Showing posts with label Selkirk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Selkirk. Show all posts

Saturday 28 April 2018

Jesse Zeman: If we don't act now, future generations will only see some wildlife species in museums




http://theprovince.com/opinion/op-ed/jesse-zeman-if-we-dont-act-now-future-generations-will-only-see-some-wildlife-species-in-museums


News broke last week that B.C.’s south Selkirk caribou herd is now functionally extinct, and this week the South Purcell’s population is at a record-low four animals. While these numbers may shock the public, it was no surprise to those who have spent decades advocating for and researching mountain caribou.

B.C. started funding caribou conservation in the 1970s and researchers have been telling us how to fix the declines for over three decades. We failed to listen. Caribou are one of the most intensively studied animals in Canada; we may know more about them than any other wildlife species yet their populations continue to decline.

Why? Because B.C. did what’s easy, not what works.

Science tells us the ultimate cause of caribou population declines is habitat loss, principally logging and oil-and-gas development. These activities bring young forests while increasing the abundance of prey species such as moose and white-tailed deer, which attracts more predators. The activities also increase the number of roads, which brings people and allows predators to move more efficiently. Waiting for roads and cut blocks to grow in to get back to caribou friendly habitat takes decades.
In the interim, there are only a few necessary management options — managing human access, recreation, resource extraction, non-native prey and predator populations — to keep caribou populations viable while habitat recovers.

There are a few glimmers of hope in two B.C. mountain caribou populations, Klinse-za and North Columbia, where management options have been used and in North Columbia, where significant land-use planning occurred. For the most part, however, until the past few years, politicians only did what looked good, talked about recovery, had staff write recovery plans and implemented recommendations which were politically and socially convenient.
For the South Selkirk’s herd, it was too little, too late.

The story of caribou is becoming the story of wildlife. Moose populations are in decline across B.C., Rocky mountain bighorn sheep (one of two species on B.C.’s Coat of Arms) and elk are coming in at record lows in the Kootenays, Thompson and Chilcotin River steelhead are at record lows, and Fraser River salmon continue their downward spiral. While researchers tell us the over-arching issues are habitat related, the calls for change go un-answered, often in favour of the very things that scientists tell us will not change the trajectory of failing populations.

Last spring, the federal government cancelled the Rural Restoration Unit, a group focused on habitat restoration and enhancement in streams across B.C., the only part of Fisheries and Oceans Canada with a history of helping steelhead spawning and rearing habitat.

After a backlash, unit was restored with funding, no doubt, coming from other programs. Last fall, facing predicted record low returns, Freedom of Information documents show DFO pushing to move salmon net fisheries into higher risk period for steelhead, putting endangered runs at increased risk. Since, DFO has been busy justifying the sustainability of its salmon net fisheries, which “ensure less than 20 per cent of returning steelhead” are killed in nets — because, according to DFO, it’s OK to kill up to 20 per cent of endangered fish populations in net fisheries for salmon.

Last winter, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada — independent scientists the federal government relies on to assess wildlife — conducted an emergency assessment and designated these two steelhead populations as endangered.

Canada and B.C. are gaining a well-deserved reputation for placing band-aids on a patient that is suffering a heart attack. We are amassing an environmental debt that will be inherited by future generations whose expectations for vibrant wildlife populations will not be met. Under the current approach, seeing a Thompson River steelhead or a  mountain caribou will be left to electronic devices or museums.

B.C. is at a crossroads. We can continue to do what we always have and manage our fish and wildlife to zero and let politicians off the hook for failing to keep wildlife a priority or we can advocate for wildlife. At the B.C. Wildlife Federation, we care deeply about fish and wildlife and invite the public to join us and focus on their recovery.

Jesse Zeman is fish and wildlife restoration program director at the B.C. Wildlife Federation.

Letters to the editor should be sent to provletters@theprovince.com. The editorial pages editor is Gordon Clark, who can be reached at gclark@postmedia.com.
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Saturday 21 April 2018

Province grants $2 million to create Caribou Habitat Restoration Fund

 Vancouver Hunter: This news is a small step in the right direction, but it comes too lake for the Selkirk Mountains' grey ghost herd.  Truly sad news this week...  Here is the press release from the ministry of FLNRO from April 13, 2018:

https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2018FLNR0060-000624

The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation has been granted $2 million to aid in caribou habitat restoration, Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development Minister Doug Donaldson announced during his address at the B.C. Wildlife Federation’s annual conference.

“There were about 40,000 caribou in B.C. in the early 1900s. Today, there are only about 19,000 caribou left,” said Donaldson. “We need to do whatever we can to help enhance and recover caribou habitat to rebuild the numbers of this iconic species.”

The Province is creating a comprehensive caribou recovery program that includes engagement with Indigenous communities, industry, recreationalists and the public. The program is intended to conserve and recover populations of the 54 caribou herds in British Columbia. Caribou habitat restoration is a key component of recovery efforts.

Roads, trails, right-of-ways and seismic lines have changed the landscape where caribou live. This makes them vulnerable to predators, such as wolves, bears and cougars. The Caribou Habitat Restoration Fund will help to disrupt these lines of sight and travel – through reforestation, fencing, fertilization and other measures – to restore the caribou’s habitat and to decrease predatory attacks.

“We are pleased that the Province has chosen to partner with us to help recover lost caribou habitat,” said Brian Springinotic, chief executive officer, Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation. “The goals of the provincial caribou recovery efforts directly align with the foundation’s mandate to improve conservation outcomes for British Columbia’s wildlife.”
The Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation and the Province are working to finalize program details. 

Since its inception in 1981, the Habitat Conservation Trust Foundation has invested over $170 million in grant money to more than 2,500 conservation projects in B.C., with the goal to restore, maintain or enhance native fish and wildlife populations and habitats.

Learn More:
For more information about the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund, visit: http://hctf.ca/

Vancouver Sun: B.C.'s Selkirk Mountains' Gray Ghost caribou herd 'functionally extinct'

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/b-c-s-selkirk-mountains-gray-ghost-caribou-herd-functionally-extinct 

The Gray Ghost caribou herd in the southern Selkirk Mountains is “functionally extinct,” despite a decade worth of interventions by governments to save them.

Only three females are left of a population that had 50 members as recently as 2009, said Canadian wildlife biologist Mark Hebblewhite, a professor at the University of Montana.
“The only thing we can do at this point is let them die off or put them in a zoo and breed them,” he said. “Herds like this are winking out all over B.C.”

The Gray Ghosts — named for their notoriously shy habits — are the last caribou with a range in the lower 48 states of the U.S. In B.C., the George Mountain herd, the Purcell South herd and the Purcell Central herd have also perished in recent years.
“No one has seen a caribou around Kinbasket Lake for about eight years, so they are probably gone, too,” he said.

Managed forests and oil and gas development are essentially fatal to Woodland caribou because their ecological niche is so narrow.

“They are old-growth specialists,” said Hebblewhite. “They feed on lichen that only grows on very old trees. Those forests take centuries to replace.”

The young forests that grow after logging also promote populations of moose and deer, which in turn promote larger predator populations of wolves and cougars.

The South Selkirk herd is considered endangered in the United States and Canada, where efforts to bolster them include killing local wolves and even introducing caribou from healthier herds.



“Dozens and dozens of animals were introduced and we thought they were recovering, but they’ve really tanked in the last couple of years,” he said. “This is the writing on the wall for other caribou populations in B.C.”

B.C. has protected about 2.2 million acres of old-growth forest for caribou, restricted snowmobile access to some core habitat areas and culled wolves in several areas including the southern Selkirks.

While killing wolves has been moderately successful in other regions, the South Selkirk cull program has not, according to the government’s program summary.

Late last year, the Environmental Law Centre and the Valhalla Wilderness Committee petitioned federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna to issue an emergency order to protect 10 of the most southerly herds under the Species at Risk Act, citing imminent threats to their survival.

British Columbia’s caribou recovery program has failed because the province has failed to curtail logging and to fully implement snowmobiling bans, said ELC legal director Calvin Sandborn.