Last month a wilderness protection group released video and photos showing clearcut logging approved by the B.C. government near Clearwater, in an area it said has been selected by the federal government as critical habitat for southern mountain caribou.
The Wilderness Committee (WC), a registered non-profit and federal charity, said the clearcutting is happening in an area specific to the at-risk Wells Gray herd living in the region.
“These photos and video clips of a person operating a logging machine shows how much damage can be done to critical habitat in such a short time—dozens of trees in minutes and hundreds in hours,” said WC co-executive director Joe Foy.
The logging is located in the Spahats Creek drainage, near the southern boundary of Wells Gray Provincial Park, with the cutblock listed as R316 on B.C. government maps.
According to the WC, the government of Canada estimates 3,800 southern mountain caribou remain, but populations are declining and there are 10 herds made up of fewer than 100 animals.
In May, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada, Catherine McKenna, declared an “imminent threat” to their recovery, which is why the WC was upset to find logging in the habitat continuing, said Foy.
“The fact our federal government has designated this forest as critical habitat for southern mountain caribou, who face an imminent threat of disappearing, apparently makes no difference to the B.C. government who continue to permit this extinction logging,” Foy said.
“I don’t know what is worse—the fact that B.C. has permitted this or the fact that Canada is not enforcing its own laws.”
Foy added mountain caribou need old forests to survive because only trees more than 120 years old support the lichen these caribou require as a food source in the winter.
Forest cover also helps keep wolf numbers low and caribou survival up.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development said,“We are aware of harvesting in the area. There is no harvesting planned or occurring within the ‘no harvest zones’, only in the ‘modified harvest zones’ consistent with the 2009 provincial Ungulate Winter Range legal order for the area.”
Foy said he feels the ministry is saying it has its own provincial laws and regulations regarding logging, which he added is true, and the logging doesn’t break provincial law or regulation.
However, he pointed out B.C. is logging federally mapped critical core habitat of the southern mountain caribou at a time when numbers continue sliding toward extinction and B.C. should heed the feds’ habitat maps and stop logging these areas.
The ministry spokesperson said, “It’s important to note 76 per cent of the core critical habitat in the federal Well’s Gray-Thompson Local Population Unit is already protected, in addition to the caribou habitat preserved within Well’s Gray Park, a significant portion of the core caribou habitat in the North Thompson has been protected from logging since 2009, as part of the provincial government’s Mountain Caribou Recovery Implementation Plan.”
Foy again agreed B.C. has already protected a great deal of critical core habitat and the province has a plan to save the mountain caribou, but his group feels B.C.’s plan isn’t working because too much habitat has been logged.
He added every bit of habitat left should be protected and more forest should be allowed to grow to 120 years or older to bring back enough caribou habitat for numbers to grow again.
“Therefore, any logging of mountain caribou critical habitat anywhere must come to an end now—before we lose this species completely,” he said.
According to the ministry, B.C. and Canada are jointly developing a process to align resources, which will include increased recovery efforts for caribou in some areas of the province.
The Wells Gray-Thompson Local Population Unit may be a focus of some of that incremental work.
“B.C. is saying they’re negotiating with the federal government in order to stave off having the feds issue an emergency safety-net order and then take over the protection of mountain caribou habitat in BC because the province has failed to act,” Foy said.
“B.C. is offering to do a better job at protecting some habitat, while at the same time hoping to allow logging companies to continue to log other habitat areas; we hope the federal government does not cave into BC’s demands to keep logging caribou habitat.”
Foy added if the feds do cave, and logging continues in federally mapped critical habitat, then mountain caribou won’t have, “a snowflake’s chance in hell of surviving.”
“Caribou in BC will be toast.”