24 August 2012, Wells Gray, BC – The threatened Mountain Caribou is about to get even more threatened if forestry giant Canadian Forest Products disregards a formal agreement signed into effect 13 years ago between the B.C. Ministry of Forests and Upper Clearwater residents near Wells Gray Provincial Park.
A proposal by Canfor Vavenby planner Dave Dobi to salvage log beetle-killed Lodgepole Pine near Wells Gray brings Canfor into conflict with a 1999 agreement between Upper Clearwater residents and the Ministry of Forests.
That’s the message recently sent in a letter to Mr. Don Kayne, CEO of Canfor, by the Wells Gray World Heritage Committee (WGWHC), a small but active group dedicated to furthering the candidacy of British Columbia’s fourth largest wilderness park for designation as a World Heritage Site.
WGWHC challenged the corporate giant to honour Mr. Kayne’s recent assurance to British Columbians that “Canfor will not support actions that overturn landscape objectives set through public planning processes unless there is full public consultation and support. We will not support actions that impact parks or critical habitat for species at risk” (Vancouver Sun, 16 July 2012) http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/Forest+sustainability+essential/6939266/story.html.
“Valley residents worked hard to strike a lasting balance between forestry interests and the interests of other user groups in our valley,” said Steve Murray, spokesperson for the Upper Clearwater Action Committee. “According to our agreement, logging on crown land ought to be restricted to small incursions for removal of insect- or beetle-killed trees. Now along comes this Canfor planner and suddenly we seem to be back at square one”.
Murray was referring to a recent assertion by Ministry of Forests District Manager Rick Sommer that the Upper Clearwater agreement condones massive salvage logging. “This simply isn’t true,” said Murray. “Such an interpretation would leave Upper Clearwater residents with no concessions at all after three years of negotiations. Our position shouldn’t be construed as NIMBY: Upper Clearwater made its hard decisions 13 years ago, when we endorsed a proposal by MoF to establish three woodlots here encompassing more than 1350 ha. Canfor has no right to treat our valley as though it’s business as usual. Large-scale salvage logging wasn’t part of the deal”.
“Mountain Caribou are also likely to be adversely affected by Canfor’s proposed clearcuts,” noted Trevor Goward, spokesperson for WGWHC. Early in the 20th century, wildfire destroyed about 90,000 ha of old forests in the Clearwater Valley – an area three times the size of the Bowron clearcut. The resulting young, regenerating forests have since then favoured deer and moose – as well as wolves and cougar, their main predators, which in turn put caribou at increased risk of predation. By 1940 Wells Gray’s caribou herds had declined to the extent that hunting them was no longer allowed. The Mountain Caribou currently numbers about 1700 animals and has been designated as threatened in Canada since 2002.
“Nowadays,” noted Goward, “these aging stands are entering the ‘late seral stage’ en route to oldgrowth. As this process continues, Wells Gray will become less productive for moose, deer and their predators, and more productive for Mountain Caribou. Some biologists are now cautiously optimistic that the Wells Gray herd may actually achieve a degree of spontaneous recovery in the decades ahead, a situation not expected to occur elsewhere”.
“Most of the cut blocks proposed by Canfor are in an area of low snowfall and hence high potential as winter habitat for moose and deer,” noted Goward. “By introducing progressive clearcuts here, Canfor will return forest succession to an early seral stage permanently. Boosting Wells Gray’s predators at a time when its Mountain Caribou might otherwise be expected to recover is hardly what I’d call respecting the needs of species at risk”.
WGWHC has called upon Canfor to adjust its logging proposals to respect the terms of the Upper Clearwater agreement as well as to promote the well being of the Mountain Caribou. “B.C. has accepted provincial, national and international responsibility for the recovery of these animals,” noted Goward.
WGWHC has also called upon Terry Lake, Minister of Environment and MLA for Kamloops-North Thompson, to help avoid future conflict of this kind by establishing a moratorium on industrial timber extraction within the Upper Clearwater viewscape (see map) until such time as a comprehensive, province-wide discussion on its best and highest use can be undertaken. “The implications of this decision are too far reaching,” said Goward, “to be left in the hands of any single stakeholder group”.
“According to latest figures gathered by Wells Gray Tourism,” noted Tay Briggs, a well known advocate of wilderness tourism, “proximity to the wilderness of Wells Gray injects more than $20,000,000 into the Clearwater economy every year”.
For interviews, please contact:
Trevor Goward at 250-674-2553 (trevor.goward@botany.ubc.ca): Mountain Caribou, general enquiries
Steve Murray at 250-674-2753: Upper Clearwater agreement with Ministry of Forests
Tay Briggs at 250-587-6444 (skitrek@mercuryspeed.com): Wilderness tourism
To read WGWHC’s original letter to Don Kayne, and for more background information, please link to http://wellsgrayworldheritage.ca/