Logging

Habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation have been the ultimate cause of mountain caribou declines, and industrial forestry has played the major role. The highly endangered  caribou rely on these forests for essential winter food and shelter.

Fortunately, the recent mountain caribou recovery plan includes long-sought and hard-fought protections for the caribou, bringing the total area where logging and associated road building can not occur to 2.2 million hectares (5.4 million acres, an area eight times the size of the entire North Cascades National Park). The recovery plan also prohibits motorized recreation across more than a million hectares of caribou habitat.

The practical effect of the recovery effort is that more than 90% of mountain caribou high suitability winter habitat will be protected from the most pernicious forms of habitat destruction. Government officials deserve a great deal of credit for their attention to and leadership on caribou conservation. But the work is not yet complete.

The government must still complete work to ensure habitat protected from forest development is not degraded by inappropriate recreation, mineral exploration, or energy development.  Also required is immediate action to augment two smaller herds which have seen numbers decline since the government announced recovery planning two years ago.

The Mountain Caribou Project continues to work in good faith with government officials and biologists to get mountain caribou on the road to recovery.