Alberta’s Draft Upper Smoky Sub-Regional Plan Fails to Protect Woodland Caribou or Consider Cumulative Effects: The Case for Federal Action

Press Release

June 20th, 2025

On March 27, 2025, the Government of Alberta released the draft Upper Smoky Sub-Regional Plan (the “Draft Plan”), intended to guide future land use and development decisions in the northwestern Alberta sub-region encompassing the ranges of two highly threatened woodland caribou herds.[1]For reference, the Draft Plan defines the Upper Smoky Sub-region as south of Grande Prairie and encompassing Grande Cache, Kakwa Wildland Park, and about half of Willmore Wilderness Park. It is adjacent to Jasper National Park and accounts for roughly 2% of Alberta. For more detail, please see the map at the end of this post.

While sub-regional planning is a tool to integrate ecological, economic and Indigenous rights objectives to the Upper Smoky region at a landscape level, the Draft Plan falls far short of its objectives.

This blog post outlines the purpose and context of Alberta’s sub-regional plans, examines how the Draft plan compares to previous efforts and analyzes its shortcomings in addressing caribou recovery, cumulative effects, and Treaty rights.

Purpose and Evolution of Sub-Regional Plans

Sub-regional plans (“SRPs”) were introduced as part of Alberta’s broader Land Use Framework, with the goal of coordinating land-use decisions across multiple sectors. More recently, SRPs have become a central tool for Alberta’s obligations under the Species at Risk Act (“SARA”), particularly with respect to woodland caribou recovery.

Alberta’s commitment to caribou range planning began with the 2005 Caribou Recovery Plan and the 2011 Caribou Policy. [2]

These early initiatives were followed by formal conservation agreements between Alberta and the federal government under section 11 of SARA. The first such agreement, signed in 2016, required Alberta to prepare range plans for all 15 caribou populations in the province. However, no plans were completed during the term of that agreement.

In response, a renewed conservation agreement was finalized in 2022, reaffirming Alberta’s obligation to protect caribou habitat and identifying sub-regional planning as the framework through which these commitments would be implemented. Eleven SRP areas were outlined, with the intention of aligning planning boundaries with caribou ranges while integrating other land-use priorities.

To date, Alberta has released two SRPs – the Cold Lake and Bistcho Sub-Regional Plans. These plans have significant deficiencies. However, by contrast, the Draft Plan represents a further significant regression, both in its substance and its commitment to meeting legal obligations.

Comparing the Cold Lake, Bistcho and Upper Smoky Sub-Regional Plans

The Cold Lake and Bistcho SRPs have some notable deficiencies, particularly in relation to enforceability and implementation. Nonetheless, they acknowledge caribou recovery as a planning objective and contain certain measures designed to limit new disturbances in critical areas.

The Draft Plan, by comparison, fails to incorporate even these modest safeguards. It is primarily oriented around facilitating industrial activity – particularly oil and gas, forestry and recreation – with minimal regard for ecological thresholds or habitat conservation. Planning is conducted on a sector-by-sector basis, without meaningful integration or consideration of landscape-scale impacts.

Crucially, the Draft Plan omits binding commitments to habitat protection and contains no regulatory tools that would ensure the maintenance or restoration of caribou habitat. As such, it fails to meet even the basic requirements set out in Alberta’s commitments under its 2022 conservation agreement with the federal government.

Upper Smoky Sub-Regional Plan Draft Plan Does Not Offer Protection for Woodland Caribou

The Redrock-Prairie Creek and Narraway caribou populations, which inhabit the Upper Smoky planning region, are among the most imperiled in Alberta. Both herds experience some of the highest levels of industrial disturbance in the province. Under the federal Caribou Recovery Strategy, provinces are required to maintain or restore at least 65% undisturbed habitat in each range to support caribou persistence.

The Draft Plan neither meets, nor aspires to meet, this threshold nor does it take meaningful steps towards protecting these imperiled herds. It allows for continued logging and industrial expansion in key habitat areas, lacks enforceable restoration targets, and provides no clear timelines for habitat recovery. Even zones designated for conservation – such as the so-called “Nature First” areas – permit uses that are incompatible with caribou conservation.

The failure to include explicit targets, legal constraints, or ecological monitoring linked to thresholds renders the plan ineffective in contributing to caribou recovery.

Continued Harm to Indigenous Peoples and Treaty Rights

The shortcomings of the Draft Plan are especially significant in relation to Aboriginal and treaty rights and the impacts on Indigenous peoples. Many Indigenous peoples in the Upper Smoky region have expressed concerns that the pace and scale of industrial development is eroding their ability to meaningfully exercise their Aboriginal and treaty rights, including hunting, fishing, and trapping.

Many Indigenous peoples have participated in numerous consultation and regulatory processes, consistently calling for land-use planning frameworks that address the cumulative impacts of development and reflect Indigenous knowledge, laws and values. These calls have included repeated requests for collaborative and rights-based approaches to cumulative effects assessment and caribou recovery planning.

Despite these efforts, Alberta has continued to authorize development on a project-by-project basis, without adequately considering the broader territorial impacts or the compounding effects on Indigenous ways of life. The Draft Plan exemplifies these structural deficiencies: it does not assess impacts on Treaty rights, includes no Indigenous-led criteria or indicators, and lacks enforceable measures to ensure that Indigenous land use can be maintained in practice.

The failure to meaningfully include Indigenous rights-holders in the design and implementation of the Draft Plan not only perpetuates ecological degradation but also undermines efforts at reconciliation and the Honour of the Crown. Without significant course correction, sub-regional planning risks becoming yet another process that fails to protect both the environment and Treaty rights of Indigenous peoples.

Case for Federal Intervention

Under the Species at Risk Act, the federal government has both the authority and responsibility to intervene where a province fails to protect the critical habitat of a listed species. The Draft Plan, in its current form, constitutes such a failure.

Specifically, the federal government should:

• Conduct an independent review of the Draft Plan, and the other SRPs, to assess compliance with the federal caribou recovery strategy;
• Require Alberta to redraft the plan in accordance with its commitment under the 2022 conservation agreement; and
• Consider issuing a protection order under section 80 of SARA if the province fails to take appropriate corrective action.

Failure to act would undermine the credibility of federal-provincial cooperation under SARA and set a dangerous precedent for habitat protection in other jurisdictions.

Conclusions

The Draft Plan fails to conduct any meaningful landscape-level planning, prioritizes economic benefit over caribou recovery, and makes no effort at reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Its failure to incorporate enforceable habitat protections, cumulative effects management, or consideration of Aboriginal or treaty rights renders it ineffective and inconsistent with Alberta’s legal obligations and policy commitments.

Absent a complete redraft, the Draft Plan will contribute to the further degradation of critical caribou habitat and the continued infringement of Aboriginal and treaty rights. The federal government must fulfill its statutory role under the Species at Risk Act to ensure that caribou recovery and Aboriginal and treaty rights are not subordinated to short-term economic priorities.

The Government of Alberta is accepting feedback on the Draft Plan until June 25, 2025. Please contact Blair Feltmate or Christina Joynt if you wish to provide feedback to the Government of Alberta on the Draft Plan.

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