Wood Buffalo inspectors concerned but say park not yet ‘in danger’

A major United Nations inspection report has declared that Wood Buffalo National Park should not be added to a list of World Heritage sites in danger – yet.

But inspectors from UN cultural agency Unesco made 17 recommendations for change and highlighted a string of significant concerns, particularly over the impacts of upstream dams and the potential future release of treated tailings water in the region.

The park, Canada’s largest, spans the NWT-Alberta border near Fort Smith. Wood Buffalo is considered threatened by the consequences of oil sands development to the south, and last year’s inspection was the second in six years.

Parks Canada developed an action plan after Unesco first expressed concern in 2016. 

Inspectors spent eight days assessing the park’s progress since that plan was launched. Their final report to the World Heritage Committee, dated August 26, 2022, was made public this week. At a September meeting in Saudi Arabia, the committee is expected to “decide on the safeguard measures to be taken.”

“The mission does not consider that the property should be recommended for inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger at this stage,” the inspectors wrote in their summary.

If the committee accepts that recommendation, the park will avoid what would at this point be the worst-case scenario.

Inspectors instead suggested that the implementation of Parks Canada’s action plan – and their 17 recommendations – be closely monitored, and called for a third major inspection in 2026 to check on progress.

Parks Canada said the team leading its action plan was working on a public response.

‘Continued negative trend’ in some areas

First Nations and Métis communities in and around the park have long maintained that the federal government is not doing enough to ensure its well-being.

“I’m hoping that when the report comes back, they’ll be mandated to do more for the park and for the Delta,” Lori Cyprien, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation’s director of rights and lands, told Cabin Radio last year.

More: How Indigenous peoples and Parks Canada view the park’s progress

At the time of the inspection, Melody Lepine of the Mikisew Cree First Nation told the Canadian Press the park needed to be declared endangered to drive greater action from the federal government.

While the inspectors did not go that far, they said most threats to the park identified in 2016 “remain valid today” – pointing to tensions between governments, Indigenous peoples and industry, plus the impact of dams and oil sands and the absence of a “buffer zone” around the park.

Inspectors said many of those factors exhibit “a continued negative trend” and conservation of the Peace-Athabasca Delta “remains of particular concern.”

The inspectors said a model to help park managers understand how dams affect Wood Buffalo’s water will not be available until 2024, adding they had heard “the disappointment expressed by the indigenous rights-holders at the slow progress in addressing this main threat.”

The prospect of releasing treated oil sands tailings water into the Athabasca River, inspectors added, was “extremely concerning.” The federal and Alberta governments are drawing up regulations that would, if implemented, allow such releases to happen, a move fiercely opposed by conservation groups and downstream Indigenous communities.

“Major concerns remain about the lack of progress in addressing cumulative impacts from industrial developments around the property,” the report’s summary stated, though inspectors said mining giant Teck’s 2020 decision to abandon its proposed Frontier oil sands mine “is welcome.”

Inspectors said Parks Canada had made “important progress” in some parts of its action plan, particularly “efforts to strengthen Indigenous partnerships and ongoing efforts to move towards co-management of the property.”

But they said “it is too early to assess how far the action plan will succeed” and suggested Canada’s current budget for that plan probably isn’t enough.

The 17 recommendations made by inspectors can be summarized as follows:

1. Develop an Indigenous-led vision for shared park governance so that it becomes a “genuine partnership”
2. Finish models that allow better understanding of park hydrology and the impact of climate change and dams
3. Wait for those models before doing work on water control structures like weirs
4. Don’t approve any more dams on the Peace River until the models are available and the impacts can be properly assessed
5. Regarding water control in the park, “urgently establish a sound decision-making mechanism allowing for key corrective actions to be taken”
6. “Decide on a set of concrete mitigation measures” before 2026 regarding water issues, like dams and climate change, and find the money to pay for them
7. “Urgently and before the end of 2024, conduct an independent systematic risk assessment of the tailings ponds of the Alberta Oil Sands region with a focus on risks to the Peace-Athabasca Delta,” then send that to Unesco
8. Assess and improve, where needed, monitoring of oil sands impacts
9. Put together a tailings pond reclamation strategy that guarantees protection of water quality in the park
10. Send any major industrial projects in the Peace-Athabasca Delta’s watershed for federal environmental and social impact assessments
11. Make sure assessments of other projects in the broader area fully consider the park and Indigenous peoples’ concerns
12. Get on with preparing a land use plan for the Lower Peace region
13. Standardize and sustain the “innovative Integrated Research and Monitoring Program developed under the action plan”
14. Improve monitoring of whooping cranes and wood bison, and keep researching ways to “reduce risk of spread to the disease-free Ronald Lake Bison herd”
15. Keep working on a buffer zone around the park, in part by expanding the Kitaskino Nuwenëné Wildland Provincial Park
16. Revise the park’s 10-year management plan based on an agreed Indigenous-led vision
17. Update the action plan by the end of 2023 to include a response to these recommendations, then put appropriate funding and evaluation mechanisms in place