Case Study: Environmental Risks of Human Development

Canada

Tar Sand Consequence on Canada:

• Environmentalists and indeginous tribes were especially opposed to the tar sands because, firstly, the production implements health risks and there have been increasing report of Canada. 
• Large scale open cast mining also destroys forests and peat frogs, causing a loss of ecosystems and habitats. 
• Although only about 0.2 percent of Alberta’s forests have been destroyed, the sheer devastation about mining has also reduced the resilience of the native Taiga environment. Syncrude claims to have replanted 20 percent of its mined land, but environmentalists argue that the figure is actually less than 1 percent. 
• Extraction also creates spoil heaps – dumps for waste, soil and land. 
• Tailing ponds are also created, which contains contaminated toxic wastewater caused by oil extraction and processing. 
• Lastly, Caribou populations have also declined drastically in areas of oil extraction. They have become easy prey for wolves, which have been culled to preserve the caribou. Even so the local caribou population is expected to be extinct by 2040.