Impaired Wetlands: Further Considerations

Abstract

The impacts of bitumen exploitation remain underestimated in spite of decades of industrial activity and a host of monitoring programs initiated by government or industry. The growing footprint of open pit mines, tailings ponds, power lines, facilities, roads, wells, pipelines, seismic lines, and other infrastructure (coupled with increased noise, emissions, and deposition of contaminants) is resulting in regional-scale habitat loss, fragmentation, barriers to movement, and degradation of existing habitat. The region's wildlife, air, water, sediments, habitats, and waterbodies (including the Athabasca River) are increasingly affected by bitumen exploitation. Human-caused wildfire ignitions may be exacerbating stresses posed by ongoing climate change and industrial activity that threaten a host of wildlife and the persistence of wetland and old-growth forest habitats. Fire activity is currently at its highest recorded level. Evidence suggests an increase in fires reported since about the late 1980s. Wetland reclamation approaches and assumptions are reviewed. Wildlife use of industrial wetlands is a principal objective of wetland reclamation in the region. Because regional industrial activity is predicted to intensify and remain high decades into the future, the creation of reclaimed, albeit impaired and contaminated, wetlands may result in more harm than benefit. A host of factors renders it unlikely that the impairment of the region's wetlands will ameliorate in the near future. Loss of biodiversity presents a serious concern but present monitoring fails to gather useful and credible data on wetland plant species and vegetation. The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute, the current agency sponsored by government and industry to monitor biodiversity, produces unverifiable wetland data with inherent sampling bias and a limited power to detect change.