Environmental stewardship through farming gets little play in a federal strategy to protect nature, the UCP’s Grant Hunter emphasized in a recent interview.
The federal approach announced in late March uses “a narrow base, a narrow lens” in defining protected and conserved tracts of land, said Hunter, the minister of environment and protected areas.
Farmers are “some of our best stewards,” Hunter said in a Macleod Gazette interview. “They have to be, they want to be.”
Force of Nature: Canada’s Strategy to Protect Nature attaches $3.8 billion in federal funds to making 30 per cent of the country’s landmass protected or conserved by 2030. Hitting the target would more than double the strategy’s current 14 per cent calculation.
Nowhere does the strategy say it will work directly with farmers or the farming community to reach the 30-by-30-goal. Searches applied to Force of Nature land on just one appearance of the word farmland and one of agriculture.
The percentage comes from internationally accepted definitions that underpin a framework created in Montreal in December 2022.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework ties 196 signatory countries, including Canada, to the 30-by-30 goal.
The Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database pegs the Alberta percentage of protected or conserved land at around 15 per cent.
The tally in the database — the official national ledger for United Nations reporting — counts land within parks because their primary goal is conservation. It also counts areas with long-term, effective protections in place called OECMs, which stands for other effective area-based conservation measures.
A farm doesn’t typically qualify under OECMs because usually it doesn’t meet stringent requirements for year-round, long-term conservation and protection within the international accounting system.
The UCP hasn’t officially stated its own all-in percentage, but the governing party does use numbers that strongly suggest Alberta is already well past 30 per cent.
Hunter issued a statement responding to Force of Nature that says 40 million hectares or nearly 60 per cent of the province’s land base is publicly managed Crown land. The land has been “responsibly managed, stewarded and conserved for decades,” the release said.
But the NDP charges that the minister is redefining what a protected area is to suit the UCP’s agenda.
“It might be the most absurd, ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard somebody say about parks and protected areas,” said Sarah Elmeligi, the Opposition shadow minister for the portfolio. “All Crown lands aren’t protected areas.”
Parks and protected areas in the 30-by-30 strategy are “clearly defined” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the federal government and even Alberta Forestry and Parks, she said.
“You can’t just change the definition and then say you’re winning. That’s ridiculous,” she said.
“If all Crown land is protected area, I’d love the minister to explain to me how oilsands are in a protected area, or large-scale forestry development, or all-season resorts, or pick your choice of industrial activity,” continued Elmeligi, the member representing Banff-Kananaskis.
“The reason why we create protected areas is so that we can say these parts of the landscape are important and we’re going to protect them for the enjoyment of Albertans, for wildlife, for water and for other ecological goods and services. That is not the case for all Crown land,” she said.
“The reason why we create parks is so that we have different management intention in different parts of the landscape, so that we can honour these commitments to Albertans.”
According to Hunter, shortcomings in the federal strategy include a failure to acknowledge that farmers already play an active and protective role on 13.4 million hectares of crop land and hayland, including summer fallow, that they own or lease in Alberta.
The number represents more than 27 per cent of Canada’s total crop land and hayland.
The federal document also ignores Alberta’s relationship with industry in the use of Crown land, the province’s environmental regulations, and its system of sub-regional planning to manage industrial footprints in geographic zones, Hunter said.
“We’ve proven that you can have high environmental standards,” said Hunter, the MLA for Taber-Warner. “You can help species at risk come back. You can start, through coordinated efforts, to build back biodiversity that some places have lost.”
He added: “We don’t need to have the federal government going into our jurisdiction telling us that . . . they’re going to sterilize 30 per cent of our land, which is really what I think they’re doing.”
In response to a reporter’s question, Elmeligi said the province is putting at risk funding arrangements with the federal government. But that’s not her main concern.
“I think the greater risk, which is becoming more and more apparent to me, is that this current government is taking small steps to dismantle Alberta’s parks all the time in many different ways.”
Elmeligi added that “the things that Albertans love and cherish the most in the Alberta landscape are not actually being protected by this government.”
But Hunter counts himself among those Albertans who love and enjoy nature.
“Our approach has been very, very, very simple,” he said. “We have beautiful landscapes, we have a beautiful province, and our job is to be able to pass it on to our children and grandchildren as best as we can keep it.”
Hunter said he’s “very committed” to biodiversity in Alberta and to “making sure that we have pristine landscapes that all my children and grandchildren can enjoy, and we’ll continue to protect that.”
Resource development and the economy are also important, he said.
“We have a province (with the) highest-growing job numbers in Canada. Without our job numbers, we’d be in recession. We’d be in big trouble in Canada,” said Hunter.
“So we want to continue to have that. We want to have those good jobs. But again, we’ll do it in a very environmentally responsible way.”
