Environmental management
Enbridge continues to engage with and include Indigenous groups in our environmental management activities.
We are learning and adapting our strategies and activities through early and ongoing engagement to refine and improve our practices and provide participation opportunities during projects and operations.
In 2018, we committed to seeking the participation of Indigenous monitors from potentially impacted Indigenous groups and we continue to do so in areas where access is granted by the landowner.
Spotlight: Caribou habitat restoration project
In 2019, Enbridge created the Caribou Habitat Restoration Project for five natural gas transmission projects in northeast British Columbia. The purpose of the project was to efficiently undertake caribou habitat restoration and monitoring conditioned by the Canada Energy Regulator (CER) as well as meet our commitments to Indigenous groups. By combining the work required under the five projects, we were able to look at the bigger picture related to caribou habitat restoration—not just on a project-by-project basis. This helped streamline meetings, team efficiencies and communications, for Enbridge and Indigenous groups. It also created more holistic benefits, beyond those any one individual project would create.
Through engagement, collaboration and partnership with Indigenous groups, the work was planned and executed and will be monitored for decades to come. In addition to supporting restoration on projects, Enbridge has invested more than $800,000 in caribou habitat restoration work led by Indigenous groups since 2015, including contributions to a maternal penning project that seeks to protect cows and calves from predators during the calving season. We have taken a number of learnings from the Caribou Habitat Restoration Project, many of which will contribute to furthering our lifecycle approach and ongoing engagement and collaboration in this region and on caribou habitat restoration into the future.
Indigenous representatives touring a horizontal directional drilling of a creek in Alberta, Canada.
Enbridge created the Caribou Habitat Restoration Project in BC to efficiently undertake caribou habitat restoration and monitoring.
Plans in action: Line 21 (Norman Wells Pipeline) Traditional, Cultural, Wildlife and Environmental Knowledge Program
A Traditional, Cultural, Wildlife and Environment Knowledge Program is a land-based cultural learning initiative jointly developed by Indigenous leadership, youth and Enbridge in 2018 in the Northwest Territories. Enbridge continues to provide annual funding through the Enbridge Fueling Futures grant program that supports the connection of Elders and Indigenous youth with the environment. Participants in the program can utilize a journal to record and share knowledge, experiences and reflections from being on the land as they build their understanding of tradition and culture.
