Impacting Indigenous Culture - The Tar Sands of Northern Alberta›

Every extractive industry deeply affects the relationship between people on the land and their newly manufactured landscape. The incredibly rapid development of the tar sands in Northern Alberta is having a profound affect on the culture, lifestyle and health of the First Nations. Conversely, communities have gained employment, and access to modern health care and services. Is the stability and preservation of a culture better served through attention to traditional lifestyle or to commerce and industry?

This multimedia piece by iLCP photographer Robert van Waarden explores this story and the consequences of the Tar Sands development on the First Nations of Northern Alberta.

Impacting Indigenous Culture - The Tar Sands of Northern Alberta from Robert van Waarden on Vimeo.

Spirit Bears the Next Environmental Superstar: Great Bear RAVE on ABC News Nightline

© Ian McAllister, iLCP

Late this summer, the iLCP, a group of internationally renowned photographers took part in a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and stunning marine biodiversity, it is one of the planet's most priceless treasures, but overseas oil interests wanting access to western Canada's tar sands, the second largest known oil reserves in the world, have put the region in threat, prompting the action of conservation groups and the iLCP. Throughout the expedition we'll be bringing you profiles, stories, statistics and photos to learn more about the region and why it's so crucial that we all work to protect it. Please follow along here on the iLCP blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

We're very excited that the Great Bear RAVE is going to be featured on tonight's ABC News Nightline.

Along with the program, they've put together a great slideshow of photos which you can check out here.



You can also read this piece, highlighting Spirit Bears as the next environmental superstars. Here's an excerpt:

"It's a magnificent bear," said Ian McCallister, director of the nonprofit conservation group Pacific Wild.

Today, the Great Bear Rainforest faces a threat -- a massive oil pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia, Canada. The plan would turn the spirit bear's home into a superhighway for supertankers.

"They want to bring Big Oil to this coast," McCallister said. "The only thing that's standing between that is really the spirit bear, the concerted efforts from conservationists and the First Nation [native] people."

Toronto Star Says Alberta Can't Greenwash Its Tar Sands Troubles

Photo by Garth Lenz

We've talked a lot about how terrible the tar sands is for the environment, so we thought we'd hand it over today. Earlier this week, the Toronto Star editorial board gave its opinion on the tar sands:

When a delegation of Alberta cabinet ministers comes to town calling for a “constructive conversation” about the oil sands, they deserve a hearing. Anti-Alberta boycotts are gathering steam, and the province is responding with public relations campaign of its own.

But a charm offensive is not going to change the channel. It’s not enough to say the world should stop tarring Alberta’s oil sands merely because the province claims it has gone green, as Environment Minister Rob Renner told his Toronto audiences this week.

“There is no doubt we must transition to a cleaner energy future that will see our reliance on carbon-based fuels diminish,” Renner said soothingly. The trouble with Renner’s story is that it sounds like a tall tale. He boasts of the “incredible environmental improvements that the oil sands industry has made,” but sloughs off the burden of surging greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.

Alberta’s pitch is that billions of dollars will flow down the pipeline to Ontario manufacturers that supply the oil sands sector. Now Energy Minister Ron Liepert wants Ontario workers to shout down environmentalists who want to shut down the oil sands with this snappy retort: “You’re attacking my livelihood.”

If that’s the adult conversation Alberta claims to want, it sounds more like a hard sell, with a hint of economic blackmail (back the oil sands, or it will cost you jobs). The trouble with Alberta’s pitch to Ontario’s economic self-interest is that it ignores the heavy burden imposed on manufacturers by a higher Canadian petro-dollar, which is already pricing our exports out of foreign markets.

The oil sands are being developed at a breakneck pace, without a workable strategy for curbing greenhouse gas emissions. Alberta is relying too heavily on a $25-million public relations war chest, and the panacea of unproven carbon capture technology, to greenwash its tar sands troubles.

Alberta Tarsands: Extremely Harmful to Wildlife

Between now and September 14, the iLCP, a group of internationally renowned photographers are taking part in a RAVE (Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition) in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest. Home to white spirit bears, ancient forests, and stunning marine biodiversity, it is one of the planet's most priceless treasures, but overseas oil interests wanting access to western Canada's tar sands, the second largest known oil reserves in the world, have put the region in threat, prompting the action of conservation groups and the iLCP. Throughout the expedition we'll be bringing you profiles, stories, statistics and photos to learn more about the region and why it's so crucial that we all work to protect it. Please follow along here on the iLCP blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

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The Alberta tar sands have been deemed "the most destructive project on earth," and as if we needed another negative consequence of oil extraction in this area of the world and its effects on the environment, a new study now shows that birds are dying in Alberta oilsands tailing ponds at least 30 times faster than what the industry says.

Up until now, environmental reports about the impact of the oil industry in this region have been published by the oil industry itself, and the authors of the study are demanding that independent, third-party regulation be put into place.

"We need to have credible scientific monitoring," said Kevin Timoney, Treeline Ecological Research, to CBC News.

Read more about the study and its findings here.

Image: Treehugger