Future Energy

Ancient History: the Northeast B.C. Access Management Initiative

Source: Muskwa-Kechika Management Area

Once upon a time, I worked for a Canadian bank.  Shortly after I joined that august institution, the Chief Credit Officer, a man with a long history in the bank and in lending circulated a memo that roughly said .... when he began his career, it used to take 25 years for the bank to forget the lessons of the past and make the same mistakes all over again.  In contrast, he suggested that at the time of the memo, it was only taking the bank 10 years to recycle all of the mistakes it had formerly made.  He attributed the change to the price of progress. 

I have often thought about those remarks in connection with the work I do today.  poking around oil and gas companies in Calgary and energy regulators in western Canada, I would have to say that institutional memories have continued to shrink.  So much so that I would suggest many organizations are working on a forget-fullness cycle of five years or even less as people change jobs, reorganize, restructure, etc. more or less continuously. 

Bearing this in mind, over the past couple of months, triggered by some recent work on access management, I decided to track down and scan some of the reports, etc. that were developed as part of the Northeast B.C. Access Management Initiative.  The Northeast B.C. Access Management Initiative was a multi-party process that was initiated in 1994 in an effort to understand the issues and find some solutions.  It was also the first time I became involved in trying to develop land-use management processes to address access concerns.

Back in 1993 I was helping a Canadian gas pipeline company (Westcoast Energy Inc., now Spectra Energy) develop a series of projects in northeast B.C.  Then, as now, the cumulative effects of access development and its subsequent uses were among the most significant concerns associated with oil and gas development among public land-use managers (primarily the B.C. Ministry of Environment) in the area.  In the words of one environmental consultant I worked with at the time, "the creation of motorized access has the greatest impact of any activity on the type, pattern and amount of use of public lands and resources". 

Like any issue associated with cumulative effects, the best solutions were not likely to come out of any single infrastructure project then being developed.  So, with the help of several people in the oil and gas industry and the financial support of my employer, I set out to bring everyone that could possibly have an interest in the issue to the table.  Eventually, with the support of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and the B.C. Government, we were able to have individuals working in oil and gas and forestry sat down with government staff, guide/outfitters, local landowners and others to try to understand the issues, some of the possible solutions and agree on a path forward.  After less than two years, and having written a series of documents, the initiative was ultimately subsumed into the land use planning processes (Land and Resource Management Planning), then raging across the process.

Despite this early initiative, the pace of industrial development on western Canada's  public lands and the explosion in the number of people looking to these same lands for recreation have ensured that concerns for access creation and management remain much as they were 16 years ago.  And, needless to say, few remember either the initiative or the work that was developed during its short life. 

So as my public service for the day, I have posted on my company website (Eos Consulting) the documents that I've tracked down and scanned thus far, including:

1. A Compendium of Physical Access Control Measures for Roads and Other Rights-of-Way, prepared by Axys Environmental Consulting Ltd.(now part of Stantec), March 1995.
2. A Review of the Coordinated Access Management Planning (CAMP) Process in British Columbia: Applications and Lessons Learned, prepared by Carmanah Research Ltd., February 1995.
3. Agenda for the 1994 Initiative Workshop: Access Management as a Component of Planned Petroleum and Natural Gas Development, June 1994, prepared by Erlandson and Associates.
4. 1995 Workshop Summary Report for the Access Management Initiative, June 1995, prepared by Ehrlandson and Associates.

[There are two further documents - very bulky - that I will post as soon as I can arrange to have them scanned.]

I doubt these materials are going to provide anyone with the solution to cumulative effects associated with access  and access management, but they can offer a starting point for some of the initiatives that are following.

Backtracking: More Grizzly Bears and Access Management

 

Source: Alberta Wilderness Association

I just spent some time helping my father-in-law clean up an overflowing stack of mail, magazines and much other paper, and came across an old article relating to access management and grizzly bears, the subject of a post May 2^nd.  A year ago, Westworld Alberta magazine included an article by Jeff Gailus, (see Bear-ly With Us, April 2009) the author interviewed by the CBC's Anna Maria Tremonte April 29^th, about efforts to save Alberta's grizzly bears. 

Mr. Gailus sounds a bit more upbeat in the article than he did on the radio two weeks ago. However, he once again highlighted the role of high road densities and public use of those roads in the bears' Alberta demise.  Its a good article and it does explain the connections between roads and bear recovery in a bit more detail than was possible in the CBC interview.

Interestingly, the article quotes Chris Servheen, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service's Grizzly Bear Recovery Coordinator, on managing access without removing roads.

"That's a Holy Grail question ... in the U.S. we have what's called the Knucklehead Factor: it's always five to 10 per cent of the people who cause all the problems.  We don't even count gated roads as closed because we can't get people to obey the closures.  So if the Knucklehead Factor exists in Alberta, you can't reduce access without closing roads."

After my post two weeks ago I got a message from a friend reminding me of the position taken by then Petro-Canada, now Suncor, at the ERCB hearings for a natural gas pipeline/wells proposed south of Alberta's Kananaskis - the "Sullivan project":

"One thing that I noticed in the ... commentary and response from Jeff Gailus  was that there was no mention of open access vs controlled access - simply access.  In [the] ERCB Hearing re: Sullivan - this distinction was made and had to be re-inforced on the premise that not all access is created equal.... and that properly controlled access isn't much different than no access."

Petro-Canada's position is consistent with my conclusions in work I did during 2008-2009 regarding access management (the reports are here) for the Foothills Research Institute.  Its difficult and it requires a well coordinated strategy (rather than just a gate) but access can be controlled once it has been created.  The insurmountable hurdle appears to be the will and the resources to create an effective strategy - so Shell Canada has been able to make a success of managing access in the Waterton region of south-west Alberta and Petro-Canada/Suncor may be able to do so as part of the proposed project development for Sullivan.  Governments though, in both the U.S. and Canada, have a harder time saying no to the Knuckleheads. 

So, perhaps it is better not to create the access in the first place if that's an option.

FYI, Jeff Gailus was kind enough to add some comments to my original post that you might find interesting.

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).