The B.C. NDP government has imposed a two-year moratorium on new mining and forest work in large areas of forest land in northern B.C., after a bumbling effort to shut down existing industry and comply with a federal order to protect endangered caribou herds.
ItB次元官网网址檚 a cruelly mistimed blow to B.C.B次元官网网址檚 struggling forest industry, and has implications for caribou zones down the Rocky Mountains to the Kootenays. The federal Liberals want to impress their urban environmentalist supporters going into a fall election, and Premier John Horgan appears to be trying to use the caribou crisis to further his aggressive transfer of provincial timber to Indigenous communities.
The , worked out in secret with two selected Indigenous groups, created such a wave of public concern that Horgan put it on hold this spring and called on former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Blair Lekstrom to advise his forests minister, Doug Donaldson.
尝别办蝉迟谤辞尘B次元官网网址檚 details how local governments, other Indigenous groups and industry were shut out of private talks with the West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations. Their chiefs falsely claimed the sweeping restrictions would not eliminate forest jobs, and Horgan intervened after forest-dependent people started packing meetings in the Peace and Kootenay regions to demand answers.
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The struggle to protect dwindling caribou herds has been going on for many years, and B.C. is part of a much larger picture. NewfoundlandB次元官网网址檚 herds are many times bigger than B.C.B次元官网网址檚 total population, and decline there as well as here is attributed to climate shifts, resurgence of wolves and grizzly bears and their access to prey via roads and snowmobile tracks.
In B.C., professional environmentalists are as usual the loudest voices. TheyB次元官网网址檙e appalled that the province has resorted to shooting wolves from helicopters, dismissing the temporary moratorium as too little and too late.
Claims that successive B.C. governments have B次元官网网址渄one nothingB次元官网网址� may be good for fundraising, but they are false. By 2016, the area protected from logging and road building in the South Selkirks was 2.2 million hectares, 95 per cent of the best caribou habitat. The South Peace recovery plan covered 400,000 hectares of high-elevation winter habitat.
The same winter, the forests ministry worked with West Moberly and Saulteau to try to shoot 120 or more wolves in the South Peace, where the Graham herd, B.C.B次元官网网址檚 largest, numbered about 700 caribou.
The fifth winter of wolf kills has now past, and oddly the NDP-Green government hasnB次元官网网址檛 been criticized for continuing it. Say what you want about these provincial efforts, but theyB次元官网网址檙e not nothing. Predator control and maternity pens to protect tiny calves are the only strategies that have been shown to work, and these costly efforts are continuing.
Banning industrial activity and roadbuilding is also not a magic solution. As the Council of Forest Industries has pointed out, Wells Grey Provincial Park and Jasper National Park herds are also declining, with no industrial activity. Caribou are gone from Banff National Park, which has been protected since 1885.
In the meantime, the Justin Trudeau government has just discovered another endangered species it wants to be seen trying to save. The federal agency wrote to B.C. in June, urging work to start on a plan for the B次元官网网址渢hreatenedB次元官网网址� grizzly bear, one of the caribouB次元官网网址檚 main natural predators.
Folks living in northern B.C. report that the main threat involving grizzlies these days is that there are too many of them, and theyB次元官网网址檙e coming closer to communities.
Tom Fletcher is B.C. legislature reporter and columnist for Black Press Media. Email: tfletcher@blackpress.ca
tfletcher@blackpress.ca
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