Biodiversity at Suncor- 2023 Report on Sustainability

NORTHAMPTON, MA / ACCESSWIRE / September 18, 2023 / Suncor Energy

We broke new ground when we first began publicly reporting our sustainability performance in the mid-1990s. Twenty-eight years later, our Report on Sustainability and its companion publication, the Climate Report, continue the practice of disclosing our progress in more than a dozen areas of environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance. Read more on our ESG progress in our reports here.

We're committed to preserving and promoting biodiversity in all areas where we work. This includes conserving habitat and reclaiming the landscape we've disturbed.

Our Approach

Throughout the life cycle of our projects, we seek to avoid, minimize, restore and/or offset impacts to biodiversity from our operations. We do this by:

• incorporating the principles of the mitigation hierarchy, integrated land use and management planning processes into project design, construction, operation, reclamation and closure

• mapping our disturbance footprint and using monitoring tools such as wildlife sweeps to understand and ensure our development activities avoid sensitive environmental areas and wildlife potentially affected by our activities

• minimizing disturbances to the greatest extent possible while considering multiple factors, including safety, operations and the environment

•employing mitigations such as wildlife crossings, low-impact seismic, waste management procedures and managing human-wildlife interaction to reduce conflicts

• measuring and reporting our performance against the Mining Association of Canada's Towards Sustainable Mining Biodiversity Protocol

• engaging with local Indigenous communities

• working internally, with industry peers and with multi-stakeholder organizations to monitor, conserve, restore and reclaim habitat for birds, mammals, fish and other species, including species at risk such as caribou

Biodiversity monitoring and evaluation

We monitor biodiversity in and around our operations and reclaimed sites in accordance with our regulatory commitments and aligned with broader regional initiatives such as the Canada-Alberta Oil Sands Monitoring (OSM) Program. Reclaimed terrestrial, wetland and aquatic areas are monitored according to site-specific reclamation monitoring plans that assess the components of biodiversity while vegetation regrows and ecosystems develop over time. This monitoring allows us to collect soil, vegetation, wildlife use and water quality information to support reclamation certificate applications once it's determined requirements have been met. We further evaluate biodiversity across our sites through wildlife monitoring. This is conducted in accordance with approved site-level wildlife mitigation plans that include bird deterrents at ponds; the use of wildlife crossings over above-ground pipelines; and strategies to manage human wildlife interactions.