The Canada Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) have given the Alberta government a grade of D- on their ability to protect land and water in the province.
It has a lot to do with coal mining, said Katie Morrison, executive director of CPAWS Southern Alberta chapter.
"One of the things that really contributed to Alberta getting such a low grade on this report card was their reopening of coal across the province. There's actually several pieces on this but the government is creating a new coal policy, to replace the 1976 coal policy, but contrary to what everything Albertans have said about what they want for the future of the Rockies, what they want for coal in the province, this new coal policy, the government says, will include new coal mines and only consult with industries."
Only Ontario had a worse grade of F, which Alberta received the last time they did a report card in 2022.
"We gave it a D minus this time around because we did see a couple of minor pieces that the government did take action on. One was that there were a few new parks and boundary amendments in northern Alberta, and those were sort of private land that had been donated to the province to turn into parks, so we saw a little bit of progress. And we also saw last summer that they undertook a public engagement on the development of a new plan for parks, which should be the future of how we want to see parks and what we want from our parks and protected areas in the province. But we certainly haven't seen any progress on those plans for parks."
The report takes into account what the provincial governments are doing with public land and is not related to private land purchases in the name of conservation, such as the projects that the Nature Conservancy of Canada undertake.