Duck Habitats

For the time being the technology, albeit greatly improved, relies on the extraction of thick bitumen in the Alberta oilsands by water heated and pumped through the oil-soaked sand which loosens the crude from sediment.  It is a process that uses an enormous amount of water daily.  Water that is contaminated with traces of oil and fine clay.  And this mixture is called 'tailings'.  That industrial use of water on an enormous scale is unfortunate, to say the least.

But it is water that can be recycled.  The contaminated water is piped to large ponds, eventually the sediment settles and the water recycled.  Until the process is completed, however, the oil-soaked water remains a danger to wildlife, particularly birds.  Ducks in particular are attracted to large bodies of water.  They see the water aerially, fly down to settle on it because it is their natural habitat, although tailing ponds really do not represent a natural body of water.

In 2008, migratory birds, a large flock of thousands of ducks ended up on a tailing pond owned by Syncrude.  They were coated in oil, and were unable to survive; they sank and they died.  The company was fined $3-million for failing to use bird deterrents "early enough and quickly enough".  Most of that fine was used for research on migratory bird habits.  Since then Syncrude has completely overhauled its bird-deterrent systems.

The oil companies operating in northern Alberta are constantly searching for new and improved methods of oil extraction.  It's a huge, valuable market they're involved with, in extracting those natural resources.  Demand for fossil fuels is high and will remain high for the foreseeable future.  Those same companies are mindful of their obligation to protect the environment and that includes wildlife.

They are multibillion-dollar operations, and they spend millions trying to persuade ducks that the environment that oil extraction lies within is deadly to them.  In 2009, 94 ducks met their deaths on those ponds.  A handful of duck hunters with seasonal licenses are capable of shooting down more than that.  Countless birds are killed by the rotating blades of windmills, by flying into high-rise glass-walled buildings in cities that keep their lights on at night.

The huge urban pet cat population dispatches hundreds of thousands of birds of every description annually.  In 2011, 74 ducks were killed on the ponds.  "Before the incident in 2008, it was a seasonal system.  We had cannons and scarecrows, and we had a team also, but it wasn't year-round staffing.  We have radar systems monitoring all the ponds that we have.  When birds approach, then they activate deterrents."

"They have 300 falcon modules, flashing strobe lights, high-powered acoustic devices and 100 hyper-spikes that emit a sound in a specific direction." In 2011, 17 birds were killed on Syncrude's tailings pond.  Nothing is perfect.  Ducks become accustomed to all these startling distractions and begin to settle where they should not, regardless.

"You've got to show due diligence" an environment performance improvement manager with Shell Canada explained.  The Migratory Bird Act has "got probably the stiffest penalties of all the federal acts ... you can be fined on a per-day, per-bird basis for not doing something".  And the costs of failing to 'do something' are higher than the deterrent price.

"So when you do the math on 60 ducks that die, it's a quarter of a million hazing ducks to keep them away, versus $60-million in grief and hard costs."