The danger to wildlife has been recognized since the dawn of oil sands production. Regulations have long required bird deterrent programs.

In the Fort McMurray bitumen belt, bird warning systems have evolved far beyond scarecrows. The old frightener has grown up into an automated network of scary robots that detects an approaching flock, turns towards the birds and blasts blank shotgun shells.

As tailings ponds go, the liquid waste storage site at the six-year-old Albian Sands mine is relatively small at three kilometers long by two kilometers wide, with an actual wet surface area much smaller than that. But the Albian consortium led by Shell Canada still has to keep away wildlife of several varieties and the bird warning network has to be robust. “We’re just trying to get ahead of the curve and use the best technology that we can find and make the system as good as possible,” says Albian Sands spokesman Chris Zorica. “It’s a bird deterrent, not a bird prohibitor.”

The Albian system stays silent until birds approach the pond. Then the system sets off an array of mechanical frighteners including cannons, attack screeches of falcons, flashing lights and falcon effigies.
“Birds become habituated to the sound of a cannon going off randomly around the clock seven days a week, and they aren’t scared by it,” says Darrell Martindale, Albian’s manager of environment and regulatory compliance. “Ours is a standard radar system, and the comp-uter makes a decision on the size and direction of the object. The system will detect everything from moths to bats to helicopters. We program the computer to detect a change from one screen to the next.”

Birds that respond slowly to the warnings or ignore them may still survive. “I think there is a perception out there – because the word toxic is used, regarding tailings ponds – that as soon as a feather of a bird touches the tailings pond, the bird dies,” says Martindale. “That’s not the case at all. The top level of the pond is primarily water. It looks milky because there is silt and clay in the pond. There is some floating bitumen that’s just been released which sinks after a few days. If a bird lands on 98 per cent of a tailings pond, nothing will happen to it. There is no food in the pond, so the bird will rest for a few minutes and fly away. It’s only when bitumen gets on its feathers that it is at risk.”

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