The anti tar (oil) sand group Rethink Alberta is now campaigning to discourage tourists from visiting the province.
The group is already running a billboard campaign in the U.S. and UK, and mailing postcards to travel agents and tourism operators to discourage potential tourists to reconsider visiting Alberta.
The postcards have been sent to the five states which Corporate Ethics International, creator of the ad campaign, says are Alberta's strongest tourist markets in the US.
These are California, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Illinois. Corporate Ethics International is one of eight companies which are behind the campaign. Tourism Alberta's Anne Doughlas said that the campaign has not produced much of an effect.
Michael Marx of San Francisco based Corporate Ethics International said that the real intent of the campaign was not to prevent tourism but to sound a warning alarm for the future of tourism in Alberta as it is threatened by the continued unbridled development of the tar sands.
Billboards showing ducks covered in oil from toxic tailing ponds are soon to hit Europe as well as per Rethink Alberta's next step. However the ads have been criticised for misinformation before and most people feel the campaign is not achieving anything.
Tar sands are a type of bitumen deposit. The sands are naturally occurring mixtures of sand, clay, water, and an extremely dense and viscous form of petroleum called bitumen. They are found in large amounts in many countries throughout the world, but are found in extremely large quantities in Canada and Venezuela.
Tar sands reserves have only recently been considered to be part of the world's oil reserves, as higher oil prices and new technology enable them to be profitably extracted and upgraded to usable products.
They are often referred to as unconventional oil or crude bitumen, in order to distinguish the bitumen extracted from tar sands from the free-flowing hydrocarbon mixtures known as crude oil traditionally produced from oil wells.