Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (May 01/01) - Pieces of the cumulative effects puzzle are coming together but not fast enough for some.

A draft of the cumulative effects management framework is now awaiting ministerial approval in Ottawa. A plan for implementing the framework is at the final drafting stage.

"The stuff we've done over the last two years is leading edge, nationally and internationally," said David Livingstone of the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. "We are the one's inventing this wheel."

Once implemented, the framework will offer a system of monitoring the combined environmental impacts of separate developments. A big part of it will be developing a better understanding of how much development ecosystems can cope with, something known as carrying capacity.

But a Canadian Arctic Resources Committee study indicates time is fast running out for one of the busiest areas of the Northwest Territories.

CARC asked environmental consultant Peter Cizek to map the "footprints" left by oil and gas projects in a 1000 square kilometre study area around Fort Liard.

The impacts on the environment were then transposed onto the map using a computer model, Globio, designed to predict such impacts. The model was modified to include the effects on wildlife of seismic cut lines, an impact documented by woodland caribou research in Northern Alberta.

The map of ecological impacts predicts that the development has already cost the area almost 40 per cent of habitat used by large mammals.

Projecting ahead based on historic rates of oil and gas development, the analysis predicts large mammal habitat will be halved by 2010 and reduced to one per cent of the area by 2050.

CARC research director Kevin O'Reilly said the development of the maps highlighted shortcomings in the current system that need to be addressed.

"Nobody seems to have a map of the finished footprint, what it looks like on the ground," O'Reilly said. "In the absence of that it's really difficult to know what's going on out there."

O'Reilly said there is no single organization that keeps track of projects in the north. To plot development in the area since 1957, Cizek had to go to the Mackenzie Valley Land and Water Board, Indian Affairs and Northern Development offices here and in Fort Simpson and the National Energy Board.

Livingstone said establishing linkages between such organizations will be part of implementing a regional cumulative effects strategy.