Today marks the two year anniversary of the release of recommendations of the Joint Review Panel assessing a proposal by EnCana Corporation (now Cenovus) to drill 1,275 shallow gas wells in the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Suffield National Wildlife Area. As we have done previously, the Suffield Coalition today wrote a letter to the Ministers of Defence and Environment to inquire about the government’s response to the Panel report, which we still await two years later.

The Suffield Coalition comprises seven groups who actively participated in the Joint Review Panel process. The members are: Alberta Wilderness Association, Nature Alberta (formerly Federation of Alberta Naturalists), World Wildlife Fund Canada, Nature Saskatchewan, Southern Alberta Group for the Environment, Grasslands Naturalists, and Nature Canada.

In today’s letter we once again called on the federal government to close the door to any further industrial development in CFB Suffield National Wildlife Area and to ensure the long term conservation of Suffield as one of the most important areas of native grasslands remaining in North America.

Two years ago the Suffield Coalition concurred with the Panel’s findings that the Cenovus/EnCana project would likely interfere with the conservation of wildlife, the core purpose of the National Wildlife Area. As the Panel pointed out, avoiding such interference is a requirement of the Wildlife Area Regulations. We therefore believe that federal permits to proceed with additional drilling in the NWA under the Wildlife Area Regulations or the Species at Risk Act should be denied.

In their Report, the Panel recognized the importance of the NWA as one of the few large blocks of dry mixed-grass prairie remaining in Canada, and that the NWA was created to protect the ecological integrity of this land and the species that occupy it, including at least 15 species listed as endangered, threatened or of special concern under the Species at Risk Act.

Sixteen of the Panel’s 27 recommendations are prefaced by “should the project proceed”. They demonstrate the considerable challenges and uncertainties involved in mitigating the risk of significant adverse effects from the proposed drilling as well as from current activities on sensitive soils, native grassland, wetlands, ungulate winter range, five species of snakes and fifteen species at risk. Taking the risk implied within these recommendations is not appropriate within a National Wildlife Area. We believe it is not in the public interest to approve the project.

The other 11 Panel recommendations are designed to address major deficiencies in environmental management within the NWA and CFB Suffield overall, whether or not the project proceeds. These recommendations include working with stakeholders like the Suffield Coalition. We are ready, willing, and able to help. But we await a response from the federal government.