The Canadian Parks and Wildlife Society (CPAWS) Northern and Southern Alberta chapters leveraged momentum and attention on Alberta’s Eastern Slopes built by their previous work on coal and parks to increase organizational and community capacity to holistically address the multiple environmental threats facing this key ecosystem. The Eastern Slopes are an environmentally and socially vital landscape with overlapping importance for water, biodiversity, carbon storage, cultural and recreational values. Yet, these values also face multiple overlapping threats such as forestry and increasing recreation pressures. This project helped to protect this key ecosystem through a multi-pronged approach using policy expertise and engagement, empowerment of community groups to get involved in land use decisions and the advancement of understanding around the practice of landscape-scale conservation.

This project focused on the protection and conservation of Alberta's Eastern Slopes, has contributed to solutions to pressing environmental threats through a multi-phase, comprehensive strategy aimed at engaging communities, influencing public policy and building capacity for landscape-scale conservation. The project's success can be attributed to its holistic approach, leveraging public engagement, policy advocacy and coalition building.

CPAWS achieved significant milestones in raising awareness, influencing policy, building coalitions, empowering communities and contributing to biodiversity conservation. Some examples of the work done and the positive impact of its efforts included attendance and support garnered at COP 15, the inclusion of land use planning within the AEP mandate letter and the recognition of the need for a holistic approach by the Government of Alberta. They remain committed to safeguarding the Eastern Slopes and will continue to build on these achievements for a sustainable and resilient future.

It has been clear to CPAWS that the threat to the iconic Eastern Slopes is an issue of cumulative impacts- a nagging issue across Alberta that will require big thinking and major multisolving. The many diverse demands on the finite area of Alberta's Eastern Slopes also all have diverse means of addressing them. Some are managed through Alberta Forestry and Parks, some by the Alberta Energy Regulator and others, like the destruction of native trout habitat, are even in Federal jurisdiction. These levels and layers of complications mean that there needs to be simultaneous support to respond to emerging issues while using those situations to build organizational and community capacity to address the integrative landscape-level issue of cumulative impacts.

The next steps are to continue to address the individual issues as they relate to coal and forestry while nurturing community-level relationships, all while applying its learnings to the development of an overarching strategy for nature in the Eastern Slopes. CPAWS hope that an integrated strategy can minimize biodiversity emergencies like clearcutting in Kananaskis, new coal mines in sensitive headwaters or land use plans that allow OHV encroachment in high alpine vegetation.