NIRB gives High Arctic coal project a thumbs-down review

RANDY BOSWELL
Canwest News Service
Special to Nunatsiaq News

A controversial proposal to open a coal mine on Ellesmere Island — potentially one of the planet’s most northerly industrial operations — has hit a major roadblock after a Nunavut review agency ruled that “the high likelihood of immitigable impacts” to wildlife and globally-significant fossil beds in the region demand that the project be “modified or abandoned” by its B.C.-based developer.

The thumbs-down recommendation from the Nunavut Impact Review Board, filed Feb. 22 with the federal government, was hailed as a victory of fossil science over fossil fuel by the U.S.-based Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which had described the proposed Weststar Resources Corp., coal project as a threat to “some of the most significant sites in the world” for fossil researchers.

The board’s decision leaves the project’s fate in the hands of the federal government and could force the company to radically redesign its development plans.

“The news couldn’t be better,” society president Blaire Van Valkenburgh said in a statement sent Thursday to Canwest News Service. “This is the strongest possible outcome in our favour.”

In its report, submitted to Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl, the review board cited “unacceptable potential adverse impacts” — including possible disruption of Inuit hunting activities — in rejecting the proposed mine.

Despite a submission from Environment Canada, backing Weststar’s plan — described by the federal ministry as “a type where the potential adverse effects are highly predictable and can be mitigated with known technology” — the NIRB concluded there was too great a risk of harm to Peary caribou, other “sensitive wildlife” and “significant paleontological resources.”

Weststar president Mitchell Adam had given assurances to the board in January that the company would work closely with territorial officials to minimize impacts from the coal mine on Ellesmere Island’s environment, Inuit communities and fossil resources.

“We’re not just going to go up there and backhoe this thing and make a mess,” Adam told Canwest News Service at the time. “If there are fossils of any significance — or any muskox or other wildlife — we’re not going to go up there and disturb it.”

But “at the same time,” he added, “if we can outline surface coal, and get some interest of a major company, they’re going to provide jobs and they’re going to ship it out of there — no coal-fired plant, no gasification. You’re just going to dig the coal, put it on a boat and send it to China, Korea or Europe.”

But the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which represents 2,000 of the world’s leading fossil scientists, successfully rallied its members to deluge the review board with objections to Weststar’s plans.

“The proposed development area includes fossil sites of a broad range of ages that includes some of the most significant sites in the world, and the society … is deeply concerned over the possible loss of these valuable resources,” it said in a January statement.

“These unique, world-renowned sites near Strathcona Fiord include fossil plants and animals that lived during one of the warmest times in all of Earth history, when Ellesmere Island was blanketed in forests inhabited by alligators, turtles, primates and hippo-like animals,” the society said.

“Despite over three decades of searching the High Arctic, no sites of comparable age and fossil richness have been discovered elsewhere in the Canadian Arctic.”

In June, Canwest News Service reported the discovery on Ellesmere Island of a set of 53-million-year-old fossilized teeth from a huge, hippo-like animal that lived in the island’s ancient tropical environment.

The find was made by Saskatchewan paleontologist Jaelyn Eberle — now curator of fossil vertebrates at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History — and was called potential “smoking-gun” evidence showing how a host of prehistoric mammal species arrived in North America.

Eberle’s submission to the review board, quoted in the agency’s report to Strahl, said the island’s fossils “are a part of Nunavut’s heritage and a legacy for generations of Nunavut children. These fossils, and the clues they reveal about Nunavut’s ancient past, are irreplaceable.”

Canada’s Arctic fossil record is also considered important to reconstructing the Earth’s environmental history and understanding the pace and impact of present-day climate change.

“Destruction of these fossil sites will strongly affect our ability to understand how global climate change will impact these regions over the coming century,” Van Valkenburgh has stated.

The society stated in January that it is “not disputing either the need for finding new sources of energy, or the economic benefits that may accrue from the development of the coal mining.”

But it stressed the need “to preserve the invaluable fossil resources in the area alongside other objectives.”