Press Release
October 4, 2004
CPAWS-BC Calls for Moratorium on Logging in Core Habitat of Endangered Mountain Caribou
VANCOUVER - Endangered Mountain Caribou could become extinct this century if a moratorium is not placed on the logging of old-growth forests that make up its habitat, according to the BC chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.
"Ongoing logging in the core habitat of the endangered Mountain Caribou is unacceptable," says Chloe O'Loughlin, Executive Director of CPAWS-BC. "The BC government must place a moratorium on logging activity in these areas while the Mountain Caribou Recovery Plans are negotiated."
The endangered Mountain Caribou currently inhabit less than 60 per cent of their historic range in BC. Mountain Caribou were added to BC's Conservation Data Centre (CDC) Red-List in 2000 because of continuing declines in population numbers and ongoing forestry threats.
"There are only 1,672 Mountain Caribou remaining, down from 1,905 just two years ago, British Columbia must act now," says O'Loughlin. "A 12 per cent population decline is a clear signal that we are not managing our wilderness land base correctly."
BC's Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection stated in its 2002 Strategy for the Recovery of Mountain Caribou, "Today, the primary threat to Mountain Caribou appears to be fragmentation of their habitat. Associated with this fragmentation are potential reductions in available winter food supply, increased human access and associated disturbance, and alteration of predator/prey relationships. For these reasons, forest practices are currently considered to be the greatest habitat management concern."
Despite this acknowledgement by the BC government, forestry operations continue in independently identified core caribou habitats in BC's Monashee Mountains, the Purcell Mountains, the Central Selkirk Mountains, and the transboundary Southern Selkirks.
"We cannot continue to remove the core habitat of the caribou if we hope to recover the population," says Gil Arnold, CPAWS-BC's negotiator for the recovery of Mountain Caribou.
Arnold states that, until the completion of Recovery Plans, as mandated by Canada's Species at Risk Act, British Columbians need to apply a temporary moratorium to further tenures for forestry operations in identified core Mountain Caribou habitat and suspend current harvesting and road-building operations in identified core Mountain Caribou habitat.
"Like the wild salmon and the buffalo, the Mountain Caribou has served as a source of wealth for humans who have lived in BC's interior mountains for many thousands of years," says Arnold. "The remaining wild forests that sustain Mountain Caribou also support their predators: bears, wolverines, wolves, and cougars. They hold the snow, keep the creeks cold, and shelter songbirds. The Mountain Caribou and its habitat are on the edge...how we respond will matter greatly to future generations."
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Contact
Gil Arnold
Tel: 250-362-9404
Email: gil_arnold@uniserve.com
Chloe O'Loughlin
Tel: 604-685-7445
Email: chloe@cpawsbc.org
CPAWS - British Columbia Chapter