Industry endangering forests in Alberta Rockies, study says

A report based on new satellite imagery says forestson the slopes of Alberta's Rocky Mountains are disappearing morequickly than anywhere else in the province including the oilsandsarea.

The Global Forest Watch data, to be released Thursday, suggestsindustrial development is cutting through forests on the easternslopes at twice the Canadian average and faster than countries thatinclude the United States, Russia and Brazil.

"By any measure or comparison, this is a large amount of forestloss," said Global Forest Watch spokesman Peter Lee, who reachedthat conclusion using a database of hundreds of thousands of satellite pictures.

The information was compiled and processed by scientists andtechnicians at the University of Maryland and Google Earth. It usedLandsat imagery from 2000 to 2012 to study how forest cover haschanged globally.

Lee used that information to look at Alberta, where previousstudies had already found the most industrially affected forests inCanada.

He found that in those 12 years, the eastern slopes of theRockies lost 6.8 per cent of their forests that weren't in a
protected area. That outpaced the rate of deforestation in theoilsands region, which came in at 5.5 per cent.

The Canadian average was 3.1 per cent. Brazil's average was 4.3per cent, the U.S. was 2.9 per cent and Russia came in at 2.2 percent.

'Region of great forest change'

"I have suspected this for some time," said Lee. "We've beenwatching the eastern slopes as kind of a hot spot, because it's beenpopping up as a region of great forest change."

Most forest loss in Canada is due to fire, Lee said. In Alberta,it's almost entirely due to energy and forestry.

"Ninety-five-plus per cent of forest loss in the eastern slopesis due to industrialization. It's almost exclusively due to
industrial uses."

The losses are also widely dispersed.

"We're not talking about a concentration in one area," Leesaid. "We're talking about a dispersal of these disturbances thatare causing degradation of the entire forest system in the easternslopes."

Lee's data, to be presented to the Alberta WildernessAssociation, includes a map of industrial tenures granted by the
provincial government.

"Almost the entire eastern slopes outside of prime protectionare covered by one or more industrial tenures," he said. "And inthe vast majority of the area, it's multiple industrial tenures."

Deforestation and habitat loss

As Lee was detailing his findings, the Alberta governmentannounced it was putting another piece of endangered caribou habitaton the auction block for energy development. The 264 hectares in west-central Alberta make up some of the last relatively undisturbedhabitat for two herds of mountain caribou, which a federalscientific panel recently declared in imminent danger ofdisappearing.

The amount of such caribou habitat recently leased out by theprovince sits at 1,700 hectares.

Lee said the eastern slopes are the headwaters of rivers thatsupply water for most of the province. The Bow, Red Deer and NorthSaskatchewan rivers all begin there.

He also pointed out that the region has become a popularrecreational region.

"The eastern slopes have turned into Albertans' naturalrecreational playground," he said. "I think it would be a great
surprise to people to learn that it's now become almost exclusivelyindustrialized."