Cenovus scales up caribou protection efforts with $32M challenge to re-establish species habitat

Cenovus is planning a $32-million project that ambitions to restore the habitat of dwindling caribou populations around its oilsands sites in northeastern Alberta over the following 10 years.

many years of enterprise activity inside the vicinity have sliced up the boreal woodland wherein the animals stay, creating openings that make them greater susceptible to predators.

The Calgary-primarily based enterprise has been running given that 2008 on pilot initiatives to assist protect the threatened species.

the new undertaking targets to replant forests along antique get entry to roads and seismic strains in a place protecting three,900 square kilometres — greater than 10 times what the business enterprise has finished thru its early-stage paintings.

The enterprise’s circulate comes a week after the Alberta government released a draft plan that calls for the protection of an extra 18,000 rectangular kilometres of caribou habitat, bringing the province-extensive general to 49,000 square kilometres.

The provincial plan additionally involves working with industry to ensure the restoration of 10,000 kilometres of enterprise-prompted land disturbances in caribou habitat the western part of the province.

The population of the cold Lake caribou herd in northeastern Alberta, whose habitat range overlaps with Cenovus oilsands websites, is envisioned at 150 animals and numbers are dropping.

The enterprise’s footprint has essentially created “highways” for moose and deer searching out young grasses to munch on and that, in flip, draws predators such as wolves and bears, said Jon Mitchell, the organisation’s vice-president of environment and sustainability.

“And it simply so occurs that they stumble across caribou as nicely and that’s prompted numerous the problem,” he said in an interview. “Caribou aren’t used to having that sort of predator density there and their approach has a tendency to be to hide and that hasn’t labored very well.”

The Cenovus undertaking entails planting some four million seedlings and making sure conditions are right for the new bushes to develop.

To help the new bushes alongside, the agency plans to build soil mounds in damp, comfortable regions and bending a number of the timber alongside the brink of the corridor to offer the proper amount of colour and safety.

Mitchell stated the Cenovus plan is being undertaken separately from the Alberta one, however the employer has been maintaining the provincial government in the loop and sharing its information. The province’s range plan for bloodless Lake location is predicted in 2017.

“At this level it’s been very collaborative with recognize to ensuring that those projects work together and don’t compete against one another,” stated Mitchell.

“these techniques are ones that can be implemented in any caribou habitat so our focus has been on demonstrating their effectiveness.”

Simon Dyer, with the Pembina Institute, an environmental suppose-tank, said the Cenovus and Alberta plans together can make a big difference for caribou.

“that is a bigger voluntary recuperation commitment than we’ve seen from every other organization, so they deserve credit for that,” he said in an interview.

“What Cenovus is providing here is very vast by way of one organization however this desires to be a version that every organization running in caribou variety desires to be considering. The government needs to think about what incentives and equipment it is able to put in area to encourage or mandate this level of recuperation.”