Potato farmer donates funds to Alberta Tories
Environmentalists are livid to discover that the Alberta government is negotiating the sale of 13600 acres of native prairie in the Bow Island Grazing Reserve in southeastern Alberta to a potato farming corporation.
The conversion from native prairie to irrigated farmland will be disastrous for biodiversity in an ecosystem that is rapidly disappearing in Alberta environmentalists say. “It’s a major threat to biodiversity” says Philip Penner executive director of Nature Alberta. “Native prairie is very rare and most of it is fragmented. Keeping the large chunks that remain is vital to preserving native grasslands.” Native prairie comprises only five per cent of Alberta’s land base yet it supports 70 per cent of the province’s endangered species.
Nigel Douglas a conservation specialist with the Alberta Wilderness Association says that more than a dozen endangered species have been found on this prairie land including nesting burrowing owls. “We want this sale halted” he says. “The land is just too important.”
Alberta Sustainable Resource Development Minister Mel Knight who could not be reached for comment told reporters last week: “Rules around critical habitat or at-risk species would have to be followed no matter who owns the land.” But Penner wonders how habitat can be protected if the land is plowed for agriculture.
“Once it’s ploughed under it’s ploughed under” he says. “It may take thousands of years to reclaim. We’re losing it forever.”
Officials at SLM Spud Farms which is trying to buy the land would not comment on their plans for the land. Kathy Kiel a spokesperson for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development says that all private landowners must abide by provincial and federal endangered species legislation and “the landowner would have to take steps to mitigate impacts on endangered species.” The province says Kiel is in the process of reviewing the economic and conservation value of the land.
Should the sale go through the government has promised to replace the lost habitat. On the radio program Let’s Go Outdoors Knight recently said that in exchange for the sale up to 10 times as much land would be protected — with the help of the Nature Conservancy of Canada. But according to Bob Demulder regional vice-president of the Nature Conservancy the organization was not aware of this. “It caught us completely off guard” Demulder says. “We are not connected to this sale in any way and are not enabling it.”
Douglas adds: “It had the ring of a minister making something up on the spot.”
The government says Kiel is still exploring other options and funds from the sale will be transferred to the Enhanced Land Stewardship Fund to conserve other grassland.
Environmentalists say this land deal is part of a larger problem — the fact that the Alberta Public Lands Act does not require any public consultation nor is the government obliged to inform Albertans about the sale of public lands to private companies.
“The process absolutely stinks” says Douglas. “The current legislation gives a huge amount of discretion to the minister. This land belongs to us and we should all have a say in what happens to it.”
In 2003 the government transferred a similar parcel of land to the same landowner. Douglas says that land exchange happened despite a survey that found at-risk species described as having “significant wildlife values” on the land. As for the land the government received in the deal Douglas says the government’s own biologists were against the swap because pristine rangeland was traded for fragmented land that contained mostly non-native grasses and was degraded by oil and gas exploration.
“The government doesn’t recognize the value of biodiversity” he says. “They see it as expendable land they’re not listening to their own biologists. Fish and Wildlife (branch) makes recommendations but they just get overruled.”
If this current deal goes through and the land is used to grow potatoes it would require irrigation. Environmentalists question where this water will come from and what the consequences will be for water quality and the aquatic ecosystems along the South Saskatchewan River. “This land lies within the South Saskatchewan River basin where there has been a moratorium on new water leases for a number of years because of water scarcity” Penner says “There has been a history of over-allocation and a potato farm will tax the river even more.”
The Alberta Liberals are also demanding an immediate halt to what they call a backroom deal with a farmer who has donated thousands of dollars to the Progressive Conservative Party. “For years Alberta Liberals have demanded a moratorium on the sale of public lands” Liberal leader David Swann says in a press release. “This administration won’t do that so at the very least they should establish a transparent and honest process to determine when and how public lands can be sold.”
The government is moving forward with a new land-use framework in the region containing the Bow Island Grazing Reserve a process which promises “Increased consultation with First Nations and Métis communities stakeholders and the public to ensure a fair opportunity to influence new policies and decisions” as well as to identify and protect important natural lands for conservation. Douglas says that this sale undermines that process which was established because it was recognized that the current system was broken. “They are trying to squeeze it through the old system before the land-use framework stops them” he says.
