The province has given the go-ahead for Cermaq Canada to use up to 2.3 million litres of a pesticide called Paramove 50 to remove sea lice from fish at 14 salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound, but opponents fear the mixture of hydrogen peroxide, surfactants and other chemicals will harm other species and weaken the immune system of farmed fish, making them more likely to contract diseases that could infect wild fish.

Bonny Glambeck, co-founder of Clayoquot Action, a group circulating a petition against use of the pesticide in Clayoquot Sound, said studies show the pesticide can persist in the surface layer of the water, home to marine organisms, such as Dungeness crab, prawns, young salmon and herring.

“Right now the wild salmon smolts are migrating and using the shallow areas to make their way out to the ocean and this is where it will end up when it is dissipating,” she said.

The bigger problem is that it can suppress the immune systems of farmed salmon for two weeks and that means they are more susceptible to viral outbreaks such as piscine reovirus, Glambeck said.

“So just as the young salmon are passing by the farms, we could shock these farmed fish into getting PRV or that becoming HSMI (heart and skeletal muscle inflammation disease) which is deadly to wild salmon,” she said.

Recent studies have confirmed a link between PRV, which is common among farmed salmon, and HSMI.

Although the hydrogen peroxide mixture, called Paramove 50, has been used at other sites in B.C., it has never before been used in Clayoquot Sound and the provincial government says steps are being taken to ensure the pesticide is well-diluted before it is discharged.

A permit application, submitted by Cermaq to the B.C. Ministry of Environment, requests permission to use the pesticide between January 10, 2018 and January 9, 2021 at fish farms in Fortune Channel, Bedwell Sound, Cypress Bay, Herbert Inlet, Millar Channel and Shelter Inlet.

A proposal to pour pesticide directly into pens protected with tarpaulins was turned down and the province is demanding that a well boat be used to reduce the amount of pesticides and minimize the effect on other marine organisms.

“The treatment bath, inside the well boat, will begin naturally breaking down as additional seawater is added before it’s filtered and discharged into the ocean far from shore,” Environment Minister George Heyman said in an e-mailed statement.

In 2011, over 13,000 farmed Atlantic salmon were killed at an east coast fish farm after a well boat treatment that used Paramove 50, according to an incident report filed with Health Canada.

In Norway, 126,000 farm fish died in 2016 during delousing treatment, an event fish farming company SalMar said was likely due to overexposure to hydrogen peroxide.

The government is continuing to look at whether sea lice treatments are scientifically supported and consistent with international best practices and a new interim policy, to guide statutory decision-makers, demands more stringent information-gathering and reporting, Heyman said.

That interim policy will be reviewed “over time” to ensure it is having the desired effect, he said.

“We take very seriously the concerns related to sea lice treatment expressed by First Nations and the public as the the protection of our waters and health of our wild fish stocks is paramount,” he said.

The pesticide Paramove 50, which stuns sea lice, meaning they fall off fish as they rub up against each other, is being used instead of antibiotic insecticides administered in feed, because, globally, sea lice are becoming resistant to antibiotics given to farmed fish.

However, Cermaq says the company wants to use Paramove 50 because the hydrogen peroxide bath treatment has a low environmental impact and is a more natural way to manage sea lice than feeding pesticides.

“It’s important that, as farmers, we have multiple tools in the box to allow us to effectively manage sea lice on our marine farms,” said Cermaq Canada managing director David Kiemele in an e-mailed response to questions from DeSmog Canada.

“The request and subsequent approval for the use of Paramove 50 was our first step in achieving a multi-faceted approach to integrated pest management,” said Kiemele, adding that hydrogen peroxide has been used internationally and in other areas of B.C. without negatively affecting the environment.

The Cermaq website points out that “hydrogen peroxide is almost the same as water, with just one more oxygen molecule,” and that, as long as the treatment is used properly, there are no risks to wild or farmed fish.

The Cermaq website emphasizes that fish farmers take good care of their fish, which are their livelihood, and many steps are taken to ensure the treatment is done properly.

However, for Glambeck, the heart of the issue is that the discussion should not be about the best poison to put in B.C.’s coastal waters, but how to move fish farms out of the ocean.

“It will be a couple of years and then another chemical will be needed. We need to look for long term solutions,” she said.

“The problems of disease and sea lice are global fish farm problems that the industry has not been able to solve — and they are not trying to solve them because of concern about the environment but because it is costing them a lot of money — so the industry globally now is looking towards closed containment,” she said.

Land-based farms are the answer, for the industry and for wild fish, and both levels of government should be working at a transition strategy to support fish farm workers and communities, Glambeck said.

Two major land-based fish farms are opening in Maine, with the global trend towards land-based containment, and B.C. is going to be left out of the game if companies insist that ocean pens are the only way to go, she said.

“We are going to be stuck with 1980’s technology. Our governments need to be investing in moving this industry forward into the new millennium,” Glambeck said.

“At the same time we are losing our wild salmon and allowing them go the same way as the East Coast cod. All the markers are there, the science is there to show we really need to intervene and get these farms out of the ocean,” she said.

Doug Donaldson, Minister of Forests, Land and Natural Resource Operations, who is in charge of provincial aquaculture tenures, has said that the province is interested in moving to closed containment and, with 22 fish farm tenures coming due for renewal in June, both the industry and environmental groups will be watching closely.

Image: Atlantic salmon farm in Clayoquot Sound. Photo: Clayoquot Action

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It was just another evening in Sarnia, February 2017, when the apocalyptic flaring began.

Without warning, enormous flames engulfed Imperial Oil’s petrochemical refinery, spewing plumes of smoke into the air. Nearby houses in Aamjiwnaang First Nation and south Sarnia shook and windows rattled. A foul odour overwhelmed the area.

For the next five hours, the night sky was aglow with vivid oranges and yellows. A grass fire broke out on a nearby lot.

By 11:30 pm, the incident had formally concluded. But flaring continued for the next 10 days.

Since that week and a half of chaos back in 2017, local community members who live near the refinery in Sarnia’s notorious “Chemical Valley” have been pushing for answers from the province and for Imperial Oil to be held accountable for potentially exposing them to toxic chemicals.

Ontario’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change recently released a preliminary incident report after being prompted by an application from Aamjiwnaang First Nation member Vanessa Gray and Ecojustice scientist Elaine MacDonald back in October.

The ministry referred the investigation to its enforcement branch to determine if charges are warranted — a process that could take years.

Experts say it’s an important first step for residents who are surrounded by Chemical Valley’s 57 industrial polluters and often feel their serious environmental concerns are ignored.

“What stood out to us this time was the severity of the event and also not seeing much in the way of follow-up by the ministry,” said Kaitlyn Mitchell, lawyer at Ecojustice.

“We started talking to people about it, because we thought ‘well, if it looked and sounded that big then maybe it had some impacts on people, but that’s not really coming through in any of the ministry’s or company’s updates.’”

Over 500 incident reports filed in Sarnia region in only two years

Sarnia’s Chemical Valley is one of the most notorious spots in Canada when it comes to local environmental impacts.

Around 40 per cent of the country’s petrochemical industry is located in the 25 square kilometre region, producing everything from gasoline, to fertilizers, to plastics.

Imperial Oil’s facility can refine up to 120,000 barrels of crude oil a day as well as produce products like polyethylene and chemical solvents. It’s only one of the nearly 60 industrial facilities in the area.

In 2012 the World Health Organization awarded Chemical Valley with the top spot for most polluted air in Canada.

Such toxic pollutants can include sulphur dioxide and benzene, which can cause serious respiratory and cardiovascular impacts as well as having links to cancer.

A recent collaborative investigation by Global News, the Toronto Star, the National Observer and a number of journalism schools found that over 500 incident reports had been filed in 2014 and 2015 for spills and leaks in the Sarnia area: yet only one public warning had been issued through the municipality’s alert system.

With that said, flaring — used to prevent the dangerous buildup of gas by combusting it as an alternative to releasing it straight into the air as methane — is a routine process in the area and usually doesn’t become an “incident” (although it does result in significant air pollution, including volatile organic compounds, soot and sulphur dioxide).

The uncontrolled flaring that caused the 10-day incident in February 2017 resulted from an equipment malfunction.

But according to the application for investigation filed by Gray and MacDonald, that was the 10th malfunction-related flaring incident at Imperial Oil’s facility since January 2014.

Mitchell said that while the government indicated it was looking into the incident prior to the application for investigation, it became clear that they weren’t aware of many of the impacts on the surrounding community.

“What we would say is that when there’s a massive flaring event, you should not assume unless otherwise told that there were no off-site impacts and community members were not adversely impacted,” she said.

“You should be proactively reaching out. If the flames were big enough to be rattling people’s houses, then I would like to see the ministry knocking on people’s doors and asking them if they did have any sort of impacts or if they’d like to talk to the ministry about the flaring event.”

Warning sirens only went off for a few seconds during flaring

Sarnia has 15 municipal sirens to warn of chemical spills and leaks, as well as a public alert system that uses phone calls, email and text messages.

But when the Imperial Oil flaring incident happened, sirens only sounded for a few seconds.

Many members of the surrounding community, including Aamjiwnaang First Nation, were left without any knowledge of what was happening.

The application for investigation detailed how many attempts were made to contact both the provincial ministry and Imperial Oil to find out details, but to no avail: “The combined effect of these impacts was to cause residents significant fear, as they did not know whether their health and safety was in danger.”

This confusion was aggravated by the province’s failure to conduct any air monitoring during the flaring incident. That left Imperial Oil to conduct monitoring.

“They just went out with these handheld monitors to try to measure levels around the facility,” MacDonald told DeSmog Canada. “The handheld monitors were nowhere near sensitive enough to actually determine whether any air standards were being violated.”

In the following days, Imperial Oil brought in consultants to conduct sampling with more sensitive equipment: but that monitoring didn’t occur downwind or include testing for sulphur dioxide.

While increases in sulphur dioxide levels were noticed on several nearby stations, many of the monitors in the Sarnia region were operated by industry and didn’t provide public information.

“At the time this happened, we had no information on what the monitoring stations were picking up,” MacDonald said. “If it would happen again now, at least we’d be able to look at those air monitoring stations as they’re finally online.”

This means that nobody has firm evidence of the type or quantity of toxic pollution that was emitted during the incident.

In a press release issued on March 1, 2017, Imperial Oil stated: “The disruption Imperial has experienced is not an emergency situation for the community.”

Vanessa Gray, a member of Aamjiwnaang First Nation and co-applicant in the call for investigation, said in an interview with DeSmog Canada that “even the people who are investigating this incident are very dismissive of the adverse effects of personal experiences in the community.

“I feel like that’s the general feeling when Indigenous community members talk to the ministry: they’re very dismissive to our concerns,” she said. “If they’re not looking out for our best interests, then who is?”

‘This happens as part of daily life’

There have been some instances of progress for Chemical Valley’s current approach to air pollution.

In late March, the province of Ontario adopted a new sulphur dioxide standard which reduces the maximum amount a facility can emit within a single hour by almost seven times. The ministry also recently clarified its rules on the tracking of flaring by industry, which has long been accused of being overly ambiguous.

But there’s still much to be done.

The Environmental Commissioner of Ontario identified a series of problem areas in its 2017 report, which devoted an entire section to air pollution in Aamjiwnaang. They include the ministry’s ignoring of cumulative effects of emissions (instead only regulating facilities on an individual basis), an over-reliance on self-reporting by industry, a lack of monitoring equipment and an inadequate approach to warnings and communications.

Onlookers suggest government must also reconfigure its relationship with a community of residents who have been effectively forced to acclimatize to significant air pollution as a way of life.

“The thing that struck me when I was speaking to people was this is not a stand-alone incident,” Mitchell said.

“This happens as part of daily life, in some ways — of course, it doesn’t happen every day but it happens frequently enough that it’s not as alarming or doesn’t seem as surprising to people as it would in other Canadian communities.”

Gray agreed: “It’s not enough that Indigenous activists from Aamjiwnaang have been speaking out against the amount of pollution we’ve been experiencing my whole life. There are reasons that are piling on that there should be more action than there is. But what we’re seeing in Sarnia is they continue to expand. It’s not slowing down. Industry is still proud of what they’re doing.”

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As Tavish Campbell dropped his remote camera into the water close to a salmon farm in the Broughton Archipelago, his heart sank.

Earlier in the day, during a dive, he was awestruck by the sight of an ancient, rare and previously undiscovered glass sponge reef in the water off Port Hardy, but now he was staring into the barren ruin of a second glass sponge reef.

“The one was totally alive and vibrant and healthy and the other one was a wasteland, covered in brown sediment,” Campbell told DeSmog Canada.

The live reef was at a depth of about 30 metres, which is unusually shallow for a glass sponge reef and Campbell did not drop a line into the water for fear of damaging the glass sponges.

“It was a little bit eerie doing the first dive, free-falling through the darkness and then my light illuminated this incredible sight — there were vibrant golden sponges, some standing two metres tall like giant vases. Schools of rockfish hovered over the top, there were king crab on top of the sponges and lingcod rested on the big egg masses with the males guarding the eggs. I was pretty gobsmacked,” Campbell said.

“I could hardly believe my eyes. It was like being on another planet. These sponges are ancient. These reefs have thrived there since the Jurassic (era) and were thought to have died off. It was like finding a herd of living dinosaurs.”

The euphoria of seeing the first reef, teeming with life, contrasted violently with the second site where the sponges were clearly dead and appeared to be smothered by waste and salmon feces from the farm, said Campbell, spokesman for Wild First, a coalition of organizations working to have salmon farms move from ocean pens to land-based operations by 2025.

“It was incredibly disheartening. . .One of my first thoughts was, with more than 130 salmon farms on the B.C. coast, what else is being smothered that we have yet to discover,” Campbell said.

“These sponges rely on clean water, free from excessive sedimentation, but unfortunately this is the exact opposite of the conditions under a salmon farm. With close to a million farmed salmon swimming overhead, the steady rain of feces and feed waste is a death sentence for life underneath.”

The fragile sponges, made of silica, were thought to have gone extinct 40-million years ago until living glass sponge reefs, estimated to be 9,000 years old, were discovered in Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound in 1987. Reefs were then found in Chatham Sound, Howe Sound and the Strait of Georgia

Both of the Broughton Archipelago reefs, about 1.6 kilometres apart, were discovered previously by Jody Eriksson and Campbell’s twin sister Farlyn Campbell, who were doing underwater surveys around open-net salmon farms, and Farlyn then asked her brother to film the area.*

Last year, Campbell filmed the startling “blood water” video showing a stream of blood pouring into the water off Campbell River from farmed salmon processed by the Browns Bay Packing Company. The video sparked an investigation by the province that found the effluent tested positive for the highly contagious piscine reovirus, a virus that can infect wild salmon.

Blood Water: B.C.’s Dirty Salmon Farming Secret from Tavish Campbell on Vimeo.

The dead glass sponge reef was found under Cermaq Canada’s Cecil Island Farm and Cermaq managing director David Kiemele said the company is looking into the claims.

“All of our leases abide by strict environmental regulations about where we can locate farms to ensure we avoid known risks to sensitive marine habitats,” Kiemele said in an emailed statement.

The Cecil Island site has been empty since June 2017 and will remain empty for several more months, Kiemele said.

“The farm is what we refer to as a nursery site where only small fish are grown for short periods of time before being transferred to other farms, so it is not unusual for it to remain fallow for long periods of time,” he said.

Although Kiemele has seen the video, he said there is no way to “clearly understand where this video was shot, at a depth of more than 264 feet,” but that is now being investigated.

Campbell said it was not possible for the remote camera to go directly under the farm, so the video was shot from about six metres outside the perimeter.

Ancient Glass Sponge Reef Smothered By Salmon Farm Waste in B.C. https://t.co/aquTeICDIj #Salmon #Bcpoli

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 27, 2018

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society has been working to protect glass sponge reefs in B.C. for decades and Ross Jameson, CPAWS-B.C. ocean conservation coordinator said the discovery is a wakeup call and demonstrates the need for the federal and provincial governments to work on protecting B.C.’s glass sponge reefs.

“The discovery of these glass sponge reefs is both incredibly exciting and saddening,” Jameson said.

“To find a new living reef is significant on a global scale. However, seeing the complete destruction of one of those reefs is devastating.”

Last year, the federal government established a 2,410 square kilometre marine conservation area in three sites between Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, restricting fishing in about 900 square kilometres.

The plan appears to be successful as there is a 150 metre buffer zone around the reefs to prevent them being damaged by sediment, Jameson said.

The reefs can be damaged by any bottom activity from shrimp fishing and dumping to trawling and more needs to be done by both the federal government and the provincial government, which has responsibility for the seafloor and salmon farm tenures, Jameson said.

Studies are being done on some of the reefs, but CPAWS wants an immediate precautionary approach around the sites so human activities do not destroy them while they are being studied, he said.

“There are about 130 fish farms on the B.C. coastline and we don’t know how many other glass sponge reefs are out there. There’s a good chance that there’s another one under an open net pen farm. We need to put some immediate protection in place,” Jameson said.

“With such limited restrictions on harmful activities along the coast, the discovery could just as easily have been two destroyed reefs,” he said.

Campbell also wants to see both levels of governments offer better protection for the reefs, especially as the province is looking at 22 fish farm tenures coming up for renewal in June.

Glass sponge reefs, which act as a giant ocean filter and essential habitat for marine life, are found only in B.C. and Alaska and, last December, the federal government added the Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound reefs to Canada’s tentative list for World Heritage Sites.

* Update: April 30, 2018 3:45pm pst. This article previously stated Jody Eriksson and Farlyn Campbell discovered the glass sponge reef earlier spring and has been updated to reflect the fact the reef was discovered prior to this spring.

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The continuous flow of dangerous pollution from B.C.’s Elk Valley coal mines into a Montana watershed is a top discussion item for Canadian and U.S. delegates convening at a bilateral meeting in Washington, D.C., Thursday.

Selenium from five metallurgical coal mines owned and operated by Teck Resources has been leaching into B.C.’s Elk River and flowing southeast into Montana’s Kootenai River watershed for decades. Contamination levels measured in U.S. waters exceeds maximum concentration limits outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Selenium is released from waste rock piled at Teck’s large-scale open-pit coal mines, where rainfall and snowmelt draw it into the Elk and Fording Rivers. Selenium can be harmful to biological organisms at even small amounts and causes deformities in fish and birds.

Michael Jamison, program manager with the National Park Conservation Association’s Glacier Field Office in Montana, said it’s a good sign the pollution of the transboundary watershed is on the bilateral agenda.

“People have been discussing the transboundary water issue between B.C. and Montana as a potential agenda item for the bilaterals for over a decade,” Jamison told DeSmog Canada. “They’re finally there.”

The decades-old problem of contamination received new attention from top U.S. officials, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who vowed to put pressure on his Canadian counterparts to address the ongoing pollution problem.

Montana Senator Jon Tester has been raising the profile of the issue for years, saying the Kootenai watershed, which is a popular spot for recreational fishing and outdoor activity, is threatened by B.C.’s pollution.

Tester pushed for the Kootenai to be included in the recent U.S. government-spending bill, signed by President Donald Trump, which lists reducing the pollution flowing into the watershed as a budget priority.

“It seems like there’s some traction here that we’ve been missing for some time,” Jamison said.

“But this is what baffles me — it’s bad enough that us in Montana, the U.S. State Department and tribes on this side of the border are prioritizing it. But it must be so much worse farther north.”

“I guess I don’t understand how B.C. puts up with that.”

Teck was the single largest donor to the BC Liberal party, which governed B.C. for 16 years until last year. Between 2008 and 2017, the company gave $1.5 million to the BC Liberals. The company also donated $60,000 to the B.C. NDP in that same period.

Teck’s ongoing selenium nightmare

The reality of Teck’s selenium problems have unfolded over the last decade as the company has tried — unsuccessfully — to introduce an effective water treatment facility.

In October 2017 Teck pled guilty to three violations of the federal Fisheries Act for its pollution of the Elk River and was fined $1.4 million for a 2014 fish kill near the company’s Line Creek wastewater treatment plant.

The $600 million water treatment plant had only been in operation for four months when the fish kill — which included local bull trout, a species of special concern — occurred.

An expert report prepared for Environment Canada in 2014 found selenium poisoning caused spinal, head and skull deformities, missing fins and disfigured gill plates in fish eggs brought to laboratories to be hatched.

“As these surface mines have expanded, so has the volume of their selenium-laden water discharges to nearby stream and rivers,” Dr. Dennis Lemly, research associate professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, wrote in his report.

Lemly warned the Elk River watershed was at a tipping point and that further increases in selenium concentrations could lead to a “total population collapse of sensitive species such as westslope cutthroat trout.”

Erin Sexton, senior scientist with the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station told DeSmog Canada that B.C. has granted permits for Elk Valley mines that allow for selenium levels ranging from 70 micrograms per litre to 19 micrograms per litre while the provincial criteria for protection of aquatic life is 2 micrograms per litre.

U.S. EPA regulations limit acceptable selenium pollution levels to 1.5 micrograms per litre.

Jamison said the rules don’t seem to apply to Teck’s mining operations in B.C. even after the company has been found to be in violation of provincial regulations.

“The regulators up north said, ‘nah that’s cool. As long as you promise you can fix it, you get your permit,’ ” he said.

“Whereas down here we have different methods to review, permit, monitor and regulate mines. And there’s not a lot of wiggle in it.”

“The lines seem to be drawn in ink on the U.S. side, and in pencil on the Canadian side.”

In the fall of 2017 Teck shut down the Line Creek water treatment plant after it found the facility was releasing a more bioavailable and thus more toxic form of selenium into the region’s waterways. Teck has since notified the B.C. government the treatment plant will be offline until 2018.

“Teck has invested millions in multiple treatment technologies, and at least twice they have shut down their one and only treatment plant, due to impacts to fish,” Sexton told DeSmog Canada.

“First for a fish kill, and now for a technology ‘error’ resulting in bio-concentration of selenium in the wastewater — the exact opposite intent of the treatment.”

Sexton, who has studied transboundary water quality for the last decade, said Teck and the B.C. government have not been forthcoming with their data on these issues.

“Frankly, we collected our own data in the Elk River system — the Flathead Lake Biological Station collected data for water quality and bugs — and Montana Fish and Game collected data for fish — because of the lack of data availability, transparency, and scientific objectivity that has characterized this issue for over a decade,” she said.

B.C. Minister of Environment George Heyman was unable to provide comment by time of publication.

“The lines seem to be drawn in ink on the U.S. side, and in pencil on the Canadian side.” https://t.co/f5UhxC79WC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 26, 2018

Mine permits issued despite Teck’s prolonged pollution problems

Dave Hadden, executive director of Headwaters Montana, said he’s pleased to see the Kootenai listed on the bilateral agenda, but is concerned neither short-term nor long-term solutions are clearly at hand.

“This is a multi-century problem,” Hadden told DeSmog Canada. “The problem is not going to go away and there needs to be a mechanism that finds a solution for addressing a multi-century problem that is fair to Canada, fair to the U.S. and that provides mitigation for these impacts.”

Headwaters Montana is one of a coalition of groups asking B.C. follow international water quality standards before new Elk Valley coal mines are approved.

Lars Sander-Green from B.C. conservation group Wildsight said B.C. actively grants permits and approvals to Teck that not only maintain operations but allow for expansion.

“It’s more than just up and running. In order to continue mining and exporting coal they continue to expand their footprint, which means expanding their waste rock piles and the selenium problem,” he told DeSmog Canada.

A 2016 report from B.C. auditor general Carol Bellringer found it concerning that permits were granted to Teck Resources to expand its Line Creek Mine after staff at the Ministry of Environment found an expansion of the mine would exacerbate selenium pollution problems.

At the time, the BC Liberals granted a permit for the expansion invoking — for the first time in B.C. history — section 137 of the Environmental Management Act, which allows government to introduce waste into the environment if deemed in the public interest.

“Perhaps we should be looking at a temporary moratorium, additional fines or compensatory mitigation with biological offsets in other areas given the legacy of impacts they have created in the Elk,” Sexton said.

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The effects of climate change can be complex and unpredictable. For one species of Arctic duck, the result is a tense standoff between population growth and decline.

Eiders are a species best known for their light, fluffy down. Each spring the birds return to their coastal tundra colonies and build nests on the ground, protected only by a low profile.

A new study has shown the warming Arctic and earlier spring melt is in one way a boon to the birds: it gives them access to their underwater feeding grounds sooner. That means more females can fatten up, and possibly lay more eggs as well.

But the dwindling ice also brings more polar bears ashore in search of food. The bears prefer hunting seals, but that hunt requires sea ice.

Once ashore, a few bears can devastate an entire colony, eating all of its eggs in a matter of days.

The product has the eider population sitting on a knife’s edge.

“Those two effects — the more females breeding and larger clutch size — actually almost perfectly cancel out in our models the effect of polar bears eating more of their eggs,” explained Cody Dey, a researcher at the University of Windsor.

This effect has shown up since the early 1990s, when researchers on the Nunavut island surveyed by Dey and his colleagues rarely spotted bears ashore.

“Now we’re seeing pretty much 90 per cent of nests have been depredated by polar bears,” said Dey.

“This is probably the largest eider colony in the world and it’s having pretty much no reproductive output at all.”

Studies of how well this strategy works for the polar bears have suggested it isn’t a viable way for the large carnivores, which depend on fatty seals for nutrition, to make up the difference and survive long-term.

The effect on the nests, meanwhile, is devastating. In one field season, researchers watched as every nest but one was raided by polar bears; the sole remaining nest was inside the field camp’s electric fence.

The scientists’ models showed that the balance should remain in place for the first half of the century, but Dey admits that unexpected factors — for example, faster spread of diseases — could “throw the models out the window.”

Eiders are not the only species held in the balance as climate change alters the world around them. A 2014 paper published in the journal Climate Change Responses showed that in studies of insect-plant relationships, a third showed a relationship like that between the eiders and polar bears: climate change was helping one while also helping another that hindered it.

In some parts of the Arctic, polar bears have been increasingly relying on bird eggs for nutrition. Studies have shown that that may not be enough to make up for a loss up seal blubber in their diets. Photo via Evan Richardson.

Locally driven research

The duck study began when multiple communities in Hudson Strait in eastern Nunavut told researchers they had started to notice polar bears increasingly coming into bird colonies in the area.

Dey’s supervisor Grant Gilchrist had built strong connections within the communities, and those relationships guided the research.

The scientists have also kept the communities involved in the research process, employing guides, boat drivers and research assistants in fieldwork. When the study is finished, Dey says the results will be shared with community members as well.

“That’s really where the power from research comes from, is knowing the results,” he said.

Dey and his colleagues in the Liber Eros fellowship recently wrote an op-ed in the magazine Policy Options calling on the federal government to formally include Indigenous traditional knowledge and partnerships with northern communities in its upcoming Arctic Policy Framework.

“This is the approach to Arctic research that we need to support: research shaped by northerners that addresses the needs of northern communities,” the authors wrote.

The op-ed also called on the federal government to build more infrastructure in the North, such as enhancing internet connectivity in a place where just 27 per cent of households have access.

“Combined with few roads and the high cost of air travel, these communication barriers limit the exchange of information and exclude ideas that could improve policy and practice,” they wrote.

As the eider study and its surprising result shows, that exchange of ideas can bear unexpected fruit, for both researchers and communities.

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As pipeline politics dominate headlines, British Columbia is poised to overhaul the process that guides how major resource and development projects proceed.

The review now underway of the environmental assessment process has the potential to restore public confidence in the system that evaluates large developments — from open-pit coal mines to pipelines to hydro dams — by considering the combined effects of multiple projects in a single region and instituting other sweeping changes that critics say are long overdue.

“We had this ridiculous situation in northern B.C. where we had 18 LNG projects, five different pipelines and an oil export project all proposed at the same time here,” said Greg Knox, executive director of the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust.

“People were asking ‘can Kitimat handle these LNG facilities, plus [the] Enbridge [Northern Gateway pipeline], plus [the] Rio Tinto’ [Alcan aluminum smelter], and wondering how it would all impact the environment and people’s health.”

The projects would have affected local air quality at a time when the B.C. government had already granted a permit to the Rio Tinto Alcan smelter allowing the company to increase sulphur dioxide pollution in the Kitimat airshed by more than 50 per cent.

Under B.C.’s current regulations, each resource project is assessed separately, as though the others do not exist. There is no mechanism to study the cumulative impact of various projects on, for example, a single caribou herd, or on overall water or air quality in a community like Kitimat.

Concern about additional air pollution from LNG plants prompted the Kitimat community to ask the B.C. government to conduct a regional environmental assessment to address the combined impact of all the projects and figure out how to proceed with fewer ecological and community impacts.

“We had pipelines going everywhere when it would have made sense to have a pipeline corridor,” Knox said.

But the request was ignored, Knox said.

“They refused. They basically sent some form letter. They rejected doing a regional environmental assessment. It was a boilerplate response.”

The Elk Valley coal mines in southeastern B.C. are another case in point when it comes to the cumulative impacts of resource projects. The valley, which is part of one of North America’s most important wildlife corridors, is home to five operating coal mines.

More than 100 years of coal mining has polluted the Elk River with worrisome contaminants such as selenium, a heavy metal highly toxic to fish and birds. Yet each new mining proposal is examined as though it is the only project polluting the river.

B.C. Auditor General Carol Bellringer flagged the government’s failure to manage the cumulative impacts of the Elk Valley mines as a cause for concern, pointing to the environment ministry’s failure to address known environmental issues and the “lack of sufficient and effective regulatory oversight and action” that has allowed the degradation of water quality.

B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman has said the review of the environmental assessment process is designed to restore public confidence in the system.

But how far must the changes go to examine the impacts of a proposed project like a coal mine expansion in the context of other significant resource projects in the same watershed or airshed? Or to prevent projects staunchly opposed by First Nations from advancing through the system at considerable cost to taxpayers?

Decisions currently made in ‘black box’

West Coast Environmental Law lawyer Gavin Smith and other experts say the overhaul of B.C.’s environmental assessment regime must address the lack of a clear rationale behind government decisions to grant certificates to projects with grievous impacts on First Nations and the environment — projects such as the $10.7 billion Site C dam.

“What’s been happening is that the environmental assessment regime goes into a black box,” Smith told DeSmog Canada.

“All of this work on the assessment happens, and it goes to ministers and they just make a decision. Communities are left feeling like all the time and effort they’ve put into the process has been totally ignored. It’s not actually even clear on what basis the decision was made.”

The B.C. government issued an environmental assessment certificate for the Site C dam in 2014, even though First Nations are fighting the project in court and the dam will cause more ecological damage than any project ever examined in the history of Canada’s Environmental Assessment Act, according to more than 200 leading Canadian scholars.

Only three projects ever rejected in B.C.

No matter how environmentally egregious a project is, or how intense the opposition from First Nations and other local communities, when a major resource project exits B.C.’s current environmental assessment process it is almost certain to be stamped “approved.”

“Even projects which, according to federal law, have been found to have unjustifiable impacts on the environment and on Indigenous culture and governance have been approved through the provincial system,” Smith said.

“It’s a pretty strong indication that the system is built to facilitate getting to yes.”

Only three projects have ever been refused a B.C. environmental assessment certificate, according to an email from the provincial environment ministry.

The Ajax mine, a 1,700-hectare open-pit gold and copper mine proposed for the outskirts of Kamloops by Polish mining giant KGHM, is the only project to be rejected in the past seven years.

A proposed landfill for Metro Vancouver garbage, on the Ashcroft Ranch near Cache Creek, was turned down in 2011, while the Kemess North gold and copper mine north of Smithers was rejected in 2008 — but then approved last year.

Rejected projects often return

Smith said there must be mechanisms built into the revamped environmental assessment process to ensure rejected projects can’t simply be tweaked and re-tendered.

Lawyer Sean Nixon vividly remembers his reaction on the day he heard Taseko Mines had submitted a new plan to extract gold and copper from the area around Fish Lake in B.C.’s interior, a lake sacred to the Tsilhqot’in Nation.

“The first response was incredulity,” recalled Nixon, who had represented the Tsilhqot’in National Government several years earlier during the environmental assessment for Taseko’s project, dubbed the “Prosperity” mine.

The B.C. government granted Taseko a provincial environmental assessment certificate in 2010.

But Ottawa refused to issue a federal certificate, largely because the mine would drain Fish Lake — known as Teztan Biny to the Tsilhqot’in Nation — and turn part of it into a toxic tailings pond that would destroy rainbow trout habitat and wetlands.

That was supposed to be the end of the matter.

But then the project was back again. This time, when Nixon heard about it in 2011, it had a different name: Taseko called it the “New Prosperity” mine.

The project was virtually the same, with one major exception. The company said it would move the tailings pond upstream from Fish Lake — enough of a change to spark a second federal environmental assessment review, at an unknown cost to Canadian taxpayers.

In B.C., the process the company went through was a breeze by comparison. Taseko merely requested an amendment to its environmental assessment certificate, which was duly approved by the provincial government even though Taseko lacked a clear plan to keep tailings pond contaminants out of Fish Lake.

“The province didn’t need details about how the company planned to keep chemical contaminants from destroying the lake,” Nixon told DeSmog Canada. “The mining company said it would work out the details later. And B.C. accepted that claim at face value.”

As with the Prosperity mine, there’s nothing to stop the Ajax project from being re-submitted to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office with modifications and a new name.

The KGHM website still lists Ajax as a project “under development,” and the company has said it is considering its options.

Early-planning phase would axe non-starter projects

Smith says the revamped system needs to include the ability for the B.C government to say “this project doesn’t stand a reasonable likelihood of success so we’re not wasting taxpayer money doing, for example, a third assessment on a project that’s already been rejected.”

Sustainability criteria — such as targets for maintaining air and water quality – need to be built into the law, and decision-makers need to justify their decisions based on these criteria, Smith said.

To deal with projects as controversial and destructive as the Site C dam or the New Prosperity mine, Smith said B.C.’s environmental assessment process needs to include an “early planning phase,” during which the views of First Nations and other local communities are taken into account well before the project advances through the system.

Perhaps the project is “a total non-starter from the get-go,” said Smith, in which case communities should be able to say “there’s no way this project is going to happen.”

In the case of Taseko, the former B.C. Liberal government approved exploration permits for the New Prosperity project last summer during its final days in office, while Tsilhqot’in members were under a wildfire evacuation notice, even though the federal government had also refused to grant the project an environmental assessment certificate the second time around.

The company subsequently took the federal government to court and lost in December.

Yet Taseko’s website still lists the New Prosperity mine as one of the company’s five properties, while noting “there is considerable uncertainty with respect to successful permitting of the project.”

Smith said he would be surprised if the company submitted a third iteration of the project to the B.C. Environmental Assessment Office. But until B.C.’s environmental assessment process changes, he said, “on paper, Taseko’s New Prosperity project still exists and is still a risk.”

A 12-member advisory committee, led by ecologist Bruce Fraser and Lydia Hwitsum, former Cowichan Tribes chief and former chair of the First Nations Health Council, is due to release a discussion paper on the review process in May, including feedback from the Environmental Assessment Office.

After a public comment period, the government will introduce reforms in the late fall.

The federal government is simultaneously overhauling its environmental assessment process with Bill C-69, but the bill has been criticized for falling short in several key areas.

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Canadians are being urged to fight against a push by U.S. President Donald Trump to fast-track drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the calving grounds of Porcupine caribou herd.

The Trump administration, which last fall slipped a provision allowing drilling in the Arctic Refuge into an unrelated tax bill, is forging ahead with plans to prepare for a mandatory environmental review of the decision and the Bureau of Land Management will be accepting comments from Americans and Canadians for the next 60 days to map out the scope of the review.

The Porcupine caribou herd, with up to 200,000 animals, undergoes the longest land mammal migration on earth, travelling 2,400 kilometres between their calving grounds in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, through the boreal forest and into the Yukon and Northwest Territories

Gwich’in communities — home to Indigenous people who have subsisted off the land for millennia — call the calving grounds “the sacred place where life begins.”

Now, with the future of the herd and the people who rely on the caribou under threat, the Gwich’in people, along with non-governmental agencies and environmental groups are urging Canadians to speak out and speak loudly, especially as the Arctic is already being affected by climate change.

‘A deeply Canadian issue’

“This is a deeply Canadian issue,” said Chris Rider, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Yukon Chapter.

“Disturbing this fragile ecosystem could have a disastrous effect on the health of the Porcupine caribou herd and the Gwich’in. We need to tell the Trump administration that the only option at this point is simple: stop. Oil and gas development has no place in the heart of the Porcupine caribou’s calving grounds.”

Canada’s federal government objected last year to drilling in the refuge, which is also home to polar bears and hundreds of migratory bird species, but now, with the Trump administration poised to sell leases in the refuge as soon as possible, a public outcry is needed, say opponents of the drilling plans.

One tool could be a treaty signed between the government of Brian Mulroney and Ronald Reagan in 1987. The treaty requires both governments to “take appropriate action to conserve the Porcupine caribou herd and its habitat.”

‘Stand with the Gwich’in for what is right’

Dana Tizya-Tramm, a Vuntut Gwitchin councillor in Old Crow, Yukon, and the lead on Arctic Refuge work for the First Nation, said drilling in the refuge would threaten one of the last healthy, barren-ground caribou herds on earth and jeopardize an entire way of life.

“The needless threat of developing the Porcupine caribou herd’s calving grounds on the coastal plain of Alaska has now elevated this issue to involve all of North America. It is not just the Gwich’in or Indigenous peoples’ loss, but all of North America’s last healthy caribou herd whose future is now in question,” he said.

The push for drilling signals to the Gwich’in that their traditional knowledge and warnings about the stability of Arctic ecosystems are disregarded by U.S. leadership, Tizya-Tramm said.

“Heed the call, stand with the Gwich’in for what is right. We must each ask ourselves what is more important to us, life or oil,” he said.

Gwich’in Call on Canadians to Speak Out Against Trump’s Arctic Drilling Push: https://t.co/kzCcyEv0Jx #ANWR #cdnpoli #indigenous #caribou

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 21, 2018

Caribou herds in peril

In Canada, caribou numbers have dropped by more than 50 per cent, with some herds wiped out and others declining by more than 80 per cent, but the Porcupine herd is the exception, largely due to a relatively intact range.

Caribou are incredibly sensitive to light and sound and any construction in their calving grounds, during one of the most vulnerable phases of their lives, could lead them to abandon the area altogether, Rider said.

The race to overcome barriers to drilling, such as the necessity for an environmental review, is seen as the Trump administration trying to ensure leases are sold quickly and work starts well  before the 2020 election, making it difficult to roll back legislation.

However, U.S environmental groups are vowing to fight all the way and believe that a hefty number of Americans are on their side.

“Most Americans oppose the Trump administration’s headlong rush to drill and desecrate this sacred place, which will inevitably end up in court,” said Jenny Keatinge of Defenders of Wildlife.

Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, a U.S.-based land conservation organization, said that by pushing for a lease sale next year, the administration is admitting that they have no intention of seriously evaluating the negative impacts of oil development on wildlife, even though the science clearly indicates there will be significant effects.

Adam Kolton, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, said the Trump administration’s secretive work to push for Arctic drilling is a disgrace.

“When we have an administration using Twitter to fire cabinet secretaries and rewrite plans for the entirety of America’s coastline, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised at the reckless, warp speed approach it is taking to put up oil rigs in one of the most iconic and wildest places left in America,” he said.

“Forget minimal effort, they can’t even be bothered to fake the effort needed to assess the impacts of leasing on wildlife and the environment or meaningfully consult with the Gwich’in people whose culture is at stake,” he said.

Meanwhile, the B.C. government is asking for public input on a three-year, $27-million provincial caribou recovery program.

The money will be used to build a science-based approach to preserving B.C.’s 54 herds, as the number of woodland caribou in B.C. has declined from 40,000 to less than 19,000 since the early 1900s, says a government news release.

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Peace River Valley farmers Ken and Arlene Boon were at a lookout on a neighbour’s property on Sunday when they spotted a fresh landslide at the Site C dam construction site.

Arlene snapped some photos of the latest geotechnical issue to dog the troubled project and posted one on Facebook, with the caption: “just more of the north hill sliding down to the bottom.”

Given that the slide is on the same hill where recent attempts to stabilize the riverbank are encroaching on infrastructure for the $470 million Site C dam workers’ camp, including its water line and parking lot, the couple was not surprised to see the latest slump.

But they are astounded that the NDP government is keeping the public in the dark when it comes to details about geotechnical problems, rising contract costs and other major issues plaguing the largest publicly funded infrastructure project in B.C.’s history.

“It seems that under the NDP there’s a bigger cloak of silence,” Ken Boon, president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association, told DeSmog Canada.

“They’re just going to sit on all this bad news. It’s out of sight and out of mind.”

A landslide at the SIte C construction site, April 15, 2018. Photo: Arlene Boon

No public access to detailed Site C information

As soon as the B.C. Utilities Commission completed a fast-tracked review of the Site C project last November, the door slammed shut on public access to detailed information about the $10.7 billion project on the Peace River in northeast B.C.

Normally, the independent utilities commission — acting in the public interest — would provide ongoing oversight during project construction.

But the former BC Liberal government changed the law to remove the BCUC from scrutinizing the Site C dam, which the commission had previously rejected as an energy option.

Instead of fully restoring the commission’s watchdog role, the NDP government announced in December that it would create a new Site C “Project Assurance Board” as part of a turnaround plan to contain escalating project costs.

The new board has been meeting since January, even though its composition has not been finalized, according to an email from the B.C. energy ministry.

Yet the public has heard nothing about the board’s findings, even though a major Site C contract — to build the project’s generating station and spillways — was recently awarded for $350 million more than documents (accidentally released last fall) revealed that BC Hydro had budgeted.

Marc Eliesen, the former CEO of BC Hydro, Ontario Hydro and the Manitoba Energy Authority, pointed out it has been nearly half a year since the NDP government announced it would set up the new board, and that no information has been forthcoming about the apparent cost overrun on the major contract for the generating station and spillways.

“To me this further confirms that there is no independent overview and that BC Hydro continues to run the show,” Eliesen told DeSmog Canada.

BC Hydro directors will help oversee Site C project

According to the email from the energy ministry, BC Hydro directors and government representatives will sit on the project assurance board, meaning that it is not an independent body.

The composition of the board is being finalized by BC Hydro and the government, and members will be announced “in the coming weeks,” the ministry said.

“We are taking the time to conduct a broad search to find highly-qualified, independent external advisors with expertise in engineering, construction and management of large, complex infrastructure projects to join BC Hydro directors and representatives from government on the new Project Assurance Board,” the email said.

“Finding the kind of specialized skills, experience and independence from BC Hydro that we are looking for in the independent advisors is taking some time, especially considering the size and complexity of Site C and the long-term commitment required for a project that wont be completed until 2024.”

Both Eliesen and David Vardy, the former chair and CEO of Newfoundland’s public utilities board, said they have never heard of a provincial government creating a “whole new body” to oversee a major energy project like Site C.

“I think that the BCUC should be doing this oversight,” Vardy said in an interview.

“The logical thing to me seems to be to use an existing board that has a similar kind of mandate. The BCUC is concerned with rates and the reliability of power. Why wouldn’t they be the best people to exercise this oversight and particularly to ensure quality control?”

Eliesen said the BCUC showed through the Site C inquiry that it has both “the knowledge and expertise to undertake such a ongoing review.”

“The facts clearly reflect that both the government and BC Hydro do not want that monitoring by the independent commission.”

Meanwhile, in Labrador and Manitoba…

In Newfoundland and Labrador, a $37.5 million Commission of Inquiry is underway — including a forensic audit — to determine where things went sideways with the hugely over-budget Muskrat Falls dam, whose $12.7 billion price tag will add $1,800 a year to the annual hydro bills of every household in the province.

Vardy said while the commission can pinpoint what went wrong and make recommendations, it can’t address what he calls the “democratic deficit.”

“Which is what happened in our governance system that allowed us to go down this road without correction,” Vardy said in an interview.

In Manitoba, where the over-budget Keeyask dam is also causing hydro rates to soar, the former head of the province’s Public Utilities Board is among those calling for a forensic audit to examine why things went so wrong.

Graham Lane, who chaired the utilities board from 2004 to 2012, said the situation in Manitoba is so dire that he and others are calling for an immediate halt to construction of the Keeyask dam, even though up to $4.5 billion in sunk costs have been incurred.

That compares to about $2 billion in sunk costs for Site C.

“This story isn’t going to end very well,” Lane, a retired chartered accountant, said in an interview. “It’s never too late to stop.”

Manitoba hydro customers now face compounding eight per cent rate increases each year for six years in a row as a result of over-spending on the Keeyask dam and related transmission lines.

In a paper Lane wrote last month, for an inquiry into the Keeyask dam fiasco launched by an independent MLA, he pointed out that knowledgeable observers saw the “slow-motion disaster” coming more than a decade ago.

“Hard questions need to be asked about governance, political oversight, the influence of engineering contractors, the competence of executive managers, the advice provided by consultants, and the role of labour unions in this train wreck,” Lane wrote.

“Special attention also needs to be placed on the lack of action by the Premier, his cabinet and advisors to grasp the immensity of the problem and take appropriate actions.”

There are many similarities between the Muskrat Falls, Keeyask and Site C dams, Lane told DeSmog Canada.

He said politicians in Manitoba “put blinders on and just kept going.”

“No-one knew how to stop. You could see what was happening. You could see the losses building.”

Lack of independent scrutiny of Site C ‘mind-boggling’

Asked if the findings of the Site C Project Assurance Board will be made public, the energy ministry replied that “progress” on the Site C dam will continue to be documented in quarterly reports to the BCUC available on BC Hydro’s Site C website.

Yet the hamstrung BCUC lacks the muscle to question basic information contained in the reports, much less to dig into issues like why the approved design for Site C’s generating station and spillways recently underwent an overhaul so significant BC Hydro must request an amendment to the project’s environmental assessment certificate, a process that will take months.

The BCUC also has no authority to ask questions about why the latest Site C quarterly report states that in October BC Hydro engaged the consulting firm Ernst and Young to “provide independent oversight to the Project Assurance Board for the Site C Project going forward.”

The BCUC did not submit its final report on Site C until November 1 and the NDP government did not announce its final decision about the project until December.

The latest report, which covers the period to the end of December, also says the Site C dam will provide energy for “more than 100 years,” contradicting earlier government statements that the project will generate 70 years of power.

The report goes on to list major Site C project organizational changes, including an array of new director positions, noting that the “scale and complexity of operations” has increased” and also that project oversight has been centralized.

Eliesen called the lack of independent scrutiny of Site C dam construction, including of the quarterly reports filed with the BCUC, “mind-boggling.”

A spokesperson for the Peace River Hydro Partners, the international consortium that holds Site C’s largest civil works contract, referred questions about the landslide captured on camera by the Boons to BC Hydro.

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The much-studied South Selkirk mountain caribou herd is teetering on the brink of extinction.

That discovery this month has focused international attention on the disaster faced by the only herd that roams between the U.S. and Canada, but biologists are warning that the crisis extends to other herds in the south of the province.

The southern mountain caribou population has dropped to about 3,800 animals this year, down from about 4,500 last year, according to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), which is calling for emergency action to protect critical habitat.

“For decades B.C. has failed to protect sufficient critical habitat to even maintain mountain caribou, never mind recover them,” said Candace Batycki, program director for Y2Y.

“Canada has failed in its responsibility under the federal Species At Risk Act to intervene when provincial recovery measures are insufficient.”

The caribou census found that the South Selkirk herd is down to three females from 11 last year and biologists estimate that at least 14 of B.C.’s 54 herds could be in trouble.

Provincial government wildlife biologist Leo De Groot said finding out there were only three females remaining in the South Selkirk herd was a surprise.

“I was hoping we would at least have as many as last year, if not more,” he said.

One animal was known to have died, but there is no clue what happened to the others and it is not yet known whether any of the remaining females are pregnant, he said.

This winter the aim was to put pregnant females into a maternity pen, built with money raised by the Kalispel tribe in Washington state, but the snow was too deep to carry through with the plan, he said.

At least four other southern herds are down to critical numbers and, as the federal and provincial governments face pressure to protect more habitat from logging, road-building and recreational use, some scientists are wondering whether efforts should be concentrated on herds where there appears to be at least a slim chance of success.

Robert Serrouya, director of the Caribou Monitoring Unit at the University of Alberta and a Revelstoke resident, was not surprised at the South Selkirk herd’s imminent demise, because of habitat loss around the U.S./Canada border.

“That herd is facing conditions in the environment that are not suitable for persistence. It would be very difficult at this time to recover that herd,” he said.“You can’t fix the habitat problem overnight; that takes decades.”

“Unlike a few exceptional, rare herds further north where we are actually seeing glimmers of recovery, down there you have permanent land conversion — agriculture and human settlement — so it’s almost impossible to restore farming and range land back to natural forest.”

With limited funds, it would make sense to prioritize recovery efforts, Serrouya said.

De Groot agrees triage is part of the discussion, and said even the idea of transplanting animals from other herds, which has been done in the past in South Selkirk, is not gaining traction because of fears it would be a wasted effort.

“No one is offering up any caribou,” he said.

No simple solution

Problems started last century when explorers and prospectors shot as many caribou as they could. Then, as attitudes about an unending supply of wildlife shifted, caribou were faced with forest harvesting moving from the valleys to high elevations, meaning wolves, cougars and bears moved into mountain caribou habitat to follow the deer, elk and moose that thrived in the clearcuts.

Caribou are an easy catch as they are not as skittish as deer and don’t kick as hard as moose. Given their slow rate of breeding, the results can be devastating, De Groot said.

In addition to predation, mountain or deep snow caribou need to survive the winter by eating lichen from old-growth trees, meaning newly planted forests cannot support them.

Biologists hoped that with predator control, such as the controversial wolf cull, an increase in moose hunting and maternal pens to protect pregnant females and new calves, caribou herds could survive until forests regenerate, but that is now unlikely for the South Selkirk herd.

“We have made huge advances in habitat protection since 2007 and we now have 80 to 90 per cent of their core habitat protected from future logging, but we are still dealing with the legacy of previous logging. The trees don’t grow that fast and it takes decades for the clearcuts to grow in so that they are not attracting the elk, moose and deer,” De Groot said.

“We had hoped that, maybe, if we could get the caribou through the next decades, these cutblocks would have grown back.”

Ongoing activity in critical habitat

Some people doubt whether habitat protection has been enforced and Batycki, pointing to voluntary industry habitat protection measures in the Peace area, wants an interim moratorium on industrial activity in critical habitat while governments sort out their recovery plans.

“The federal government has the power to do that,” she said.

Gwen Bridge of Yellowstone to Yukon said mapping and analysis clearly shows that logging and road building has been ongoing in critical habitat, even in areas that were supposedly protected through the 2007 plan.

The herds are also facing increased stress from recreational users, Bridge said.

“New proposals for extensive helicopter-based recreation on the South Purcells are illustrative of the many stresses facing caribou in southeast B.C.,” she said.

DeGroot agrees recreational use of the area is a problem as caribou move away from disturbance and, in winter, that movement takes energy, using precious body fat, and tends to move the animals through avalanche territory, he said.

One of the few bright spots in the mountain caribou world is the Klinse-Za herd, which was down to 36 animals when consulting biologist Scott McNay, of Wildlife Infometrics Inc., started working with the Saulteau and West Moberly First Nations in 2013.

The herd has now doubled in size through the use of maternity pens with 24-hour-a-day shepherds, habitat protection, restoration of forest cover, blocking access to predators and wolf removal.

“We thought the herd was going to be extirpated in two years…and the reason that this is working here is that we are throwing everything at the recovery effort. It’s a slow process, but it’s working,” McNay said.

But recovery efforts are expensive and, province-wide, much will come down to economic constraints and whether there is social will, McNay said.

“First I think we have to prove that in at least one case we can restore a caribou herd and it hasn’t been done yet,” McNay said.

If all subspecies of caribou in B.C. are counted, there are about 19,000 animals, down from about 40,000 in the early 1900s, said Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Minister Doug Donaldson.

“We need to do whatever we can to help enhance and recover caribou habitat to rebuild the numbers of this iconic species,” he said at B.C. Wildlife Federation’s annual conference, when he announced a $2-million grant to the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation to help restore caribou habitat and reduce predation through reforestation, fencing and changing sight lines.

Up to $50 million over five years has been slotted for the province’s caribou recovery program and the Alberta government has announced $85 million over the next five years for caribou habitat restoration.

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A pipeline owned by Paramount Resources Ltd. released an estimated 100,000 litres of crude oil and 190,000 litres of produced water near Zama City, in northwest Alberta, according to an April 11 incident report filed with the Alberta Energy Regulator.

The release was discovered after company personnel looked into a low-pressure alarm from the company’s leak detection system, the incident report states. The emergency status of the spill ended April 16.

The report says that although “the release was initially believed to be minor” further investigation shows the spill to be around 290,000 litres and has impacted an area of 200 metres by 200 metres.

“The pipeline was isolated and depressurized, and clean-up is underway,” the incident report states. “No reported impacts to wildlife.”

The cause of the spill is still under investigation, Paul Wykes, spokesperson with Paramount Resources, told DeSmog Canada.

The spill is located approximately 10 kilometres northeast of Zama City, Wykes said.

The remote pipeline is part of a network in the Zama area obtained by Paramount Resources when it acquired Apache Corp for $487 million in 2017.

Between May 2013 and January 2014 Apache’s pipeline infrastructure was plagued by a series of incidents that included one of the largest recent pipeline spills in North America.

In June 2013, a pipeline released 15.4 million litres of oil and toxic produced water into muskeg, contaminating a 42-hectare span of boreal forest.

Apache pipeline spill, June 2013. Photo: Apache Corp.

“Every plant and tree died” James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha First Nation, told the Globe and Mail at the time.

The spill, which continued undetected for nearly one month, was originally reported to be only 9.5 million litres in volume due to an inaccurate meter reading, the company said.

Produced water can contain hydrocarbons, salt, metals, radioactive materials and chemicals uses in the oil extraction process.

An investigation later revealed the pipeline, which was only five years old at the time of the spill, cracked due to corrosion stress, caused by a pinhole leak. The company was later fined $16,500 for the spill and the Alberta Energy Regulator ordered a third-party audit of the company’s aging pipeline infrastructure.

Oil and gas exploration has been occurring in the Zama area since the 1950s.

In October 2013, Apache announced it had detected another pipeline leak after it had released an estimated 1.8 million litres of oil, chemicals and contaminated water over a three-week period.

In a statement of facts agreed to by Apache concerning the 1.8 million litre spill, the company admitted it failed to install protective fencing around the pipeline and that evidence indicated a bison may have rubbed up against the pipe, crushing it.

Two additional Apache spills occurred between 2013 and 2014, one smaller spill near Zama and one near Whitecourt, Alberta, which released nearly 2 million litres of produced water.

It was later determined Apache failed to install proper pressure valves on the pipeline near Whitecourt.

In 2016 Apache pled guilty to violations of the Pipeline Act and the Environmental Enhancement and Protection Act as was fined $350,000 by the Alberta Energy Regulator.  

In response to the April 11, 2018 spill, Paramount “immediately initiated its emergency response plan,” Wykes said.

“A team of personnel is on site as containment, clean-up and delineation efforts continue. There is no danger to the public,” he said.

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Placer mining kills fish, damages streams, poses a risk to drinking water and jeopardizes Indigenous rights, but the activity is virtually unregulated and brings little money into government coffers, says a report urging B.C. Auditor General Carol Bellringer to conduct an audit of the province’s failure to adequately regulate placer operations.

“Placer mining — the practice of mining for gold in and near streams and riverbeds — is expanding across B.C.,” the report states. “The province allows prospectors to stake claims in private property, salmon watersheds and Indigenous lands, leaving local communities to cope with potential mercury contamination and other hazards.”

The report, written by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre on behalf of the Fair Mining Collaborative, concludes that B.C.’s current regulations cannot prevent or mitigate harm caused by unregulated miners.

“Placer mining offers little in economic return to offset the environmental damage,” the report says.

A spokeswoman for Bellringer’s office said the request will be considered along with numerous other audit suggestions, and added that, if accepted, audits can often take more than a year from the day they are started.

“We aim to make the best use of our resources and choose audits with the greatest value to government and the people of B.C.,” Colleen Rose wrote in an e-mailed response to questions from DeSmog Canada.

The report’s authors, Calvin Sandborn, Environmental Law Centre legal director, articled student Renata Colwell and law student Erin Linklater, believe the problems with placer mining are causing health and environmental problems and are hoping for quick action.

“We are saying it’s urgent,” Sandborn said.

“This is an expanding industry. The large machine operations have almost tripled since 2005 and so it can’t be ignored any longer. We have to figure out how we can regulate this. There are a lot of jurisdictions we can learn from — starting with the Yukon.”

While the Yukon has rigorous rules, in B.C., hand-panning or using hand tools with a sluicer or shaker box — an activity that has more than doubled since 2005 — has little government oversight or tracking.

Miners do not have to obtain Water Sustainability Act authorization to excavate waterways. Adequate setbacks from stream banks are not enforced and some placer mines discharge tailings directly into streams instead of settling ponds.

Miners that use machinery for the excavation have little more regulation, apart from a requirement to apply for a Notice of Work permit.

An environmental assessment is triggered only if they have production capacity of more than 500,000 tonnes a year — a threshold so high that it excludes almost every placer mine in the province.

The Fair Mining Collaborative could not find a single record of a B.C. placer mine undergoing a federal or provincial environmental assessment since the mid-1990s although at least 50 environmental assessments a year are triggered in the Yukon.

“…it’s urgent.” https://t.co/avr4aueDXO

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 17, 2018

Tara Lamothe-Ammerlaan, Fair Mining Collaborative program manager, said about 550 open permits have been issued for placer mines in B.C. annually for the last three years and, while not all are active, they all have permission to mine.

“For the most part, they operate in or near riparian areas, which are arguably the most valuable ecosystems in a landscape. We need to have some kind of regional environmental assessments that set parametres around how much mining activity is compatible with First Nations plans for their territory and with healthy and resilient ecosystems,” she said.

Lamothe-Ammerlaan said another major problem is the free entry system that allows anyone to stake a claim for a minimal fee and miners then have rights — even if it is private property, an important ecosystem, an area important to First Nations or if land-use plans conflict with the mining plans.

Last year, Bev Sellars, chair of First Nations Women Advocating Responsible Mining, illustrated how easy it is to stake a claim by staking the Cranbrook property of then-energy and mines minister Bill Bennett.

The report says regulation of placer mining is rooted in hopelessly outdated 19th century gold rush laws and some damage is historical, such as the 58-million cubic metres of sediment added to the Fraser River between 1858 and 1909, but modern mining is now stirring up sediment and dangerous substances such as mercury.

Other major problems started more recently, such as the deregulation of creeks around the Atlin area in 1985, allowing direct discharge into streams, after placer miners successfully lobbied their MLA.

The lack of regulation has resulted in sky high levels of aluminum which jeopardises the health of Taku River Tlingit First Nation members and other Atlin residents who use Atlin lake as a drinking water source.

“It’s an environmental law-free zone,” Sandborn said.

“Someone should let the fish know.”

Placer mining can kill fish by introducing sediments and metals into the water and improper excavation destroys spawning grounds, says the report, which uses numerous studies to support its claims.

A 1992 study found that unmined streams “support a standing stock of fish 40 times that of placer-mined streams.”

While the environmental damage mounts, B.C. sees little economic return with the province collecting only $253,248 between 2008 and 2015 on more than $50 million in reported gold sales.

“Since operators are taxed per mine, individual operators may pay no tax, even if they are producing more than $50,000 of gold a year across multiple mines,” the report says.

Lamoth-Ammerlaan believes the report has built a strong case for an audit by documenting the lack of regulation and the high environmental stakes.

“The government collects very low royalties on the gold that placer mines extract from our rivers and streams,” she said.

“I think this industry, with its significant potential for environmental harm and recorded gold sales tanging between $2 million and $15 million per year over the past decade, is perfect for this kind of scrutiny.”

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