Wildsight has sent a letter to Environment and Climate Change Canada, calling on the government to finalize plans to protect vulnerable deep snow-dwelling mountain caribou.
Wildsight partnered with Ecojustice, Stand.earth and Wilderness Committee to write a letter to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault, urging the ministry to complete critical habitat mapping and finish a recovery strategy that it has been waiting a decade for.
Wildsight said the government initially outlined plans to identify areas critical to caribou survival by 2014, but efforts have been continuously pushed back. The government's current timeline to deliver an amended caribou recovery strategy is 2026, but Wildsight would like to see it released sooner and has put pressure on the government to finalize the report by March 19.
The letter states that ECCC’s inaction is a “tacit endorsement” of the loss of more herds.
“That might sound soon, but those maps already exist. The B.C. government completed critical habitat maps for its herds in 2020. They’re just not enshrined in the federal recovery strategy yet,” said East Kootenay Wildsight conservation specialist Eddie Petryshen.
Wildsight has been pursuing habitat mapping as a means of recovering declining caribou herds and providing clarity on caribou habitat. Without this key roadmarker, it says habitat protection can't be put in place.
Deep snow-dwelling mountain caribou, also known as southern mountain caribou, inhabit southeastern B.C and parts of Idaho and Washington. In winter, when food is buried under the snow, they rely on lichens from old-growth trees as a primary food source.
Human industrial activity, particularly logging, has been a key contributor to the decline of caribou. GIS analysis from the Wilderness Committee found that 310,120 hectares of important caribou habitat were logged in B.C. between 2007 and 2023, with 51,313 hectares in highly-sensitive habitat.
Wildsight and Wilderness Committee have recorded a decline in deep-snow dwelling caribou in B.C, from 2,500 in the late 90s to 1,250 today. Their research has shown that in the past two decades, only 10 of 18 herds remain in southern and central B.C.
Their recent map analysis investigation has identified that logging is occurring even in "no harvest" ungulate winter ranges, including more than 78 hectares of land reserved for caribou in the Revelstoke area, and 1,367 hectares in conditional harvest areas. Conditional harvest areas require companies to meet certain terms in order to log the land.
A report from Environment and Climate Change Canada found that as of February 2020, the caribou population had declined by 53 per cent in six years.
“Our question to Minister Guilbeault is, will your government’s legacy be to save southern mountain caribou, or to be forever remembered as the government that allowed them to disappear?” said Petryshen.