The bison walk as one long ribbon of rumbling brown fur on their pasture at the Syncrude Canada oil sands complex. On a summer day when journalists are allowed inside for a good look, one of the jumbo herbivores drops to the ground and ignites a bonfire of dirt, rolling around to shed remains of its thick winter coat.

The males, with their huge cartoon-like heads, have just been reintegrated into the herd today. If they hadn’t been taken out after the calves were born, the little tykes were liable to upset the giants and end up crushed. But all sizes (small, large, and really really large) seem to be getting along. They aren’t fazed by the trucks driving through their ranks, or by the reporters taking their pictures. They act natural, which is the point of them being there.

The bison are majestic, lumbering symbols that assert that land reclamation is possible for an oil sands mega-mine. “We wanted to show that large mammals could live on our reclaimed land,” says Steven Gaudet, manager of environment and reclamation at Syncrude. Almost ten years ago, when the project started, the managers also looked at other mammals like cattle and elk, but chose bison because they were at risk. “It was a desire to help out,” says Gaudet.

The bison live on 500 hectares out of 4,500 hectares of former open-pit mine. Their care is contracted out to Fort McKay Environment LP, part of an industrial mini-empire built by the aboriginal community in the bitumen mining district. The animals have been so successful that the Calgary Zoo is interested in storing genetic samples of them, since Syncrude keeps detailed records of pedigree.

After watching the herd roam and mingle, it’s time for lunch in a nearby cabin. The wooden walls of the small meeting room are papered with banners and pendants boasting the awards the bison have won over the years, some dating as far back as 2001.

All this poses a communication challenge for Syncrude. Obviously the success of the bison, and all they represent, is a story the company wants people to know about. But it’s hard for the industrialists to know when the story has been told enough.

Part of the problem is that the demand for information shifted. “We didn’t shift gears fast enough,” explains Alain Moore, from Syncrude, “Even 10 years ago, people didn’t think this industry was economically viable.” Then the oil sands gained official international recognition as reserves second only to the legendary resources of Saudi Arabia, and became an essential part of the global energy scene. Now, the world wants to minimize the environmental repercussions of digging up Alberta’s bitumen wealth.

This desire is recognized and is spurring change, although less radically and more slowly than demanded by the industry’s green critics.

In February, Alberta’s Energy Resources Conservation Board issued Directive 074: Tailings Performance Criteria and Requirements for Oil Sands Mining Schemes. This lays out new industry-wide criteria for managing oil sands tailings, and outlines specific enforcement actions if tailings performance targets are not met. According to Davis Sheremata of the ERCB, this new regulation is one of the most important directives, and maybe the most important environmental order, that the agency has ever issued.

Oil sands developers have always included targets for reclamation in their drilling applications but that practice didn’t always set clear performance standards. And targets and results are two very different animals.
“For decades we’ve had companies set goals to reclaim land but we couldn’t legally enforce their targets,” explains Sheremata. “Now we have the power to step in.”

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