Photograph: Cristina Mittermeier, ILCP
Potentially bad news from Canada: the country’s still largely pristine western coastline could be endangered by a plan to build a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the coast in order to export oil overseas. That is at least what environmental activists and native people who rely on these waters say. Oil company Enbridge plans to link the oil sands of Athabasca, situated in central Alberta, to the port town of Kitimat in British Columbia, with a new pipeline that would carry 525,000 barrels of oil to the coast per day. There is just one huge problem: the pipeline would pass through watersheds important to Canada’s commercial fishing industry and brush past Coastal First Nations lands and the Great Bear Rainforest (see picture), a protected coastal area filled with red cedars, spruce, and the elusive and all-white “spirit bear.” While the Northern Gateway pipeline itself wouldn’t pass through the 4.4-million-acre (1.8-million-hectare) Great Bear Rainforest, activists say it’s a little too close for comfort. The International League of Conservation Photographers recently performed a Rapid Assessment Visual Expedition (RAVE) in the area, sending a dozen photographers to the rainforest to document the ecosystem they believe is at risk. A pipeline means more tankers, and because the Kitimat terminal is separated from the open ocean by more than one hundred miles of channels and fjords, the photographers argue that a tanker spill would severley imperil the local environment. “These are highly treacherous waters, with tremendous currents,” said ILCP president Cristina Mittermeier. The danger is not just to plants and wildlife. The lifestyle of the First Nations people living in and around the rainforest, such as the Gitga’at fishermen that fully depend on the natural resources the sea and the forest offer them, would be at risk. “One major oil spill on the coast of British Columbia would wipe us out,” Coastal First Nations director Gerald Amos said in a statement.
Source: National Geographic News
Lees ook:Unexplained fall in black-faced spoonbill numbers
Lees ook:The natural wonders of pelagic South Africa
Lees ook:14 adult tiger sharks killed in South African shark nets
Lees ook:Costa Rica expands protected area around Cocos Island
Lees ook:Sharks taught to hunt lionfish to restore ecological balance