” sought in British Columbia

2010-02-23T16:55:33Z

As soon as the Olympics are over and the crowds that have come from all over the world for the array of winter sports have dispersed, a new visitor will come for a different “sport” – the bear hunter seeking to kill bears for trophies in British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest. How can British Columbia’s government put itself forward as a leader – as host of the Olympics – in Canada one week and the next week allow the backwards and heart wrenching killing of bears as they stumble out of their dens after a long winter’s hibernation?

The government must stop the hunt and stop it now. This is the message that 20 million people from around the world will send to the British Columbia government tomorrow in a full page ad that will run in the B.C. Vancouver Sun (see below). Ian McAllister, one of the most prominent bear advocates in North America and Executive Director of Pacific Wild, shares the sentiment behind the ad in his guest blog on NRDC's Greenlight page today.

NRDC has worked closely with first nations, environmentalists, industry and government to protect the temperate rainforest of British Columbia for nearly two decades. We were integrally involved in the creation of millions of acres of protected forests in Vancouver Island’s Clayoquot Sound and on B.C.’s western coast, the Great Bear Rainforest. NRDC’s very logo is of the spirit bear, one of the most beautiful bears on the planet that appears as a white, cinnamon colored, or black bear. Black bears can have white cubs and vice-versa. The forests have the richest variety of bears on the planet. The bear is the icon of the forest, a point not lost on B.C. when it paraded a giant spirit bear in the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.

The rapid logging and hunting on the coast spurred a massive campaign that started with the indigenous peoples that had lived there for millennia and spread to millions of people around the world, including NRDC’s 1.2 members and activists. Nearly 500 major corporations also joined the call to protect these forests. Since the British Columbia government moved to protect the Great Bear Rainforest in 2001, ending the trophy hunt has been one of the most deadly unfulfilled promises – over 2,000 bears have been killed. It is time to fulfill this promise and not let another year go by in which black bears, some carrying the recessive gene of the spirit bear, and grizzlies can be senselessly killed.

Anyone who knows these forests can’t help but be awed by them. They are replete with giant cedars and firs, stretching up into mist of the rainforest and over pristine salmon streams. The bear has a close relationship with these trees and salmon. It carries the salmon from the stream to eat the fish in the trees. The carcass of the fish are often seen strewn across branches, soon to fertilize the tree and the forest soils. The trees then provide dens for the bears and protection from the sun for the streams, making it possible for the salmon to survive. The bear, salmon and trees are intricately interwoven with one another in a perfect cycle of life.

The people who know this best are the first nations. They have revered the bear – many have bear clans. One of the first nation leaders we have worked closely with on the coast, Art Sterritt, had this to say of the hunt – “"This is not a sport, it is a senseless slaughter, the trophy hunt goes against every moral teaching that we carry and is disrespectful to our culture and values."

The first nations in the Great Bear Rainforest say that the white bear was put there – in their rainforest home – to remind them that their home was once all ice and snow. The bear is there to remind them to protect the magnificent forest that arose when the glaciers retreated. Now it’s the bear that needs our protection. The clock is ticking.

[Click the image below to see the full ad]

Will our leaders rise above the tar pit?

2009-02-12T17:34:00Z

The President will make his first foreign visit to Canada next week. This is a tradition and historically these meetings have been largely ceremonial.

Not so this time. Canada is abuzz with speculation about what directions might be set - particularly on energy policy. The President and Prime Minister agreed that energy and the environment will be top tier issues, along with Afganistan and trade issues. Therefore, it is likely to be the first international forum in which the President addresses climate change, and the world will be watching closely.

But there is a fly in the "tarry" ointment, so to speak. The Prime Minister is pushing "protections" for oil derived from the tar sands. This oil is literally scraped out of pristine forest and, by using huge amounts of energy and water, turned into a very heavy crude oil. It's production, topping 1.5 million barrels per day, comes at a terrible ecological and social cost to Alberta's Boreal forest. The Canadian Boreal forest is one of the world's last large intact ecosystems, our largest terrestrial carbon reservoir, and nursery to one third of our backyard birds and waterfowl. It is also the home to native communities that have lived in peace with the land for thousands of years.

With the leadership of President Obama, America is now looking beyond these extractive and energy intensive fuels to a clean energy future. In this future, more stock is put in renewable energy such as wind and solar and far less in the fossil fuels of the past. The stimulus bill approved by the House and Senate last night has record investments in renewables and in energy efficiency.

But change is hard and old ideas persist. This week, I heard Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress speak about his new book "The Tyranny of Dead Ideas". He describes our greatest challenge as being stuck in an old way of thinking. Andrew Revkin, a journalist from the New York Times, made similar comments saying recently that while global warming frightened him, more frightening is our inability to process the scale of the threat and to act decisively to protect ourselves.

Dead ideas seem to be a major driver in the tar sands. Instead of moving away from extractive, damaging practices of the past, we carry on because we seem almost unable to break away from them.

But next week, when President Obama travels to Canada, there is a chance for some new thinking. And here are some ways our leaders might want to start:

1) Set out a path for a new energy economy: This new economy would provide green jobs and environmentally sustainable energy solutions such as wind, solar power, and low carbon fuels. Already the Provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario are working with Governor Schwarzenegger's Western Climate Initiative to put low carbon fuel standards in place. More collaboration along these lines would be terrific.

2) Agree that there is no such thing as energy security that conflicts with climate security: James Jones, our National Security Advisor, said this week at a major security conference, that our overdependence on fossil fuels endangers our security, our economies, and the health of the planet.

A recent CSIS/WRI study makes the case that there is no room for high carbon fuels in a future that provides climate security.

3) Endorse a framework for action that sharply reduces our global warming pollution through absolute targets: President Obama is proposing that the U.S. adopt a cap on global warming pollution that requires sharp reductions from all emitting sectors. No sector is exempted, including coal. Trading in emissions reductions is allowed, along with some offsets, but there will be tremendous pressure to move to less emitting, low carbon alternatives for generating energy and for our transportation. To date, Canada has not adopted or proposed such a national cap.

Sadly, for Canada, the tar sands stand in the way. The economic interest in exploiting tar sands is driving a very weak Canadian federal policy on climate change. While many of these tar sands projects are coming to a halt due to the economy and price of oil, the Canadian government seems irrevocably captured by them. The tar sands are Canada's largest growing source of global warming pollution. On the U.S. side, importing tar sands oil also produces higher emissions at U.S. refineries, compared to refining conventional petroleum. The solution to both challenges is to reduce oil use by improving vehicle efficiency, producing clean alternative fuels, and improving public transportation. But first we need to break from our old ideas.

So when our leaders gather to discuss these issues next week, we should be on the lookout for technological fixes that keep old thinking alive. One of those is carbon capture and sequestration. While CCS, as it is known, may have greater promise in other applications, it is unlikely to deliver the "silver bullet" to fix the tar sands global warming pollution. And it won't clean up the other problems of air, water and land degradation. It is better to spend the billions on new technologies that don't have the huge downsides of strip mining and drilling for tar sands oil. Alberta has some of the greatest potential for wind power generation but it will take changing the mindset and political system that follows that in Ottawa, Calgary and Edmonton.

We cannot afford to get this wrong, for the climate, for biodiversity and maybe most importantly for ourselves. We need to know that we can move from dead ideas to a future that is more inspiring and more in sinc with nature.

This is where I want our new President to lead us next week. And I think most Canadians feel the same.

Mordor of the North - Tar Sands premiers as “The Most Destructive Project on Earth”

2008-02-28T20:40:35Z

Those who visit the Canadian tar sands in Alberta often describe what they have seen as a visit to Tolkien’s Mordor – miles of open pits and lagoons of toxic waste water and a night sky lit by fires and lights of a great industrial complex where there was once an intact Boreal forest of trees, rivers and fens populated with woodland caribou and nesting birds. In the epic Tolkien tale, the Dark Lord Sauron is willing to destroy everything in his path to build his power base from his dark Kingdom of Mordor and capture the One Ring forever.

And while the exploitation of the tar sands looks frighteningly like Mordor, what may be more analogous is the tale of greed and desperation that would drive oil companies to strip mine and drill for ever harder to access fossil fuels. With the price of oil at an all time high and profits in the billions, even a company that casts itself as “Beyond Petroleum” – British Petroleum – could not resist the dark pull of Mordor of the North and has re-entered the tar sands. As oil reserves in other parts of the world decline, the pull magnifies.

The struggle between the quest for billions, literally scraped out of the earth, and a world fearful that our addiction to fossil fuels will be the planet’s ruin is not new. But what is new is that this story is increasingly playing out in the media – in Alberta, Canada, the U.S. and Europe. And even in the Alberta provincial election itself.

In the last month, there has been a barrage of news stories. One piece following another in such rapidity that even those of us following the tar sands issue closely could not keep up: Billions committed to develop the tar sands and the web of pipelines; pipelines approved and purchased by major oil companies; and refineries readied to take the dirty oil, with potentially enormous increases in carbon dioxide pollution. A piece ran last Friday in the Houston Chronicle with the title, “Canada's oil sands, open arms alluring.”

However, just as many in Tolkien’s Middle Earth warned about the impacts of Mordor’s growing reach, there are those who warn of the repercussions of this new push for tar sands oil. Recent news stories have highlighted the high carbon future tar sands oil will lock us into. Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe and Mail, ran an eight part series, starting with “An empire from a tub of goo,” evaluating the challenges and huge environmental costs of producing oil from the tar sands. Another piece from The Globe and Mail, “The Long Arm of the U.S.,” suggested that just as Canada’s exports of oil and electricity are reaching into the U.S., the U.S. is increasingly extending its environmental protections to include Canada because of a vacuum of leadership there. It explored the role that California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard and Section 526 of the newly passed Energy Security and Independence Act (EISA) will have on limiting the flow of tar sands high carbon oil into the U.S.

Perhaps the most startling piece of all was an editorial in The Times of London– not the more left leaning Guardian or Independent – calling on Shell, BP, and other oil companies to get out of the tar sands or risk not only being called Big Oil but Bad Oil and on the next U.S. President to make this a priority since it was unlikely that “…companies themselves could resolve to end this new filthy habit.”

Does the peaceful hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, and his heir, Frodo, stand a chance against the power of Mordor? What it takes in Tolkien’s tales is a strong Fellowship. We may not have that yet, but the first calls for a slow down in the pace of tar sands oil development might give us the space to choose a better future for ourselves. In what can only be seen as a chink in the armor of the Mordor of the North, major tar sands oil companies have joined with an environmental group and Environment Canada, a branch of the Canadian Federal Government, to propose a moratorium on new leases based on environmental concerns. And the tar sands have become an election issue in Alberta itself.

Yesterday’s Calgary Herald led with the story, “Most candidates in Pembina survey want oilsands slowdown.” A majority of nearly 200 Albertan politicians who are up for election on March 3 are now on record supporting what surely would have been an act of political suicide just a few years ago. This will further isolate the Premier, Ed Stelmach, who has refused to “touch the brake” on developments in the tar sands. The Calgary Herald piece also noted that his most serious opponent, the Liberal leader, Kevin Taft, has said that calls for a moratorium show the province needs to rethink how it’s developing the tar sands and that, if the Liberals were in power, the party wouldn’t approve new tar sands projects until a detailed plan is drafted for managing impacts on the environment, infrastructure and labor.

With the recent release and coast-to-coast pickup of the Ottawa-based Environmental Defense report “The Most Destructive Project on Earth”, a new era for the tar sands has been ushered in. When you hear politicians like Alberta NDP Leader, Brian Mason, quoted saying “The devastation on water and the environment is severe…And it’s really one of the reasons we think we need to be reforming our economy into a green energy economy,” you know the Fellowship is growing and, as in Tolkien’s story, a Fellowship can set us on a better path – this time for our energy future – one that does not carry the cost of the destruction we see in the tar sands.

The Ring is back in play.

PHOTO CREDITS: Tar Sands pits - Garth Lenz; Crane and truck - Pembina Institute

Bearing witness to the myth that tar sands are a clean fuel

2008-01-18T16:59:40Z

Premier Stelmach came to town this week to promote increased production of tar sands oil and was met by protestors and serious questions about the impacts of this production on Alberta and on the U.S. I wonder what he expected? Maybe the good old days (the Edmonton Journal reported this morning that the Premier is meeting with our own VP Dick Cheney today, perpetrator of the secret Energy Task Force). But those days are largely gone and a new urgency about global warming and energy conservation has taken their place. No longer is it really acceptable to come to Washington and talk about environmental concerns around oil production as “myths”.

The Premier returns to Alberta today and we are left to ask what did his visit accomplish? His visit has generated a huge amount of Canadian press with headlines like “Protestors dog Stelmach in Washington”, "Stelmach Mauled in D.C.", “Premier Defends Oilsands in D.C. Visit”, and “Stelmach fights ‘dirty’ image of Oilsands in Washington”. These headlines could, of course, paint the Premier in some parts as Heroic, but more likely than not, they point to a deep misunderstanding about how much the landscape has changed in Washington D.C. and across the country.

Global warming has arrived. Even our new National Intelligence Director recently suggested that global warming is a threat perhaps more serious than terrorism. Multiple members of Congress have introduced legislation to address global warming. The first global warming bill, Lieberman-Warner(PDF), passed 11-8 this fall in the Senate Committee responsible for moving a bill forward. Bills are expected to be taken up in Congress this year.

And who would have thought it could happen? President Bush signed into law a new energy bill that requires that cars meet a 35 miles-per-gallon fleet-wide standard, raising fuel economy standards for the first time in 30 years. The bill also contained a Renewable Fuel Standard that mandates production of environmentally-sensitive biofuels. The provision that may have the greatest impact on tar sand production in the future is the little-known section 526 that prohibits procurement of "unconventional oil" by the federal government that has higher lifecycle CO2 emissions than conventional oil.

At the state level, there is even more activity. 600 mayors have adopted “mini Kyoto-protocols” – the international agreement to cut emissions that the Bush Administration has refused to sign. Eighteen states have made commitments to cap carbon. Twelve states are considering doing the same. And another twelve are considering following the lead of California and adopting Low Carbon Fuel Standards.

This all marks a directional shift that few will say is likely to revert back. All the Democrats running for President have endorsed strong global warming legislation and even a couple of the Republicans, including the arguable front-runner, John McCain. So, in my view, the gig is up. We are becoming a nation that is low carbon-minded if not low carbon in fact. What does this mean for Alberta and for Premier Stelmach? We may not want to commit to a high carbon spider-web of new pipelines and refineries to refine tar sands oil from Canada. We may not want the North American West to become drilled, strip-mined and spoiled for oil. We may not want the Midwest to be refining the dirtiest fuel that can be bought on the market. Maybe we’d rather have our big oil companies invest instead in renewable fuels. After all, it’s about the gas we put in our gas tank and, as a result, we have the right – and the responsibility – to say no to dirty fuels of the past.

When the Premier gets home, I hope he'll put his energy behind cleaning up the tar sands, not waging a PR battle, which history has shown, he is bound to lose.

Photo Credit: Oil Change International 2008

NRDC asks airlines to oppose dirty fuels and cut global warming pollution

2008-01-10T21:37:07Z

Today we are sending letters to 15 U.S. and Canadian airlines asking that they participate in a new campaign we are launching called “Cool Fuels.” We’re asking participants in “Cool Fuels,” to adopt their own corporate “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” and to publicly oppose the expansion of what we are calling “dirty fuels.” Dirty fuels are fuels derived from the tar sands, liquid coal, and oil shale and they may well be our “fuels of the future” if we don’t get serious about developing greener, cleaner alternative fuels. Already over 1 million barrels of tar sands oil is shipped to the U.S. every day. To get this oil, all the big names in the oil industry are up digging the heart out of the Canadian boreal forest, our largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon and home to lynx, bear, caribou, nearly half of our nesting songbirds, and most importantly, aboriginal communities that have lived in peace with the land for millennia.

And getting this oil is dirty business. It has to be strip mined or boiled out of tons of gravel, dirt and peat that was once a beautiful, natural landscape of old growth trees, fens and wetlands. What was once miles upon miles of green and blue forest is now one of the world’s largest industrial landscapes. For every barrel of oil that is produced. 2-5 barrels of water must be used. And for every barrel, over two tons of dirt – or what is euphemistically called “overburden” – has to be disposed of. Massive amounts of natural gas is used, which means using clean fuel to create a dirty fuel, which is like throwing good money after bad. And now they are seriously debating building two dozen nuclear reactors to do the job. Is this what it takes to fuel our addiction to oil? How do we feel about that? As a biologist was quoted saying in a recent, excellent California SacBee piece, what disturbs her the most is that we are destroying their forest to produce this oil and not even trying to conserve. That’s where the airlines come in. Our research shows us that our biggest U.S. carriers, United Airlines, American Airlines, and Southwest, are already using tar sands oil in the Chicago and Denver airports. Northwest is also a big carrier and is likely fueling from tar sands oil at its largest hub, the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. We traced this oil back from the airlines, to the airports, to their fuel distribution terminals, to the refineries and then back all the way to Alberta. It’s a spider web of addiction and it’s growing larger and larger. This doesn’t have to be the case. The airlines have lots of opportunities to substitute fuel efficency and alternative fuels for dirty fuels.

Airlines can reduce their fuel use – through improved air traffic control, routing, descent practices, and moving to electric towing at airports. They can modify their existing planes and, when they need to increase their fleet, to buy new, more efficient models, such as Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner. And they can get serious about developing the next generation of jet fuels – from biobutanol to algae derived fuel. Unfortunately, some of our major U.S. airlines are going backwards, not forwards. United Airlines and American Airlines are on record supporting the expansion of the pipelines bringing tar sands crude to the Chicago region and Jet Blue is on record supporting the development of liquid coal, albeit a “greener” variety. What is alarming is that this seems to be going on below the radar.

Most companies are busy signing on to statements and groups about reducing their global warming impact, but in practice the airlines and the major oil companies, like BP, Chevron, Conoco Philips, Exxon Mobil, Murphy Oil, Shell and Suncor, are all digging themselves deeper and deeper into the dirtiest of dirty carbon dependent future. BP, of the expensive branding campaign, “Beyond Petroleum,” just announced in December that it is investing in the tar sands. So now they must more rightly be called the “Bitumen Polluter,” for the gooey-tarlike substance they’ll soon be mining in what was the home of loons and caribou.

When I think about all this, I feel both despondent and hopeful. Despondent, because I wonder when some of our biggest U.S. companies are finally going to get it beyond ‘greenwashing’ about global warming. And hopeful, because we are all customers of these companies and can let them know loud and clear that we want them to clean up this part of our carbon footprint. A start is by urging them to participate in “Cool Fuels". So let’s get them aboard and get them moving forward, not backwards!