Environmental groups call on B.C. to close loopholes and stop approving caribou habitat destruction

Photo: Bailey Repp

French Creek logging.

Legislative loopholes have been discovered that enable extensive logging in southern mountain caribou habitat, claim local environmental groups.

The Wilderness Committee and Wildsight are calling on the province to stop approving roads and cutblocks in no-harvest zones and to fully protect all federally-identified core caribou habitat.

Together, both groups have discovered holes in what the provincial government put in place in 2009 to protect deep-snow caribou — ranging from areas primarily off limits to the forest industry (no harvest zones) to areas where certain less effective prerequisites to log are in place (conditional harvest zones).

“According to our new map analyses, more than 78 hectares of no harvest zones (NHZ) — set aside for caribou in the Revelstoke area — have been logged or approved to be logged since then,” noted a press release on the matter. “An additional 1,367 hectares were logged in conditional harvest areas since the protections were put in place.”

Between 2018 and 2024, the province approved eight cutblocks that overlap — by 37 hectares — with the no-harvest ungulate winter range protections, the groups allege. One of the areas was as large as 9.1 hectares.

These cutblocks are within the habitat of the recently extirpated Columbia South herd and the endangered Columbia North herd of deep-snow caribou.

“We cannot continue to chip away at protections and critical habitat, and expect different results. We’ve lost seven caribou herds in the last two decades in the Kootenay and Columbia region,” said Eddie Petryshen, conservation specialist with Wildsight.

“These conditional harvest areas in particular are not effectively protecting caribou habitat as over 1,300 hectares have been logged in the habitat of a herd that otherwise could have strong long term viability.”

A species in decline

B.C.’s deep-snow dwelling caribou have declined — from approximately 2,500 in the late 1990s to 1,250 today, Petryshen stated.

Over the past two decades, only 10 of the 18 sub-populations (herds) remain on the landscape in southern and central B.C.

Habitat loss, degradation and fragmentation from logging, particularly old or primary forest, are the largest contributors to deep-snow caribou decline, Petryshen pointed out. The Columbia North herd, which roams the Upper Columbia and Northern Shuswap, has increased to 210 caribou in recent years.

“Protecting their habitat is the only way to ensure they don’t meet the fate of their now extirpated south herd neighbors,” said Petryshen. “Sadly, only 35 per cent of Columbia North’s core habitat is protected. And our analysis shows portions of these protections being chipped away at.”

Cut or no cut blocks

You can’t call them no-harvest zones if logging is still on the table, said Lucero Gonzalez, conservation and policy campaigner with the Wilderness Committee.

“Destruction and protection cannot co-exist,” he said. “For a species as endangered as southern mountain caribou, partially protected critical habitat is a slow path to extinction.”

Deep snow caribou require large areas of old and primary forests to find food and avoid predators. In winter, when other food is buried in deep-snow, they stand on their huge snowshoe-like hind feet to feed on lichens growing on old-growth tree branches — that’s why they are called ‘deep-snow caribou.

New research from the University of British Columbia confirms this dependency on hair lichen, warning that abundant hair lichen can only grow in advanced aged old-growth forests, and that restoring such lichen is virtually impossible in young forests.

“A cutblock created today within the core range of deep-snow caribou won’t support caribou and their winter food again for 120 to 150 years at a minimum. That’s how long it takes for forests to produce enough hair lichens — their primary winter forage — to sustain them,” said Trevor Goward, researcher and international authority on caribou-forage lichens. “It’s impossible to log caribou habitat without permanently destroying its value for caribou.”