Cheviot open-pit coal mine threatens the grizzly bears of Jasper National Park

Grizzly bears of Jasper National Park are threatened by the Cheviot open-pit coal mine less than 3 km from the park’s east boundary. Mine approval was conditional on compensation programs for lost habitat. Six years later these still are not in place, the committees in charge of them have been disbanded and UNESCO's World Heritage Committee has issued a warning.

The last few centuries of our human time on Earth have seen us consume our own roots and foundations. It is in this sense that we are truly destroying our 'heritage' .

– Yorke Edwards

CHEVIOT MINE: grizzlies vs. coal

Updated October 21, 2006

Once prime grizzly habitat. Cheviot Creek pit with Cardinal Divide on the horizon.

Background
In 2004 Elk Valley's Cardinal Coal Operation began ripping up some of the best grizzly bear habitat on the east slopes of the Rockies only 2.8 km from the east border of Jasper National Park. When the coal finally runs out in 20 years time, a 7455 ha area more than 23 km wide will have been devastated.

The battle to stop this huge open-pit mine was long and ultimately unsuccessful. Since 1996, five national, regional and local conservation groups - Nature Canada, Sierra Club of Canada, Alberta Wilderness Association, Pembina Institute and Jasper Environmental Association – represented by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund (SLDF), fought in the courts to try to prevent it from going ahead. But in August 2005 the Court ruled it could proceed.

Cheviot Creek was the first to be destroyed. Now Elk Valley Coal (owned by Teck Cominco and Fording Canadian Coal Trust) is applying to excavate Prospect Creek – an area that Parks Canada’s grizzly bear specialist particularly recommended be excluded from the mine permit.

Along with other wildlife species, Jasper’s grizzlies leave the less productive land of the mountainous park in spring and summer to access greening vegetation and berry crops in the foothills. Reports released in March show that the regional grizzly population is now in deep trouble. In 2002 the province estimated there were 147 grizzlies in west-central Alberta including large parts of Banff and Jasper National Parks and the Cheviot mine. That population is now only about 53 bears.

When approval was given for the mine by the joint federal-provincial review panel it was conditional on compensation for the loss of grizzly habitat. The panel particularly recommended that the McLeod River-Cardinal River headwaters along the park boundary be protected and incorporated into the Whitehorse Wildland Park to buffer the impact on the grizzlies from human access by ATVs. This has not been done.

The conservation groups have now shifted their campaign focus from the federal courts to the regulatory and enforcement agencies overseeing the mine, the federal and provincial endangered species provisions and the mine’s parent companies. The aim is to get both governments to live up to their commitment to compensate for the loss of critical wildlife habitat and to address the non-existence of committees originally promised to reduce the damage from the mine.

Warning from UNESCO

Jasper National Park is a UNESCO Rocky Mountain Parks World Heritage Site and this summer, the World Heritage Committee issued a warning to Canada “to ensure that adverse impacts of the operation of the Cheviot mine on the integrity of the property are minimized and mitigated.”

Any meaningful “minimizing” and “mitigating” will be difficult when applied to devastation on the scale now reached by this monstrous operation, however it indicates that the United Nations is aware that all is not right with the project and has taken what we hope is only the first step to warn the Canadian Government.

When confronted with the World Heritage Committee’s warning, spokespersons for Alberta Environment, Alberta Resource Development and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans said they were satisfied the coal company is doing everything it is required to do.

“Not so” says the Sierra Club and points out that none of the commitments have been carried out and the two Alberta committees that were to oversee the compensation and mitigation programs - the Conservation and Reclamation Committee and the Northern East Slopes Environmental Committee - were disbanded and no new ones appointed.

There is:

•	no program to compensate for the loss of critical grizzly bear habitat
•	no comprehensive mitigation and compensation program for destruction of fish habitat
•	no formalized program for monitoring selenium levels and its effects on ungulates and American dippers

•	no research completed on current wildlife movement patterns across the mine site and establish how such corridors might be accommodated within the plan
•	no amendment to the mine plan to leave additional forest/shrub/riparian habitat intact to compensate for the significant impacts by the mine on neotropical songbirds
•	no amendment to the mine plan to leave even one additional reach of a breeding stream and its tributaries intact for harlequin ducks – in an area that once supported one of the largest populations of this “species of concern” in Alberta

Regarding the grizzly bears, the Joint Review Panel provided the following intent to revisit its approval of the Cheviot project, should evidence of effective mitigation not be in place within three years of the project approval:

“First, the Panel concluded that it will be possible to mitigate, on a regional basis, the impacts to bear populations. Second, should these mitigation programs not be in place within three years after receipt by CRC of the necessary licences and permits, the Panel is prepared to revisit its approval at that time, on the assumption that any impacts to bears in particular would still be reversible.”

Now, more than six years later, an Energy Utilities Board spokesman says the Joint Review Panel has no intention of reviewing the company’s approval.

UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee is quite right to be concerned about the adverse effect of this huge mine and the seeming lack of commitment to compensate for the damage to this critical wildlife habitat. It should consider following up its warning with a site visit and some serious questioning of the project.

Download the report – "Cheviot Coal Mine Project: concerns regarding lack of mitigation and compensation" by Ben Gadd and Sierra Club of Canada.

See following websites for in-depth information on the Cheviot mine:

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/cheviot/

http://www.sierralegal.org/m_archive/bgr04_11_02.html

http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/Parks/BACKGROUNDER_Cheviot