Thousands of woodland caribou once roamed across the Beaver Lake Cree’s traditional territories in Alberta, Canada – now between just 175 and 275 of these iconic animals remain and without immediate protection they face extinction throughout these territories and most of north eastern Alberta.

A symbol of Canada’s pristine wilderness, woodland caribou are found in undisturbed old growth boreal forest and forested peatlands. Habitat that is being degraded and threatened on a huge scale by rapidly expanding tar sands developments throughout the Beaver Lake Cree’s traditional territories.

If the current rates of decline continue the future for the region’s caribou herds looks bleak, with the population dropping to just 50 by 2025, 10 by 2040 and becoming locally extinct shortly thereafter. Given the massive expansion plans for tar sands developments in the area, the likelihood is that without intervention they will disappear much faster. 50 individuals are considered the level below which populations may be non-recoverable.

Woodland caribou are listed as ‘threatened’ nationally under Canada’s Species at Risk Act and within Alberta have been determined to be ‘at risk’. As such the Canadian Government is required by law to prepare a recovery plan that identifies and protects ‘critical habitat’ for this listed species. The Government was required to do this by 2007 – it hasn’t.

Read the Save the caribou – stop the tar sands report

Help save the caribou – play the game! 

‘H2Oil‘ is the final instalment of The Co-operative’s tar sands trilogy, a set of 3 films about the devastation caused by the extraction of oil from the ground in Canada.

In ‘H2Oil‘ you will see how America’s biggest oil supplier is reaching crisis point.  

For information on ’H2Oil‘, ’Dirty Oil‘ and ‘Petropolis’, including screenings and how you can take action go to the toxic fuels website - http://toxicfuels.com/. 

There are a limited number of free tickets to the ‘H2Oil’ Premiere available to members of The Co-operative.

‘Dirty Oil’ powerfully illustrates the devastating impact that tar sands developments in Alberta, Canada are having on the environment and local First Nation communities. The film portrays the battle taking place as First Nation communities and environmentalists face up to the Governments of Alberta and Canada, as well as the world’s largest multinational oil corporations, in a bid to stop tar sands expansion.

Join us at the premiere
We are supporting the film’s UK premiere on Monday 15 March 2010, which will be satellite broadcast from London to cinemas across the UK. A limited number of free tickets are available to Co-operative Members at certain screenings.

To find details of your nearest screening and to reserve your tickets, visit http://toxicfuels.com/

Following the BBC One screening in October of a programme dedicated to The Co-operative’s ethical campaigning and in particular our most recent campaign against Toxic Fuels. A slightly shorter version of the 30 minute prime time documentary was shown several times over the weekend on BBC News 24 as part of its ‘Our World’ series.

The programme entitled ‘Tar Wars’ can be viewed on BBC iPlayer and via cable/satellite ‘on demand’ services for the next week, and follows The Co-operative’s campaigning and our support for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, a small indigenous community in Alberta, Canada, whose ancestral lands are being destroyed by the large-scale deforestation and pollution arising from tar sands developments.

Watch the programme – spread the word – support the Beaver Lake Cree

To find out more and get involved:

Go to our campaign website: www.goodwithmoney.co.uk/beaverlakecree

Join our Facebook group: www.facebook.com/toxicfuels

Twitter: http://twitter.com/toxicfuels

Yesterday, Monday 26 October, BBC One screened a programme about The Co-operative’s ethical campaigning focussing on our fight against toxic fuels. 

As you know from our blog the Beaver Lake Cree who live in Alberta, Canada have seen their traditional lands degraded by large scale deforestation and pollution arising from tar sands developments. Animals, fish, plants and medicines that sustain the Cree are being destroyed, so they have launched legal action against Canadian and Albertan governments to protect their environment and traditional way of life.

The film crew visited the tar sands extraction sites in Alberta on the recent press trip led by Colin Baines, our Campaigns Adviser here at The Co-operative Financial Services. During their visit they  flew over several of the tar sands extraction sites to see the massive environmental damage being done by these developments.

 If you missed the programme you can now what it on BBC iPlayer.

Don’t for get you can also Donate to the Beaver Lake Cree and support their battle against further tar sands developments.

Please also spread the word – tell your friends, family and colleagues about this issue and help them join our fight on Twitter and Facebook too. 

Post  your comments below and let us know what you think about the campaign and the programme.

I wake to the sound of buffalo grunting outside my window.

It’s my last day before the long trek home tomorrow. This morning we’re filming an interview with an elder here at the lodge to document the threats to the Beaver Lake Cree’s way of life by tar sand developments. We’ll be using this footage on our campaign website.

This afternoon we’re heading out onto Beaver Lake with Len and his grandson to explore some of the surrounding boreal forest that’s under threat.

We’re joined by Donny, a Beaver Lake Cree elder, and the BBC and press journalists. Before we start the interview, Donny burns some sweetgrass and prays in Cree to bless the proceedings – he also blesses everyone present with the smoke.

As the elders and chiefs did yesterday, Donny talks about how the forest, the air and the water are not as good as they used to be. He reminisces about caribou and elk within the Beaver Lake Cree’s ancestral lands, a sight that’s becoming increasingly rare.

He recalls how people used to drink from muskeg but nobody trusts the groundwater anymore – it tastes wrong and makes people feel ill, he says. He tells us about the hunting and how increasingly animals such as moose are being found to be sick when cut open – it’s bad meat, he says, you cannot eat it.

As with many of the elders we’ve met, he’s also worried about the long-term survival of his culture, traditions and quality of life for future generations. It’s very sad, but he sees hope in the legal challenge.

We spend the rest of the day on Beaver Lake. We explore the inlets and forest surrounding the lake in the hope of seeing beaver and moose — – and it’s not long before we see the beaver.

There are beaver lodges dotted all around the lake, and as we approach them beavers pop up near the boat to see what’s going on. Some swim quite close to have a look at us before using their broad tails to slap the surface of the water. This is a warning to other beavers in the area that there is danger about.

The lake and surrounding forest is beautiful. It’s virtually pristine forest and we see white-tailed deer, muskrat and a variety of birdlife, but no moose, although we do hear one in the distance.

Len tells us it would only take a seismic line or two through the area to have a huge effect, never mind an in-situ tar sands development with all its associated infrastructure.

If that were to happen – and it may, as there have been licenses granted here – that would be it for much of the wonderful wildlife I’ve witnessed over the last couple of days.

As we head back we catch a glorious sunset and the forest comes alive with evening song. This is such a beautiful place – it’s hard to imagine it could end up like Cold Lake with seismic lines cutting up the forest and in-situ tar sand developments polluting and scarring the landscape.

It feels fragile, it feels threatened – and it is.

Tomorrow we head home. What a few days it’s been, from thoroughly depressing to completely exhilarating.

We could easily be defeatist and say the tar sands are already too advanced to stop, but I look around at this beautiful landscape and its wildlife and I feel so strongly that the devastation I’ve seen simply can’t be allowed to happen here.

The tar sands can’t be allowed to expand anywhere. We can and must stop them. They have absolutely no role to play in the low-carbon environmentally friendly future we and our Beaver Lake Cree friends need. I feel more determined than ever to help stop this madness.

If you want to help do something about it too, please get involved with our Toxic Fuels campaign or consider fund raising or donating to the Beaver Lake Cree ’s legal fighting fund.

After the grimness of the tar sands visits, it’s great to be able to spend some more time getting to know our Beaver Lake Cree hosts, and finding out how the developments are affecting their community.Today’s pow-wow kicks off at 8am with a pipe ceremony…

We enter the tipi and join the circle with several chiefs, elders and members of the council. A man sits to the side burning sweetgrass and wafting it through the tipi.

The atmosphere is solemn. One of the elders prays over the pipes in Cree and everyone bows their heads. A chief then welcomes us and explains a bit about the ceremony; how the ancestors are with us and how the pipe reconnects the mind and the heart.

A visiting chief then sings a song he had dreamt some days earlier for his grandmother who was a Beaver Lake Cree – it’s breathtaking. They light the pipes and pass them clockwise. As the pipes go around, the elders speak profoundly of their ancestors and their connection to the land.

I take the pipe, inhale and exhale, waft the smoke over my head and touch my heart with the tip of the pipe before passing it to my left. A small ceremonial meal is given to each person — dried fish, bread and an unpronounceable but tasty local berry.

As we eat, the chiefs and elders talk about the environmental damage being done by tar sands – how the forest, air and water aren’t as good as they used to be. How they fear for their traditions, culture and future generations as the environment around them is destroyed. We talk about it as an issue for us all.

There is great wisdom and serious talk, but also good humour. We shake everyone’s hand in turn around the circle and leave the tipi. Later we are told that one of the pipes had belonged to Sitting Bull!

Chief Lameman came to London in February to help us launch our Toxic Fuels campaign outside of the Canadian Embassy. Before today’s dancing got underway we gave out campaign t-shirts to children in the crowd and presented the chief with a framed photograph from the campaign launch. We also announced that we would be making the first donation to a new charitable trust that had been set up to support their legal challenge.

The chief spoke, concluding “without the environment we have nothing, it is our life – we must protect it”. There were shouts and war cries of support, and with that the drums started up again with a ferocious beat.

I spend much of the day watching the dancing, what an amazing celebration of culture this pow-wow is. In-between chitchat I ask about the tar sands. Overall I get a sense of unease at the pace and scale of the tar sand developments and a feeling of disempowerment as the federal and national governments allow the oil companies to do as they please.

In the face of such an enormous threat to their traditional way of life, it strikes me that this is an almost defiant celebration. They’re determined to keep their culture alive and all power to them.

It’s a beautiful sunny evening and, as most of the boreal forest I’ve seen so far has been degraded in some way, to say the least, I decide to go for a walk in the hope of seeing some wildlife. And do I?

During the course of an hour I see numerous white-tailed deer, squirrels, a groundhog and even a black bear!

I almost literally came face-to-face with it as I’m walking down a track. The wind must be favourable because it’s completely unaware of me. It’s slowly strolling along following the tree line around the edge of a clearing, sniffing the ground as it goes.

I keep as still as possible and get a couple of snaps – not easy when you ‘re being eaten alive by mosquitoes. I back off before it notices me and head back up the track. What an utter thrill! As I head back to the lodge I hear a coyote in the distance.

This is a very special place, both the wildlife and the people.

Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s annual three-day pow-wow, we’ve been invited to participate in the Grand Entry, quite an honour.

Today we’re staying on the ground and heading east with some Cree guides to tour some of the ‘in-situ’ tar sands developments in the Cold Lake area – the type we saw when flying up to Fort McMurray yesterday.

At these ‘in-situ’ operations, instead of digging up the tar sands, they pump steam into the deposits in the ground and pump out the loosened bitumen, which is then refined into useable oil.

Currently 700,000 barrels of oil per day are produced in-situ – and there are plans to increase this to 3.8 million barrels per day.

We head off in a small convoy and for a while drive through pristine boreal forest, rich in bird life and only broken up by beaver-dammed fen and the odd small farm.

We start to pass seismic lines, clear-cut forest about 20 metres wide, which can run in a straight line for a hundred kilometres. We also start to pass small in-situ operations, which increasingly dot the landscape.

Our Beaver Lake Cree guides explain how the seismic lines, pipelines and access roads, which criss-cross a huge area, and the numerous in-situ developments both large and small, are preventing the migration and movement of animals such as caribou and moose, and reducing their numbers in the area.

They are very worried about the degradation of their ancestral lands and what this means for their traditions and quality of life for future generations.

Last year, the Beaver Lake Cree Nation commenced what can only be described as a ‘David versus Goliath’ legal battle to protect their environment by enforcing recognition of their treaty rights. In 1876 the Cree were given the right to hunt, fish and gather forever within their ancestral lands. “How can these rights have any meaning when there are no animals left?”, our Cree guides ask.

The first large tar sands operation we reach is the Exxon (aka Esso) Imperial Oil Cold Lake development. We stop and have a look around.

It’s late afternoon and we need to start heading back – the Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s annual three-day pow-wow begins tonight and we’ve been invited to participate in the Grand Entry – quite an honour.

We get to the ceremonial grounds and are warmly welcomed by Chief Al Lameman. There is also a press pack! Albertan TV plus a number of press journalists are here to see us – Why are we here? What’s our campaign about? What’s in it for us? They are surprised that tar sands are becoming an international climate change issue and that a bank could be directed by its customers’ ethics.

We join the pow-wow’s opening ceremony, the Grand Entry. Cree chiefs from across western Canada are in front of us, while dancers line up behind in their incredible traditional dress – all intricate beading and lavish displays of feathers. There’s a huge buzz about the place —- this is going to be something very special.

The Grand Entry commences and a bewildering array of colour pours into the pow-wow arena to the sound of drums. We’re presented with ceremonial gifts of blankets, and after the formalities we’re invited to join the dancing. I attempt a bit of a two-step as the drums and singing start up again – there is very little doubt I look like a pillock – but who’s watching? (Other than a filming BBC cameraman!)

We’re surrounded by the most amazing dancing and dress, with men and women of all ages getting stuck in. It’s an audiovisual spectacular. It’s also a real privilege to be asked to take part, and needless to say something we’ll never forget.

Three tonnes of tar sands are scraped up to produce one barrel of oil. Everything here is done on a huge scale. To put this photo into perspective, the tyre tread of each dumper truck is six feet wide, and the truck itself the height of a three-storey house. We can see hundreds of them scurrying around like ants down below. 

We meet up with the journalists and BBC film crew at Lac La Biche airport for a fly-over of the tar sands. We start by taking a small plane up to Fort McMurray, the boomtown at the epicentre of the Athabasca tar sands.

It’s not long before we start to see seismic exploration lines (used for investigating the subsurface in the search for new tar sands deposits), pipelines and access roads criss-crossing the formerly pristine boreal forest.

This forest is part of a sub-Arctic ring of coniferous trees that runs around the planet, a globally vital ecosystem with more carbon stored per square metre than the Amazon.

As we go further north, the scarring of the forest intensifies with seismic lines seemingly every few yards, and in-situ tar sand mines, old and new, small and large. We’ll be touring some of these developments on the ground tomorrow.

We land in Fort McMurray and get into two helicopters for a close inspection of the open-cast tar sands mines in the area. Once the BBC has fitted micro-cameras to the underneath of one of the helicopters, we’re away.

Before long we’re flying over operations belonging to Suncor, Shell and Syncrude. I’ve been working on this issue from a financial and environmental risk perspective for a couple of years, and I’ve seen many disturbing images of tar sands developments while researching our Toxic Fuels campaign. But nothing could have prepared me for seeing it with my own eyes.

It just doesn’t seem real. It looks like Mordor from Lord of the Rings – nothing but blackened earth, toxic sludge and smoking chimneys. Total environmental devastation as far as the eye can see.

The tar sands industry refers to this process as the removal of ‘overburden’ – what that means is total deforestation, the draining of fen and bog and the removal of soil and peat until the tar sands are exposed.

It’s not surprising this can be seen from space, a black hole in the middle of Canada’s boreal forest.

The removal of this ‘overburden’ will have released huge amounts of embedded carbon into the atmosphere, emissions that are not currently measured by industry or government.

And it’s not just the carbon emissions that should be a cause for concern. Even though we’re flying at over 2000 feet, the smell is unbelievable. It’s hard to say whether it’s the exposed tar sands, chimney stacks, lakes of toxic sludge or sulphur pyramids, but it’s making us feel quite sick.

The process of producing one barrel of oil requires three barrels of water, usually taken from the nearby river. And most of it ends up being too toxic to return. The huge volumes of liquid toxic waste are stored in vast lakes of sludge, like the one in the foreground here.

Currently there are 1 million barrels of oil coming out of open-cast tar sand developments like these every day (representing 60% of total tar sand production) and there are huge expansion plans.

Shell alone plans to expand its open-cast mining in the area five-fold over the coming years. In all, there are plans to produce 3.4 million barrels of oil per day in this way.

We just can’t allow this to happen.

Not including the removal of ‘overburden’, the extracting and producing of oil from tar sands emits on average three times more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production.

At a time when we need to be shifting to low-carbon fuels, here we have one of the largest capital projects in the world developing one of the most carbon-intensive fuels and a potential climate and local ecological disaster. It’s worrying to say the least.

On the plane back to Lac La Biche, everyone is in a contemplative mood – how has this been allowed to happen? Some of us are angry.  Some seem a little shell-shocked. What a thoroughly depressing day.

Colin (on the left!) and Len Benson – at Beaver Lake Cree, the owner of the ranch and a proper cowboy!

Colin Baines, our Campaigns Adviser her at The Co-operative Financial Services, recently led a press trip to the Albertan tar sands in Canada. He went to see first-hand the environmental impacts of the tar sands developments, the world’s largest fossil fuel project, and to hear about the consequences for the Beaver Lake Cree, local wildlife and the planet as a whole. Although he has researched and campaigned on the issue for a couple of years as part of our Toxic Fuels campaign, this was his first trip to see the devastation for himself.

After reading these entries, you can get involved with our Toxic Fuels campaign or consider fund raising or donating to the Beaver Lake Cree ’s legal fighting fund.

This is a diary of his trip…

Day 1: Beaver Lake

I’m staying at a lodge on a buffalo ranch at the edge of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s reservation, close to the town of Lac La Biche in north-east Alberta. It’s beautiful, and it’ll be my home for the next few days.

I’m here as a guest of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, a small indigenous community that still hunts, fishes and gather plants and medicines within its ancestral lands. However, this land is being threatened, degraded or destroyed by tar sands developments to the north and east of the reservation. Licenses for tar sands developments have been granted right up to their reservation boundary.

Tomorrow we’ll be looking at the tar sands developments to the north. But tonight, after my 17-hour journey to get here, I need to sleep.