If the Keystone XL pipeline is constructed and tar sands development continues unchecked, some herds of Woodland Caribou could disappear in as little as 30 years. (Photo: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

The Good

Thanks to the help of the many NWF members and activists who influenced their Senators, we beat back many bad environmental amendments and saw the Senate pass some positive ones.  We were especially pleased to see a majority of Senators stand up for the Clean Air Act by voting down amendments that would have struck down the Mercury Air Toxins standard and blocked agencies from curbing the pollution driving climate change. The Senate also passed amendments to insure that critical funds are available to prevent the risk of wildfires, increase funding for ARPA-E, which provides research funding for innovative energy technologies, increase the amount of funding for weatherization and energy efficiency programs, and help homeowners and small businesses mitigate against flood loss.

The Bad

Unfortunately, several amendments with harmful consequences for people and wildlife did pass.  One passed amendment undermines federal efforts to avoid the need to list the greater sage-grouse  under the Endangered Species Act.   And another amendment weakens the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—the landmark environmental law that requires every federal agency to consider the environmental impact of any government action—by saying that greenhouse gas emissions produced outside the United States by any good produced here (including fossil fuels) are not subject to the requirements of NEPA.

And finally, the Senate passed an amendment that expresses support for building the Keystone XL pipeline—something that will have a disastrous impact on the climate and on wildlife.

For more information on the Keystone amendment and to see how your Senator voter, click here and hold them accountable>>

The Amendments

Pro-environment actions

• Udall-Barasso Amendment 239 – passed by voice vote.  Ensures critical funds are available to help reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, which threaten communities and natural resources across the country
• Merkley Amendment 398 – passed by voice vote.  Increases the investment of government research dollars under the Department of Energy ARPA-E program
  
• Reed-Collins-Merkley Amendment 482 – passed by voice vote.  Increases the budget for weatherization and energy efficiency retrofit programs
  
• Coats-Manchin Amendment 514 – failed 46-53.  Undermines the Mercury/Air Toxins Standard under the Clean Air Act.
• Inhofe Amendment 359 – failed 47-52.  Proposes funding cuts to block agencies from curbing the pollution driving climate change.
• Menendez 619 – passed by voice vote.  Helps homeowners and small businesses mitigate against flood loss.

Anti-environment actions

Now, it’s up to us to send a signal to the Obama administration they can’t ignore. The 45 day public comment period starts TODAY, and your voice is needed to keep up the fight for caribou and many more wildlife at risk from this catastrophic project.

Protect caribou by telling the Obama administration to address Keystone XL’s impacts on wildlife, habitat and climate change.

Photo: Flickr/peupleloup

State Department Analysis is Fatally Flawed

The State Department’s review ignores the massive impacts to wildlife from the Keystone XL pipeline by failing to:

• examine the effects on the boreal forest and its wildlife by enabling further tar sands development in Canada. If development continues unchecked, some caribou herds in the tar sands region could disappear in as little as 30 years.

• consider the enormous contributions to climate change. The expansion of tar sands extraction in Canada is exacerbating the climate crisis, which is fueling extreme weather events and putting wildlife in danger.

• adequately address the threats from pumping 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day along its route through America’s heartland. The pipeline would pass through the same migratory corridor that endangered whooping cranes use each spring–putting the rivers and wetlands on which they rely at risk of toxic oil spills.

Keystone XL Decision Looming

The fight to stop Keystone XL has been more than three years in the making. From emails, to hearings and rallies, to phone calls, and letters in your local newspapers–the efforts of dedicated people like you have been critical in halting this dangerous project thus far, and now we must see it to the end.

We’re expecting a final decision on Keystone XL by President Obama this year. Fortunately, we have a critical opportunity right now to make sure the effects on wildlife, habitat, and climate change are included in the final review. Our wildlife and future generations are depending on it.

Tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada. Photo: Chris Evans, The Pembina Institute, www.oilsandswatch.org

And since the boreal forest is one of the world’s largest storehouses of land-based carbon, when trees are logged or the soil is disturbed, carbon is released into the atmosphere. Overall, tar sands production emits three times more carbon dioxide than conventional oil production—exacerbating climate change and extreme weather events such as Superstorm Sandy.

Tar Sands and Caribou

Woodland Caribou (Photo: US Fish & Wildlife Service)

Woodland caribou—the shy cousin to the reindeer—are struggling to survive as their boreal forest habitat is destroyed. Over the last 50 years, about half of caribou habitat has disappeared due to timber, oil and gas development in the heart of their range, leading to steep declines of populations.

Now, the dramatic expansion of tar sands is threatening to destroy what remains of their fragile habitat—and if development continues unchecked, scientists predict that some herds in the tar sands region could disappear in as little as 30 years. The situation has spiraled so out of control that it’s even prompted misguided plans by the Canadian government to “rescue” caribou by shooting hundreds of wolves.

Keystone XL Decision Looming

Following the opposition raised by hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens across the United States, in January 2012, President Obama denied the request to build the 1,700 mile-long Keystone XL pipeline—a project that is key to Big Oil’s plans to expand tar sands operations in caribou’s boreal forests.

Now, Keystone XL is back and President Obama is expected to make a final decision on the project early this year.

We’ve seen that the American public will not sit idly by while Keystone XL is rushed through, but we need strong leadership to stop this disastrous project once and for all. President Obama has identified climate change as one of the three priorities of his second term. Now, he has the chance to make good on his promise by considering the broader environmental implications of Keystone XL and addressing just how this pipeline fits into his vision of a clean energy future.

Protect crucial habitat for caribou by telling President Obama to stop Keystone XL pipeline.

In 2008, when they thought no one was watching, oil companies Enbridge and the Portland Montreal Pipeline Company hatched a plan to reverse the flow of two existing pipelines to send dirty tar sands crude through Ontario, Quebec, and into Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for refining along the East Coast and Gulf Coast and export abroad. The plan would have exposed American treasures to the risks of a tar sands oil spill. These include Sebago Lake, which supplies Portland, Maine with its drinking water; the Connecticut River, New England’s largest; the Misissiquoi River, historically valuable to tribes and tributary of Lake Champlain; and other critical resources. It also would have provided another fuse to set off the tar sands carbon bomb by giving this land-locked resource access to markets abroad and in the U.S.

To learn more about the threat of tar sands to New England, see this fact sheet.

In 2009 the plan was shelved due to the poor economy. Now it’s back. And Big Oil won’t tell you about it.

That’s because Canada’s dirty secret has gotten out. Tar sands are an environmental disaster. As James Hansen put it, tar sands are a climate bomb that would add 120 parts per million of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, enough to catapult us past a host of dangerous climate tipping points. Tar sands development is also turning North America’s bird nursery into a toxic waste zone, leading to the decline of caribou in Alberta, and responsible for a tragic and misguided plan to kill thousands of wolves to “protect” caribou instead of forcing Big Oil to stop destroying caribou habitat.

And then there is the risk of spills. When Line 6B ruptured in Michigan in July of 2010, 1.2 million gallons of oil–enough oil to cover over three acres of land with a foot of oil–spilled into the Kalamazoo River. The cost of clean-up has been 18 times per liter as that of already expensive conventional oil spills, while sticky tar sands still coats portions of the river’s bottom and the spill has left many residents sick.

Now that they are being watched, Big Oil wants to hide the ball. But their plans to bring tar sands to New England are becoming increasingly clear.

First, in summer of 2011, Enbridge announced plans to partially reverse the flow of Line 9, the first of the two pipelines in the original “Trailbreaker” proposal. Last week, before Canadian hearings on the partial reversal have even occurred, Enbridge announced a plan to fully reverse the flow of the Line 9 pipeline all the way to Montreal. And Enbridge finally conceded that diluted bitumen (the especially corrosive form of tar sands) was slated to be transported through Line 9. Assuming Canadian officials increasingly beholden to Big Oil will rubberstamp these plans, Enbridge is now one step away–reserving the flow of the Portland-Montreal pipeline–from bringing tar sands to New England.

New England can’t afford to have Big Oil’s attempt to sneak tar sands through the region succeed. In July, New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Provincial Premiers are meeting in Burlington, Vermont. Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin is hosting. Governor Shumlin has been a true leader on energy issues and climate. He also understands that the Connecticut River cannot become the next Kalamazoo.

In a recent meeting preparing for the July event, Governor Shumlin said,

“I don’t think that we’ve dug deep enough in terms of really having a plan that’s going to enrich us all and make New England and the Northeast provinces the place where we get energy right. We have that opportunity; the planning for that opportunity is in your hands.”

The meeting will focus on a climate change plan endorsed by the Governors and Premiers to reduce greenhouse gases by 10 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020.

Getting energy right, protecting New England from an environmental calamity like the Kalamazoo spill, and reducing carbon pollution means keeping New England tar sands free and denying tar sands’ companies the market access they crave. At the July meeting, the Governors and Premiers need to discuss the threat of tar sands to New England and set a goal of keeping New England tar sands free.

Governor Shumlin is right, New England has an opportunity to get energy policy right, and that opportunity is in our hands. Big Oil wants to snake tar sands into the Northeast. They are hoping we won’t notice. We can’t afford to let that happen.

Click here to help protect Northeastern wildlife from dirty tar sands oil.

Basically untouched until recent decades, the boreal forest’s great natural riches may also turn out to be its undoing: massive amounts of oil have been found in deposits known as “tar sands,” and the energy industry has kicked off a full-scale war on Mother Nature in their rush to boost their profits. Aided by a government that seems determined to wreck the country’s eco-friendly reputation, Big Oil is transforming huge parts of Alberta, Canada into something out of a nightmare, destroying vital wildlife habitat and putting whole populations at risk.

Read on to learn more about nine remarkable species that are directly threatened by tar sands development, then send a message to the President to help protect them.

Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou)

Woodland caribou are being pushed out by oil development in their habitat (photo: British Columbia Forest Service)

The Canadian federal and provincial governments seem happy to turn a blind eye to the problem, and a stakeholder group that should be leading the charge to protect this iconic species — the Endangered Species Conservation Committee — is stocked with representatives from the energy industry, agriculture and timber companies, who watered down the caribou recovery plan to a toothless piece of paper. And even then, Environment Minister Peter Kent ignored a court order and refused to issue emergency protections for at-risk herds. Scientists fear that industrial development could cause Canada’s woodland caribou to vanish by the end of the century.

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)

Our understanding of gray wolves has come a long way since the days of Little Red Riding Hood. They are impressively smart, social animals that spend as much time playing as hunting, and live together in close-knit packs of 4 to 7 animals.

Gray wolves are a keystone species in the northern ecosystem (photo: flickr/YankeeNovember3)

But in the eyes of the Canadian government this makes them a threat, and an easy scapegoat for the recent rapid declines of the caribou herds. So the government has embarked upon a plan to “cull” wolf populations using poison-laced bait and aerial hunts from helicopters. The poison, strychnine, is known for an excruciating death that progresses painfully from muscle spasms to convulsions to suffocation, over a period of hours. As if that weren’t awful enough, other animals like eagles and even domesticated dogs have been unintended casualties of the baiting campaign.

Black Bears (Ursus americanus)

Black bears like this cub like to eat the garbage from dumps around tar sands mines, much to their misfortune. (photo: Noah Katz)

It shouldn’t come as a surprise by now that tar sands development has directly encroached on bear habitat, leading to more interactions between humans and this species. Unfortunately, the government’s approach has been similar to their wolf plan: shoot ‘em and keep digging for oil.

Alberta Sustainable Resource Development says 145 black bears were killed by Fish and Wildlife conservation officers last year after being habituated to garbage in the oilsands region. The number of bears shot in the Fort McMurray district was nearly three times the count the previous year and the highest in recent history, said spokesman Darcy Whiteside. Nearly half — 68 bears — were shot in oilsands camps and facilities after being attracted to the camp by food, garbage or other attractants, Whiteside said Tuesday.

Canada Lynx (Lynx canadensis)

Canada Lynx near Whitehorse, Yukon (photo: Keith Williams)

Unlike bears, lynx shy away from contact with humans. Development in the eastern part of Canada has already forced out the big cats, and pressure from tar sands exploitation in Alberta is causing concerns there as well. And there’s a critical connection between gray wolves and lynx: wolves kill coyotes, which directly compete with lynx for snowshoe hare and other prey. So fewer wolves means more coyotes, which means fewer lynx. For a population that’s already threatened, that’s bad news. On the other hand, protecting wolves means lynx may rebound as well.

Sandhill Cranes (Grus canadensis)

Sandhill cranes face a double-whammy in Alberta and Nebraska (photo: flickr.com/nigel)

The big birds migrate thousands of miles each year from their breeding grounds in western Canada to as far south as Mexico, fattening up for a month in Nebraska’s Platte River valley. But this exposes them to a double-whammy from tar sands, with Alberta’s energy development destroying prime nesting habitat, and the danger of a spill in the Nebraska Sandhills region (from which they take their name) that could take away a crucial feeding ground. As it happens, their migratory pathway overlaps the route of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline almost mile-for-mile, meaning that a spill at any point will put this iconic species in harm’s way.

Walleye (Sander vitreus)

An angler in Ontario holds her latest catch (photo: flickr.com/Rowdy Rider)

But walleye and several other native species of fish might soon become a scarce commodity if Big Oil gets its way. Residents of Fort Chipeweyan, Alberta (most of whose residents are First Nations members) have reported a pretty scary development in the last few years: lots and lots of deformed fish downstream of the tar sands developments. In 2010, commercial fishing ground to a halt due to concerns about heavy metals like mercury and cadmium…as if anyone would want to eat a filet with a golf-ball sized tumor. The Canadian government, not surprisingly, contests these claims, but independent data shows that contamination has reached 30 times the federally-accepted levels.

In addition to all that, tar sands extraction requires a lot of water — up to three barrels of water for every barrel of oil — and this has disrupted the normal cycles of of the Athabasca river and surrounding watersheds.

Moose (Alces alces)

It's hard to play hide-and-seek when you weigh more than a ton (photo: flicker/Benjamin 1970)

This species has been a major part of native culture and their diet for millennia, but with numbers near Fort McKay, Alberta declining 60% in recent years, First Nations elders now have to travel up to 200 kilometers to find moose during their traditional hunt. Moose meat has also tested high in arsenic and carcinogens created by tar sands mining, endangering the health of the region’s indigenous communities.

Like woodland caribou, moose are prey for gray wolves, and toxins in moose meat spells trouble for their predators.

Lesser Scaup (Aythya affinis)

Scaup, also known as "bluebills," call the Athabasca River delta home (photo: Carol Foil)

Scaup (pronounced “skawp”) are a favorite of hunters but, like so many other creatures, tar sands operations are taking a toll. In addition to direct habitat loss, Big Oil has created a particularly gruesome way for these birds to die. One of the dirtiest parts of oil mining is so-called “tailings ponds,” gigantic open pits where the industry dumps its liquid waste. There are lots of these contaminated tailings ponds in the delta region, filled with toxic chemicals and oil, but which appear to flying birds like just another good spot to land. And when they do, it’s not hard to imagine what happens: slow, painful death. The industry’s solutions have ranged from the simple (and ineffective), like scarecrows, to the absurd — supersonic “cannons” that boom loud enough to disturb animals for miles around, and scare off any birds from landing in the sludge.

You and Me (Homo sapiens)

Climate change threatens our oceans, shorelines, and every other ecosystem on earth (photo: Barry Keleher)

And perhaps the biggest threat of all is the danger posed by global warming, which has already reached a tipping point and could be pushed over the edge by burning Canada’s tar sands oil. Rising sea levels, extreme droughts, flooding — it might sound like the Apocalypse but in fact it’s already happening.

Speak up now! Tell President Obama to stand up for wildlife in the tar sands region, and stand strong against Big Oil’s plans to destroy the boreal forest.

National Wildlife Federation is helping to lead the charge against tar sands and Big Oil’s dirty projects like the Keystone XL pipeline, which would help trigger even more development in the boreal forest. We need your help to make sure that this pristine ecosystem and its magnificent animals don’t vanish forever.

To donate directly to our tar sands campaign, please go to NWF’s “Choose Your Cause” website, or visit NWF.org/tarsands to learn more and find out how you can make a difference.