A community-led approach for landscape planning

Background/Question/Methods

Fort McKay is an indigenous community located near the current centre of Canadian oil sands development. While community members have experienced economic benefits from industrial development, they have also seen their ways of life and environment significantly altered by this development. The dramatic increase in industrial activity in their traditional territory highlights the need for the community to understand both the benefits and liabilities associated with different land uses, and to formulate an approach to setting socioeconomic and ecological land-management objectives. The Fort McKay Cumulative Effects Project provides the community with defensible, transparent and science-based information on the current and projected future states of the community’s traditional territory and economy. This approach involves community-led selection of environmental, cultural and economic indicators, and application of land-use and ecological simulations to model the performance of these indicators in pre-development, current, and future conditions. Community members reviewed results from the land-use simulations and discussed economic and environmental trade-offs of development within their traditional territory. Community-led management and mitigation strategies were developed that better meet Fort McKay’s objectives for the future landscape, and these strategies were modelled to evaluate indicator response. 

Results/Conclusions

Modelling from pre-development to current conditions reflects the substantial industrial disturbance in the traditional territory, through both direct effects of footprint development (land clearing) and indirect effects associated with increased human access to a previously remote landscape.  Consequently, key indicators such as wildlife and fish habitat and populations have shown substantial declines in comparison to pre-industrial ranges of natural variation (based on natural disturbance regimes such as wildfire). Future modeling of current development projections suggests that environmental indicators will continue to decline and in most instances will no longer support traditional use activities (e.g., moose harvesting). In response, Fort McKay identified land-management options that could mitigate indicator decline while still permitting oil development, including: establishing a network of protected (conservation) areas to support traditional land uses and ecological integrity; implementing access management to reduce motorized travel and over-harvest of fish and wildlife; and requiring “best management practices” for industry (e.g., reduced footprint, improved water crossings).