Access Management and Grizzly Bears in Alberta

Source: CPAWS_southernalberta.org

This week, grizzlies and access management were in the news on The Current, CBC Radio One's current affairs program hosted by Anna Maria Tremonti.  In Grizzly Manifesto (April 29th), Ms. Tremonti was interviewing conservationist Jeff Gailus, author of The Grizzly Manifesto.  Mr. Gailus quickly linked the future of grizzlies in Alberta to access and access management.  Mr. Gailus tied the future of grizzly populations in the province to habitat security, which in turn requires few or no roads and/or limited motorized access.  In particular, Mr. Gailus pointed to the Land Use Framework process currently underway and called for that to ensure "no more habitat is degraded with additional roads ... need to put a plan in place to restore some of those areas by obliterating roads".

As a counterpoint to Mr. Gaiilus' point of view, Jim Allen, the head of Game and Priority Species in the Wildlife Management Branch of the Sustainable Resource Development ministry, was called on to defend the Alberta government's approach to managing grizzlies.  Focusing his remarks on the province's Grizzly Recovery Plan, he certainly didn't disagree with Gailus on the importance of roads and access management to the grizzlies' future in Alberta.  However, he did suggest that in fact the province was addressing concerns for access, ensuring that road densities in the "core recovery areas" were currently below the threshold of 0.6 km per square kilometre often identified as the impact threshold for the bears.

Interestingly, both men talked about the role of the forest industry and its development of roads to access timber resources.  Neither mentioned the large role oil & gas development is playing.

If you had to separate the two views, it comes down to the author's belief that access be managed by not building roads and removing those that already exist versus the province's view that the industrial access was going to take place so access must be managed by reclamation and other means.  In a province that is developing oil & gas, forestry and mining resources as fast as Alberta is, the differences in approach can quickly become very significant for wildlife habitat and populations.

Having examined the issues of access and access management in detail for the Foothills Research Institute a year ago, I think that it is a bit more complex than either man presented (in fairness to both Gailus and Allen, it may be too complex to be addressed in a 25 minute radio program).  I developed a decision tree that would allow public land managers to work through a hierarchy of approaches depending on the extent of current development and land use.  The hierarchy reflected the range of approaches available to address each particular situation - and the need to employ multiple, mutually-reinforcing approaches in each situation.  A summary of my work can be found here (there is also a detailed report and a PowerPoint presentation).

Comments

[Jeff Gailus]

Yes, Richard, it is tough to squeeze it all into a 25 minute radio interview.

You are right, there are a range of approaches, some of them tried-and-true and many of them hypothetical. As I'm sure your research indicated, managing access on complex road networks is very, very difficult. In the U.S., research and experience indicate that it's too difficult and expensive, so they don't even bother to try. They either don't build roads in the first place or they obliterate them to ensure adequate grizzly bear habitat security. Even Alberta's Fish and Wildlife Division recognizes that it is near impossible to do (see the E-8 Forest Management Plan that SRD recently drafted and approved).

This belief that we can "have our cake and eat it too" is probably misguided. It's not based on science or experience, but on an ideological belief that "natural resources must be developed because natural resources must be developed" (former SRD Minister Mike Cardinal, 2005). As one senior government official said (behind closed doors) of the impending disappearance of caribou in the tar sands region, "The bitumen is coming out of the ground, so you're going to have to figure out a way to [save caribou] with that in mind."

The same seems to go for grizzly bears, which likely will not persist where road densities are high (despite your decision tree). If it is to happen, it will take a serious government commitment, millions of dollars, and dozens (if not hundreds) of personnel to adequately and perpetually patrol the thousands of kilometres of roads that exist in grizzly bear habitat. Even if this were to happen, it wouldn't address the serious problems roads cause for such things as clean and abundant water.

As I pointed out on The Current, despite knowing about the problem for 20 years (see the 1990 Grizzly Bear Management Plan), and despite two recommendations to list the grizzly bear as threatened (see the ESCC website), the government has done very little ON THE GROUND to ensure the survival and recovery of grizzly bears in Alberta. There are lots of reports and decision trees, but there is no political will to commit to something that challenges the very heart of Tory dogma: maximize short-term economic utility.

Respectfully,
Jeff Gailus

[Jeff Gailus]

One other thing I forgot to mention. Despite Jim Allen's claim that the government was ensuring road access was kept below the 0.6 km/sq. km. threshold in core areas, no less than three forest management plans that are publicly available on SRD's website (E-8, Blue Ridge Lumber, and Sundance) indicate that road densities will exceed these thresholds or mortality risk for grizzly bears will increase in these FMAs over the next 10+ years.

Perhaps what's most troubling is that only one of them even bothers to measure road density, which is the metric used in the recovery plan. The other two simply use mortality risk or safe harbour index, which are not used in the recovery plan because these tools have not been adequately developed. This does little to provide Albertans with the evidence they need to have faith in the government's commitment to implement the recovery plan.