The cause of death? The animals had unknowingly ingested poisoned bait that was lost in a snow pile. This poison is being used to intentionally kill wolves in Canada.

Gray Wolf Pack.

Sadly, our addiction to oil here in the United States makes us complicit in this tragedy. Oil and gas development in Alberta has transformed portions of a once lush landscape into an industrial wasteland. The resulting habitat loss is pushing several woodland caribou herds to the brink of extinction.To mitigate the caribou loss, wildlife officials have been slaughtering the wolves that prey on caribou, instead of protecting caribou habitat. They’ve poisoned hundreds of innocent wolves with deadly strychnine-laced bait and have fatally shot others from helicopters!

War on Wildlife

Dogs, wolves, raptors, cougars, and the eagles that feed on the poisoned carcasses are the victims of this war on wildlife. What’s worse, to accommodate the further development of Alberta’s tar sands, Canadian officials plan to expand their poisoning and aerial shooting program.

Today, big oil companies are determined to build more pipelines in the United States so they can expand their dirty and lethal oil mining operations. Keystone XL, the largest proposed pipeline, would be disastrous if approved. It would carry dirty and dangerous tar sands oil across our nation’s heartland, would further destroy caribou habitat in Alberta, and would put wildlife along the pipeline route in serious jeopardy.

Your support today will help National Wildlife Federation continue to fight tar sands development, advocate for safer pipeline practices, mobilize our passionate supporters, and stop dangerous threats like Keystone XL once and for all.

Donate today to stand strong against Keystone XL, and other threats facing America’s treasured wildlife.

All are victims of tar sands mining in the Boreal Forest of Alberta, Canada. And we are the largest importers.

Kids Want to Protect Wildlife

Last Saturday morning, my daughter noticed I was on my Blackberry communicating with someone from work. “What are you doing,” she asked me, in that familiar impatient tone. I turned to her, and without hesitation I said: “How do we get more people to care about the fact that wolves are being poisoned in Canada because of tar sands?”

She then turned to me, and immediately announced that she will donate $7.00 to our cause—seven weeks of allowance.

She was motivated because she, like most young children, have an uncluttered sense of what’s morally right and wrong. There’s nothing that clouds their judgment. What a contrast to what we are facing every day in Congress these days. Elected officials of both party persuasions are wringing their hands on what to do about the White House’s decision to halt the permitting of Keystone XL, which, if built, would’ve been the largest tar sands oil pipeline snaking through the nation’s Heartland. Allies of the oil industry are teaming the halls of Congress to find any lever to pull to reverse the decision.

My 9-year-old daughter doesn’t understand why people who are in government aren’t standing up for the wolves. I wonder why are they not standing up to Big Oil’s insatiable greed and indifference.

She also wonders, understandably, whether a $7.00 donation will make a difference, knowing that we are up against a multi-billion dollar oil industry.

Join & Make a Difference

Motivating others to join her, that’s the difference $7 can make. Imagine if just one percent of the children in the U.S. between the ages of 10-14 donated $7.00? One percent is about 200,000 children…you can do the math.

The point is that if we stand together, unpolluted by politics and oil profits, united about what’s morally right, we can shift the political debate. And our legacy will be that we stood up for those who don’t have a voice.

Please join Ava, and thousands of others, in NWF’s fight to stop tar sands and help protect wildlife. 
Spread the word. Your voice matters.

Learn more about tar sands>>
Learn more about the threat to wolves and caribou>>
Take Action to help wolves and other wildlife>>

Protesters carry an inflatable Keystone Xl pipeline around the White House during the Nov. 6th rally. (Photo: Marine Jaouen)

Yesterday, my 9-year-old daughter, Ava, and I joined 10,000 others from around the country to encircle the White House in a show of solidarity to oppose the massive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

After gathering with fellow NWFers to form our link in the chain, Ava and I walked the perimeter to get a sense of scale—did we have enough to complete a ring around the White House? As we began to walk, we were overwhelmed.

“I had no idea there would be this many people, Mommy,” Ava said, with wide eyes and open ears, hearing chants and songs that she couldn’t make sense of, but that she knew excited people and made them smile and cheer and dance.

And when I saw that in some places, the circle was three lines deep, and a sea of people in orange vests dotted the streets, I felt tears well up—imagine all these people caring about an issue that we knew from day one spelled trouble and needed to be raised to the national stage.

“Now I know what you do, Mommy. Now I know what you have been talking about for two years.”

I hope you will feel equally moved by the testimonials and images that captured yesterday’s rally.

The author, Felice Stadler and her daughter, Ava, at the Keystone XL rally on Nov. 6.

Help us fight the Tar Sands Oil by donating through our new Choose Your Cause Campaign,  where you can donate directly to the cause that matters most to you.

A landscape visibly ravaged as our lawmakers look the other way. (Photo credit: Vivian Stockman)

Specifically, members of Congress want to block funding for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to tighten water quality protections for mountaintop coal mining. Others want to prevent EPA from issuing clean water permits for mountaintop removal projects. And still others want to prohibit the Interior Department from using government money to write new rules that would protect streams from mountaintop coal mining waste.

I wonder, those who are advocating for the coal companies, are they able to drink water from their faucets at their in-district home? Can they take quiet strolls through valleys where streams still flow, where houses still stand? Can they visit their family cemeteries that are built on the hillside (as is customary in Central Appalachia) without getting formal permission from the coal companies? Can they take their children and grandchildren fishing on the weekend to a stream that’s not filled with toxic pollutants?

Polluters have sliced off the tops of mountains to obtain dirty fuel without regard for the health or safety of the communities or landscapes that surround them. (Photo credit: Vivian Stockman)

Government has an important role to play to protect those who are at the front lines of dirty industries. Federal agencies like the EPA are required to ensure that all Americans can drink the water that comes out of their faucets, and can breathe the air without getting sick. They are required to hold companies accountable and to demand that they operate as good neighbors and put profits second to protecting public health and our environment.
Coal companies have found enough friends in Congress who are willing to shut down the entire federal government so they can avoid even the most basic, essential restrictions on how they conduct themselves.

I ask Congress, take a trip to Central Appalachia, talk to residents. If you go with eyes wide open, you will see that it’s time for government to step in and protect local communities and their surrounding mountains and streams.

Take action!  Follow this link to contact your Representative and let him or her know you don’t want to see anti-environmental riders in the budget.

The mountains of West Virginia are a respite for so many of us. But sadly this respite—a place that so many call home—is being ravaged by corporate greed.

The coal industry blows off the tops of mountains. (Photo credit: Vivian Stockman)

When I told my 10-year-old son that I had to take another business trip, he became despondent. Why, he asks? First, tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada, and now mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia?

I shared with him, I need to see the other West Virginia, the one I had only seen in pictures, in order to truly grasp what is happening to a region so close to home.

Two weeks ago I joined a few of my National Wildlife Federation colleagues on a trip to Charleston, WV, that countless others with similar interests have taken. We wanted to better understand what is going on in a region of our country where the coal industry is allowed to blow off the tops of mountains and rip apart communities, families, and the rich landscape.

What we found reminded NWF CEO, Larry Schweiger, of the lawless mining days of the 1960s: politicians and law enforcement officials looking the other way when confronted with egregious violations of federal law. Big coal owns Central Appalachia and operates with complete and utter disregard for the people and the land—a land rich in stories, history, cultural heritage and natural beauty.

One local resident-turned-activist, Maria Gunnoe, summed it up this way: “We have an outlaw industry, where the politics are almost as dirty as coal.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Lise Van Susteren, NWF board member

Instead of Majestic Mountains…Moonscape

A landscape visibly ravaged by an industrial cancer (Photo credit: Vivian Stockman)

After two days of touring the region from the land and air with local leaders like Vivian Stockman of Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, I returned home to my two children who were eager to hear what I learned and saw. I paused— how could I communicate in words the depths of the tragedy that I had seen?

Central Appalachia is home to some of the oldest mountains on earth. The area where mountaintop mining occurs—including southwest Virginia, southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and northeastern Tennessee—is also one of the most biologically diverse regions in the U.S., providing habitat to over a thousand different plant and animal species.

Now it is a landscape that is visibly ravaged by an industrial cancer. Mountaintop coal mining has destroyed over 500 mountains, a million acres of forests and over 2,000 miles of streams. It also has destroyed a way of life among the people there, people who delighted in the refuge the region’s mountains offered.

Welcome to Central Appalachia: where tap water runs brown and the air is filled with soot and smog. It’s where towns have been displaced or flooded or otherwise destroyed. In those that remain, family members suffer from a range of illnesses, many of them chronic or fatal. It’s where locals talk about black bears being buried alive in their dens as bulldozers literally move mountains to get to the coal seams. It’s where the fish are now too toxic to eat and the residents can’t go hunting the way they used to—it’s where their children are no longer safe to roam.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Central Appalachia: where the local people feel like they are being erased—their towns, their families, their traditions.

Central Appalachia is a place filled with sadness, yet it is simultaneously filled with individuals who have tremendous courage and spirit. It is their deep connection to the land that has inspired them to join hands and fight. For their home. For their way of life. For their children.

Get involved. Get connected.

Oiled tar sands duck from blogspot.com

Quick to pinpoint the cause of this tragic event, we hear that meteorological conditions may be to blame. Freezing rain and stormy conditions forced the birds to look for refuge. And sadly, but not surprising, the company’s techniques for shooing away the birds—propane cannons and little stick figures dressed in yellow rain slickers—didn’t seem to do the trick.

No Place to Land

Yes, storm conditions cause wildlife to seek shelter and refuge. But north of Fort McMurray, there is no safe refuge, where the mine operations of the world’s oil giants span an area the size of metro Chicago that lies precisely in the migratory path of dozens of North America’s beloved shore and song birds—warblers, ducks, cranes. Millions could die.

When migrating birds are tired from their long journey, what they find in Fort McMurray are toxic sludge ponds the size of lakes. From the sky they look like just the right place to land. Little do they know what greets them when they land.

Will Syncrude Release Images?

Given that the incident occurred on the massive operations leased by Syncrude, the likelihood of getting images of oiled birds is remote. And while we know images are often what propel demands for change, in this case, we only need to pull from the photo archives of previous bird deaths in the tar sands mines to be reminded of what it looks like. The same company was recently prosecuted and fined C$3 million for negligence that lead to the deaths of 1,600 birds.

Secretary Clinton said last week that we either need to rely on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada to fuel our cars and trucks–dirty oil that contaminates our fisheries, dirty oil that ruins local economies, dirty oil that poisons, drowns, or suffocates thousands of birds.

Oil killed the birds in tar sands country. Not freezing rain.

Speak Up for the Birds!

Speak up for the wildlife that has died and the wildlife that could die because of this destructive and unnecessary process. Email President Obama and the U.S. State Department and urge them to stop plans for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Thursday, October 7, 2010 – Our final day in Fort McMurray

No amount of photos, conversations with advocates, or ground tours with industry, can prepare you for what you experience when you see Alberta’s tar sands fields from the air. The scale is mind-boggling.

Under a clear blue sky, we flew in a Cessna jet over open mine pits, toxic tailing ponds, black petroleum coke dumps, oily mud flats, and thick pollution plumes. The landscape, in every direction, was covered by an oily sheen that shimmered under the sun.

The amount of sludge blanketing the landscape is the equivalent of 6 billion barrels of toxic waste. There is enough water in the tailings ponds to flood Staten Island, NY. And every winter, particle air pollution from the smokestacks turns the snows black; and when it melts in the spring, it releases the equivalent of 5,000 barrels of oil into the Athabasca River.

All of the toxic ponds and mines we saw leech freely into the Athabasca River. In fact, the entire operations lie in an enormous flat river basin, and the pipes, roads, refineries, and pits are built in and around tributaries and wetlands. The Athabasca is brown and looks lifeless.

Hundreds and possibly thousands of ducks have been oiled and died in toxic tailings ponds in Alberta

In between the massive oil fields and ponds we see little notches of beauty, a reminder of what once was—stream oxbows snaking through intact forests. Each of these little oases provides welcome relief to what we’re seeing.

The oil companies have transformed Fort McMurray from a town of 11,000 30 years ago, to a work camp of nearly 100,000 people, the majority of whom travel great distances to work in the tar sands fields. The companies have developed perverse relationships with First Nations communities where trade-offs are negotiated to ensure peace and minimal resistance. They have managed to get a strong foothold in a province where the political leaders act like oil barrens, and the electorate is nearly silent. In the last provincial elections, only 11% voted.

When I hear stories from the First Nations community leaders, I am reminded of how I felt when my 9 year old son confided in me about his first encounter with a playground bully. How do I encourage my son to stand up to him—the Yard Ape ( as a bully is aptly named in a children’s book)—and to turn his fear into anger and strength? How do I encourage him to look for and lock arms with his friends and allies so that he doesn’t have to stand up to him alone? How do I tell him that just because he’s the shortest boy, doesn’t mean he’s the weakest and can be bullied?

Tonight, over dinner with staff from the Keepers of the Athabasca, I found myself asking those same questions. Here, the Yard Ape, unfortunately, is a club of every major oil company in the world. And the task of standing up to this bully is obviously much greater and much more daunting.

But the path to changing the power dynamic may not be all that different. Join forces, turn fear to anger, shift from resignation to hope, stand tall, and call for a different path forward. Loudly.

Help us protect wildlife from tar sands oil >>

Location: Suncor’s Tar Sands and Fort McKay

Over the past 40 years, the tar sands industry has exploded in Northern Alberta, and has transformed this isolated area in the boreal forest to a massive web of roads and smokestacks, bringing with it air and water pollution and a wasteland of unfathomable size.

Yesterday’s industry-led tour of Suncor’s operations, and a visit to the First Nations town of Fort McKay, gave our delegation varied perspectives on the enormity of the industry, their land footprint, and the tremendous impact the oil companies are having on the region’s wildlife, its fragile ecosystem, and the First Nations communities that have lived here for generations.

In the area, woodland caribou populations have plummeted 70%. Moose populations around Fort McKay have dropped 60%, with elders now needing to traverse 200 km for their annual moose hunt, around mines, roads, polluted ponds. None of the elders in Fort McKay (a community of 800 that is completely surrounded by tar sands operations) fish in the Athabasca River anymore, despite living on its banks. In fact, they have not fished in the river for nearly 20 years knowing what lies upstream.

What’s striking in our conversations is that those who don’t depend on the land, and who don’t really have a deep connection to the land, are seemingly not invested in its health, its vitality, its beauty. They see the land as a resource that will line their pockets with money. Is it any different in the coal fields of West Virginia or the gas fields of Wyoming? Or is it, sadly, more of the same? Big oil making big profits at the expense of people and wildlife, and the resources on which we depend to sustain life: clean air, clean water, healthy lands.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On the plane to Fort McMurray, Alberta, where we’re gathering a delegation of eight staff, board members, and invited guests for a 3-day tour of tar sands mining operations, I read a short piece in the Washington Post titled: “How the Future will Judge Us.” The opinion piece asks which actions do we engage in today that descendants will judge us by, actions that will seem appalling tomorrow?

George Poitras addresses NWF officials in Alberta on the dangers of tar sands to his community

Despite being surrounded by water, his community has no water to drink due to massive heavy metal and toxic chemical pollution.

Despite being proudly isolated (a fly-in community), his town of 1,200 has 30% elevated cancer levels, cancers that are deemed “rare and aggressive.”

Despite having incredible access to subsistence food sources, his community of hunters, trappers, and fishermen worry about what they’re feeding their families because of the widespread contamination of the land and rivers.

His region of the country is home to the largest industrial project in the world, and therefore the most environmentally destructive. It is a region where every major oil company worldwide has made investments in mining and refining tar sands for the next 50 years. It is a region that UNEP has identified as being one of earth’s very few environmental hotspots.

George’s closing message to our group was, our people are forward thinking. We are always thinking seven generations ahead. And we ask ourselves, what is the legacy that our children will inherit?

Unlike the Post piece, the actions being pursued up here in the boreal forest of northern Canada will not seem appalling tomorrow. They are so, today.