Lorne Fitch has travelled the grasslands, waterways and mountain valleys of Alberta extensively as a professional biologist. If there’s one overarching lesson that he has learned from his life’s work it’s that the profit-driven priorities of industry and the values of conservation rarely line up.
And, when government officials jump into bed with big business, nature usually loses.
In his recently published fourth book Conservation Confidential, Fitch draws on more than 50 years of experience to explore the conflict between human progress and environmental protection. It’s a rich topic and this conflict is arguably more relevant today in Alberta than at any other time in the province’s history.
“I have unfinished business,” Fitch told TheRockies.Life. “We still haven’t met our legal requirements for species at risk and we seem to ignore fundamental ecological principles like cumulative effects and critical ecological thresholds. We’re lacking ecological literacy, particularly at the political and bureaucratic level.”
A lifetime of conservation
Fitch grew up in rural Alberta. Moving from the heartland to the city to attend University of Calgary would prove to be a life changer. In 1971, he landed a summer job with Alberta’s Fish and Wildlife Department.
Five years later, Fitch took a full-time job as a government biologist and stayed there until his retirement in 2006.
For his first decade, he was a fisheries researcher and inventory biologist. Fitch walked from the source to the mouth of hundreds of streams flowing from the Eastern Slope. Those experiences gave him a deep appreciation for the beauty and importance of these mountainous headwaters.
As a young biologist, Fitch experienced the forward-thinking small “c” conservative ideals of Premier Peter Lougheed.
“I don’t think the Lougheed government was perfect, but when you array it against every subsequent government, it was stellar,” Fitch said. “I would go back to, you know, one of the bits of advice that Peter Lougheed provided Albertans before he died. Essentially he said, slow down. You know, you don’t need to rush to develop all the resources of Alberta today.”
In a well functioning democracy, civil servants provide facts so that politicians can make sound evidence-based decisions, whether it’s about economic development or ecological protection.
Long before drought was on the minds of Albertans, then-premier Lougheed flagged the importance of the Eastern Slopes for future water security. Evidence placed watershed conservation at the centre of the 1976 Coal Policy.
Coal landscape has changed
The landscape has shifted dramatically since then. According to Fitch, the civil service has been politicized to serve a government that muzzles facts to serve, for example, a pro-coal industry agenda in the Eastern Slopes that’s at odds with the wishes of a majority of Albertans.
Any notion of the Alberta Energy Regulator as an independent agency at arm’s length from the government has been shattered, said Fitch. Opinion masquerades as fact while credible experts with knowledge are castigated if they don’t align with government policy.
“The ministers of environment and energy are not brilliant tacticians in terms of strategic thinking. Both of them and the Premier have said publicly on multiple occasions that no coal mine will be developed in the Eastern Slopes unless it’s proven that no selenium will contaminate downstream waters,” Fitch said.
“Well, that’s a wonderful statement to make, but there isn’t a coal mine in Alberta or in British Columbia that has managed to meet that, nor will there ever be a coal mine that will ever meet those stringent requirements. It’s physically impossible. The reality is that if you’re going to use an evidence-based system to make decisions, the writing is clear. Coal mining in the Eastern Slopes is a non-starter.”
“We don’t own the earth”
Fitch could have slipped quietly into retirement. But that’s not how he’s wired. Thankfully, he has a strong sense of humor and a belief in a better tomorrow. Staying engaged in conservation issues puts him in contact with a younger generation who will inherit the fall out of today’s “drill and mine as fast as possible” political mentality.
That’s what motivates him to keep writing and talking about these issues, ”to mobilize and perhaps give a sense of what a better Alberta could be.”
“Some of Alberta’s natural treasures are slipping through our fingers, some are close to disappearing and others already have. If we continue at the pace we’re at, we will mine the environment to the point where we may not have those significant benefits down the road,” Fitch said. “And that, to me, is one of the fundamental lessons of stewardship – recognizing that we don’t own the Earth. We simply borrow it from subsequent generations.”
