Oilsands watchdog calls for more protected area in northern Alberta

Alberta should protect up to 40 per cent of land in the province's northern oilsands region from development, a group that includes industry, some First Nations and environmental groups recommended Thursday.

The plan was put forward by the Cumulative Environment Management Association (CEMA), which was set up by the provincial government in 2000 to balance industrial growth with the need to protect the ecosystem in northeast Alberta.

"The plan confirms CEMA's belief that a balance is possible between economic and social and environment issues," said the group's executive director Glen Semenchuk Thursday.

But the report stresses that can only happen if the province increases the size of the area now protected from development from eight per cent to at least 20 per cent, and perhaps as high as 40 per cent.

Such protection is needed, the report says, to stop the decline of old-growth forests, woodland caribou, black bear, moose and other species in the sprawling 6.8 million hectare area that makes up the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo and includes the oilsands hub Fort McMurray.

"If there is no management intervention, all those will decline in those areas," Semenchuk said.

The report says even with the additional protected land, there will still be enough area set aside for development to boost oilsands production to eight million barrels a day.

Energy companies that sit on the CEMA panel, including oilsands giants like Imperial Oil Resources, Suncor Energy and Syncrude Canada, all gave their conditional support to the report, which also calls for compensation to companies forced to give up leases in areas declared off-limits to development.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach was noncommittal about the recommendations.

"We'll have a look at it," he said Thursday.

Sustainable Resources Minister Ted Morton said none of the recommendations in the report has been costed out, and the proposal to protect 40 per cent of the land from development would have to be "weighed carefully."

He also questioned whether the government could meet the group's target of providing a response by the fall.

This is the second time this year CEMA has called for a slowdown in development in the oilsands.

In February, it recommended the government freeze land leases in three areas around Fort McMurray until 2011 to help protect the wildlife habitat.