In Alberta ’s vast boreal forests covering the top half of the province all the way to the Northwest Territories, threatened woodland caribou and the province’s oil and gas ambitions are set to collide. With public engagement windows open until the end of October and middle of November, the provincial government is asking Albertans to weigh in on three new draft land-use plans for Alberta’s north country. The government says it’s attempting to codify land-use rules in resource-rich pockets of the province to help Alberta reach its goal of doubling oil and gas production , while preserving critical habitats. Conservation groups, however, worry the province’s changes would prioritize industrial development at the expense of species-at-risk and their home territory. “[Investors] seem to have noted though that these plans perhaps strike an updated balance that recognizes how modern oil and gas development takes place, while still adhering to caribou conservation,” said Jeremy McCrea, managing director of oil and gas equity research at BMO Capital Markets. Cheryl Bozarth Soll, president of Nature Alberta, on the other hand said the draft plans miss the point, citing what she calls the government’s “refusal to recognize what wildlife needs to be self-sustaining in their habitats.” The sections of land at the centre of this clash span a combined 118,000 square kilometres of wilderness. One region, called Berland, features rolling foothill landscapes, forests, lakes, wetlands and major river systems. It also features oil and gas activity, which is a significant economic driver for the region. According to government figures, oil and gas activity in the Berland contributes approximately $3.96 billion to Alberta’s GDP and supports a labour force of about 5,000 people. Forestry , meanwhile, contributes around $365 million to GDP and supports close to 2,000 jobs. But the Berland is also home to threatened caribou populations. Caribou habitat in the region includes the À la Pêche southern mountain caribou range and the Little Smoky boreal caribou range. Both are located in west-central Alberta within the Upper Peace and Upper Athabasca regions, lying east of Jasper National Park along Rocky Mountain foothills. The two other regions — called Caribou Mountains and Red Earth — are also home to sensitive habitats. Caribou Mountains extends from the Northwest Territories border in the north to the Peace River in the south, and the Red Earth area is situated immediately south of the Peace River. These corners of Alberta are home to multiple at-risk species—woodland caribou, wood bison, grizzly bears, sharp-tailed grouse and trumpeter swans. Caribou are picky about their habitat. Wildlife biologists say they need large, intact, old-growth forest and peatland to survive and thrive. Because caribou need so much undisturbed territory, protecting their habitat effectively protects everything living within that same range. “Caribou are very sensitive to human presence and disturbances on the land,” said Kaitlyn Philip, campaign director for Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s northern Alberta chapter. “Our actions have a direct impact on their chance of survival.” Conservation groups frame caribou protection as a proxy for protecting the boreal forest ecosystem writ large. They suggest that when caribou numbers drop, this signals a broader biodiversity decline. Back in 2003, Alberta’s woodland caribou were listed by the federal government as threatened. This prompted federal recovery strategies to set population and critical-habitat targets, including the benchmark that each range consist of at least 65 per cent undisturbed habitat. Ottawa had the power to do this because of the Species at Risk Act, which also came into force in 2003. Under the law, the federal government has both the authority and responsibility to intervene when a province fails to protect the critical habitat of a listed species, potentially overriding provincial land-use authority. Alberta’s response to the legislation was to eventually enter into an agreement with Ottawa promising 11 regional land-use plans, critical habitat restoration and targets to ensure most of the land in each caribou range remains undisturbed. Put another way, this was the Alberta government’s way of taking control of its own land-use destiny while simultaneously adhering to the Species at Risk Act. The agreement was made in 2020 while Jason Kenney was in power. The land-use plans, also referred to as sub-regional plans, were introduced with the goal of coordinating land-use decisions across multiple sectors such as the oil and gas industry, forestry and recreation. Cut to today. The Alberta government contends its newly proposed land-use plans can do two things at once — support the province’s goal of doubling oil and gas production by 2035 and meet federal commitments to recover threatened woodland caribou populations along with other species-at-risk. Doubling oil and gas production effectively means doubling oil and gas tax revenue. And since Alberta has no provincial sales tax, its annual budget is structured such that oil and gas royalties are a huge, volatile slice of total tax revenues — roughly 18 per cent of total revenues in the 2026-27 budget alone. But that also means the province’s fiscal health rises and falls almost directly with global oil prices . Call it the resource revenue rollercoaster. The Alberta government estimates that for the current fiscal year, every $1 drop in oil prices costs Alberta’s bottom line $680 million. In the often-combustive debate between resource development and environmental conservation, some are cheering the draft plans, while others are jeering. Investors in the energy sector are behind it. “Pad drilling, longer wells, and the use of existing infrastructure all help reduce the cumulative surface disturbance from what we would have seen in the past,” said McCrea, the energy analyst. Environmentalists, meanwhile, are opposed. The Alberta Wilderness Association, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society’s northern Alberta chapter and Nature Alberta released a joint statement explaining why. “Alberta’s original stated purpose for these sub-regional plans was to provide the landscape-level direction needed to conserve and recover caribou populations, while also supporting other species at risk and environmental wellbeing,” the statement read. “Instead, the plans explicitly support Alberta’s goal of doubling oil and gas production and enabling increased rates of forest harvesting, while caribou conservation and recovery are not meaningfully considered.” So how do the land-use proposals work? The draft plans would divide the three northern Alberta regions into two distinct zones: go zones and nature-first areas. The government says the zones would help inform the decision-making process for industrial development while prioritizing restoration. Planting trees throughout unused seismic lines, for example. In the so-called go zones, the government’s desired outcome is to support a working landscape while minimizing the overall resource development footprint. “[Go zones] support the expected scale of future development required to enable economic growth, including the doubling of oil and gas production,” reads each of the three fact sheets. And within each go zone, the government is allocating a certain amount of disturbed land for restoration. Nature-first areas, on the other hand, prioritize “conservation and ecosystem services with opportunities for traditional land uses, outdoor recreation, habitat restoration and enhancement.” Soll, of Nature Alberta, believes the plans should be designed around protecting that foundation “and then rebuilding habitat, not continuing to erode it while promising recovery sometime in the future.” She said the plans need clear, measurable and enforceable outcomes for species-at-risk. “And they need to be backed by strict limits on new disturbance, and a strong focus on restoration of existing disturbances. “Alberta’s caribou just can’t wait,” she adds. Soll points to data showing that by 2023, undisturbed habitat had dwindled dramatically across the region’s winter ranges — dropping to roughly an eighth of the À La Pêche range, while the Caribou Mountains and Red Earth fared only somewhat better, retaining less than half their undisturbed habitat. Those figures are far below the 65 per cent threshold identified in the federal recovery strategy. “Existing [resource development] activity,” Soll asserts, “has already pushed woodland caribou to the brink of extirpation from Alberta.” The bigger question remains. Can Alberta effectively balance the competing forces of aggressive resource development and delicate environmental conservation? Kaitlyn Philip believes the answer is yes. “It is possible to balance oil and gas exploration while protecting species-at-risk,” she said. “But it requires careful planning.” Consolidation in one of Alberta's hottest oil plays: Tamarack, Headwater merge in $10-billion deal'Protection for Canada': Ontario, Quebec rely on U.S. gas. Could they get it from Alberta? • Email: jarose@postmedia.com