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Mountain Caribou Recovery Plan diverts focus from logging, focuses on killing cougars
by WCWC Media •
Wednesday October 25, 2006 at 02:34 AM
Vancouver, BC—The Western Canada Wilderness Committee is dismayed by the BC government’s highly-anticipated Mountain Caribou Recovery Plan released today. Mountain caribou numbers in BC have plummeted to only 1900 from an estimated historic population of well over 10,000. The current population represents a 25% decline since 1992.
The causes of the Mountain caribou’s recent population crash are closely linked to logging of the caribou’s low elevation old-growth forest summer habitat, and motorized recreation by helicopters and snow machines in its high elevation winter habitat. The government’s recovery plan does little to address either issue, and merely restricts logging in some high elevation forests where the threat from logging is much less severe than in low elevation forests. The recovery plan also inaccurately implicates wolves, cougar, grizzly bear and wolverine in the caribou’s demise. These “predators” will now be killed by the hundreds in a misguided attempt to prop up the logging and motorized winter recreation industries. Andy Miller, Wilderness Committee wildlife biologist, says, “it is ironic that the BC government is going on a predator-killing campaign when the reason predator numbers have increased is because of clearcut logging. Clearcutting creates temporary habitat for deer and moose. Predators follow them, and sometimes create problems for caribou as well. The way to deal with predators is to stop blaming them, and instead restrict the logging of low elevation caribou habitat. As clearcuts decrease, so will the deer, moose and their predators. But the worst part of the recovery plan, says Miller, is that no habitat protection is advocated for any of the caribou herds in southern BC. Further, the three southernmost herds will be completely abandoned by the BC government because they perceive the socio-economic challenges of their recovery to be too great. “This plan has little to do with science, and a lot to do with doing favours for the unsustainable logging and motorized recreation industries,” say Miller. The Wilderness Committee advocates a moratorium on all logging in mountain caribou habitat, and restoration of former caribou habitat in clearcut areas. (To view the mountain caribou science team’s findings and conclusions, please see our front page for link to government document.) -30- For more information contact Andy Miller, B.Sc., 604-992-3099.
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