Globe Climate: What happens to Alberta’s wild horses?

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

I’m Rachel Ferstl, filling in for Sierra Bein again this week.

The question of whether a two-year-old beaver named Nibi should stay in the care of her rescuers or be released back into the wild has caused so much controversy that the governor of Massachusetts stepped in to protect the animal.

Nibi, who has known her rescuers from Newhouse Wildlife Rescue in Massachusetts since she was a baby, will remain at the facility and serve as an educational animal, thanks to a permit the state issued to the rescue group.

The rescuers had filed a court case against MassWildlife, the state’s fisheries and wildlife division, to stop Nibi’s release.

“It’s very difficult to consider releasing her when she only seems to like people and seems to have no interest in being wild or bonding with any of her own species,” the rescue group’s founder Jane Newhouse told Associated Press.

The animal had also captured hearts through the group’s social media, with thousands signing an online petition to keep her with her rescuers.

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. U.S. politics: How will natural disasters affect the U.S. presidential election?
2. One tree at a time: Author Diana Beresford-Kroeger wants you to plant a tree and save the world
3. Energy: Alberta oil sands companies won’t be forced to pay more to cleanup fund, documents show
4. Conservation: Researchers seize the chance to see thousands of beluga whales gather in Hudson Bay – while they still can
5. Climate action: A look at Halifax’s climate property tax, ahead of a civic election that could determine its future
6. From The Narwhal: What does the future of salmon farming look like in B.C.?

A deeper dive

Wild herds and discouraging words

Alanna Smith is a reporter with The Globe and Mail’s Calgary bureau. For this week’s deeper dive, she talks about her reporting on Alberta’s feral horses.

A decade ago, Darrell Glover was placed in handcuffs and arrested in southern Alberta for protesting a government-sanctioned cull of wild horses. He had camped alongside dozens of other people in the cold to intimidate trappers who would go on to sell the free-roaming animals at auction – sentencing many to slaughter.

Glover, sitting on a log in the very same forest this summer, says he remembers the protest as a “great resistance” that helped stop the killing of dozens of feral horses near Sundre, Alta. But the resistance is far from over, he stressed, as the provincial government continues to threaten the horses’ very existence.

The carefree creatures are difficult to spot as they roam the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. But Glover, having been around them for years, knows where to look. He calls the horses by name – Stirling, Maverick, One-Eyed Jack – as they graze in fields, gallop through the trees or play fight.

There are only about 1,300 wild horses that live in Alberta, according to estimates by the provincial government. The horses have long been seen as an iconic heritage animal with roots in First Nations, farming and ranching communities but they are not legally protected like other wild herds in Canada.

The government contends the horses are damaging pastureland and that their grazing habits are contributing to ecological decline. This same land is leased out to cattle ranchers for grazing purposes. The province says it doesn’t want shared landscape to be destroyed beyond repair.

As such, Alberta says it will reduce the wild horse population as necessary through adoption, contraception and, in extreme cases, killing. But Glover, who is president of the Help Alberta Wildies Society (HAWS), says the horses are just scapegoats for the real culprits, which he says are other animals, such as cows and bears, and campers.

For wild horses, Alberta’s arguments over agriculture and ecology are a matter of life or death. Read more about it here.

- Alanna

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What else you missed

• Alberta threatens new legal action over Ottawa’s revised environmental assessment act
• A week after Helene hit, thousands still without water struggle to find enough
• River level at Amazon rain-forest port hits 122-year low amid drought

Opinion and analysis

Greg Quinn: Britain’s coal ban is one more reason for Canada to ship natural gas to Europe

Chris Severson-Baker: As Alberta shows renewables the door, other jurisdictions are reaping the benefits

Green Investing

Britain closes last coal power station, becoming first G7 country to stop burning coal for electricity

Britain’s last coal-fired power station shut down for good, making Britain the first Group of Seven country to completely wean itself off coal to generate electricity. The Ratcliffe-on-Soar station near Nottingham opened in 1967 as one of the country’s largest power plants. Its four coal-fired boilers could produce 2,000 mega­watts of electricity, enough to power more than two million homes.

• Competition Act changes leave lingering risks for greenwashing, Quebec researchers say
• Waste flare gas from oil drilling sites to help power Saskatchewan’s electricity grid

The Climate Exchange

We’ve launched the next chapter of The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. More than 300 questions were submitted as of September. The first batch of answers tackles 30 of them. They can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that makes use of artificial intelligence to match readers’ questions with the closest answer drafted. We plan to answer a total of 75 reader questions.

Photo of the week

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Guides and Explainers

• Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
• We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is, what happened at COP28, and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
• We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.

Catch up on Globe Climate

• Sicily illustrates Europe’s climate crisis
• Scientists believe this is the answer to nuclear waste
• Resilience lives on in Mi’kmaq country
• Norway’s gamble into sustainable salmon farming

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