We believe it is important to inform the members of this committee, and government as a whole, about what we're seeing on the ground about the challenges for habitat conservation in this region, for there is nowhere else in the country that faces more difficult challenges. Decades of letting the market decide has resulted in the allocation of leases for development with little regard for the ecological and cultural values that are at stake.
To address this challenge, over the years, ACFN, together with industry, conservation groups, governments, and other first nations, has worked through a number of processes to develop recommendations on thresholds necessary to maintain species habitat and biodiversity within the region. Under one such process, conducted under the umbrella of the industry- and government-sponsored Cumulative Effects Management Association, or CEMA, there were recommendations that no more than 5% to 14%, at a maximum, of the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo should ever be under intensive development at any one time, and that the level of disturbance outside of those intensively disturbed areas should be limited to 10% of the range of natural variability through disturbances like fire or insect outbreaks. However, currently more than 14,500 square kilometres of the entirety of the 68,000-square-kilometre regional municipality of Wood Buffalo, or 21% of the region, is either already developed or approved for development. Some 51% of the region is under lease and is subject to both ongoing exploration and future development.
It's clear that the existing development footprint has now far exceeded the CEMA recommendations for habitat. This is going to have profound impacts for wildlife, for habitat, and of course for the aboriginal people who depend on them. In effect, government and industry are ignoring their own advice. The Government of Alberta's lower Athabasca regional plan is not yet a solution, as the province has yet to develop a biodiversity framework for managing habitat outside of the small core of existing and proposed protected areas.
What we're here to say is that it's simply not possible to talk about habitat or conservation in the oil sands without taking into account the pace of development and the degree to which restoration is lagging behind development within the region.
It's somewhat shocking that in Alberta, oil companies are not actually required to restore disturbed wildlife habitat to its original state. They are permitted to return it to what is called “equivalent land capacity”, which is a much lighter standard. It's under those regulations and under that lighter standard that they remove buildings, recontour some of the disturbance, stabilize the soil, and revegetate it. But this does not mean that they are in fact returning the land to the productive wildlife capability it had before. This is particularly true in the case of wetlands, which scientists tell us take thousands of years to regenerate, where they regenerate at all. Wetlands, as you know, are incredibly important for fresh water, for water fowl habitat, and indeed for carbon storage. It is this fact that needs to be taken into account when we hear the messages from industry and the Government of Alberta. Everyone acknowledges that disturbance is taking place, yet to place our hopes in yet unproven reclamation technology is perhaps, at this point, a leap too far.
These technologies have not been proven, and there is significant scientific uncertainty about whether the equivalent land capability standard, as currently practised, will ever support future traditional uses by aboriginal people. As such, future generations have no certainty that wildlife will be protected or that harvesting traditional resources, as guaranteed under the treaties, can continue forever.
We can't, as Canadians, afford to be wrong on something like this. We need better science, we need traditional knowledge, and we need informed policy that takes into account these facts, as they are, on the ground. In more than 40 years of oil sands operations, only 48 square kilometres have been restored. This is insufficient.
We've got about one minute, so I'll just turn it over—