Toxic Tailing Ponds Threaten Canadian Wilderness

[Alpha Female]

Canada's wilderness endangered

As the mixture of red sludge and alkaline water from the breach of a waste dam at a Hungarian alumina plant reached the Danube, Canadian campaigners have pointed out that tar sands operations inside Canada's Boreal Forest threaten to destroy or fragment vast lakes, rivers, forests and wetlands that provide nesting grounds for millions of birds.

Area the size of Florida under threat
Roughly 14 million hectares of boreal bird habitat, an area more than 7 times the size of Wales, could eventually be developed for tar sand operations, including strip mining, deep drilling operations and toxic tailings ponds.

Vast toxic reservoirs
Nearly a dozen massive tailings ponds, some several kilometres across, line both sides of the Athabasca River. Filled with toxic waste, many ponds are already leaking and creating their own tainted wetlands. Fish, birds and other wildlife face death from swimming or drinking from the ponds.

1600 ducks killed
Two years ago, more than 1,600 ducks died when they landed on a pond filled with toxic waste. As more waterfowl and shorebirds begin migration journeys thousands of kilometres long, they face death from swimming in or drinking from the ponds.

Source: http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/to ... lings.html

This is quite sad, I do hope they do something soon to stop this from happening, or who knows what will happen to the boreal forests, or the Athabasca river.

[Cenetri]

I completely agree; it would throw a whole ecosystem off-balance. It's unfortunate to hear this information, but it also shows what we need to do to take action in our lives.

The portion that completely stunned me was the fact that 1,600 ducks were killed from toxicity. That's quite shocking, because we know that these poisonous environments aren't created by nature itself. Also, the fact that there are many toxic areas as you have listed doesn't shock me all that much - people should take more action to help save the wildife from endangerment.

Thank you for posting this, Alpha Female; I was unaware of the damages such as this taking place, and its interesting to hear about these regions facing similar problems as our own have. Let's hope it doesn't get durastic enough to cause more danger, and lets hope that anything similar to this may get in control and not occur again. [Though, sadly, it's inevitable unless we do something about it.]

[Atropine]

This is awful news - it's devastating to hear about the colossal number of animals these toxic ponds could affect. As Cenetri said, 1,600 ducks being killed is a huge tragedy; it just shows how much damage this kind of thing can do. Hopefully as you've said there might be some way in witch to protect the habitats of these species. Thanks for sharing this article with us, Alpha Female^^