BC Last Hope for Dwindling Caribou

August 5th 2007

Province strategy for mountain species recovery crucial to future

Matthew Little
The Province

The fate of the world's remaining mountain caribou will be decided in coming weeks -- and conservationists are urging the B.C. government to put caribou before cash.

Nearly 700 businesses, most of them American, are calling on the Liberal government to better protect B.C.'s mountain caribou, one of the most endangered mammals in North America.

The call comes just weeks before the province will announce its caribou-recovery strategy, which a 14-member science team first started working on in 2005.

B.C. is the last bastion for the mountain caribou, which has all but disappeared from North America. There are only 37 animals left in the U.S. and recovery plans there hinge on B.C. populations.

The mountain caribou is red-listed, but unlike U.S. endangered species, Canadian law doesn't guarantee habitat protection.

"If a caribou crosses the border, it has much better protection in the United States than it does here," said Andrew Frank of Forest Ethics.

Mountain caribou, which only exist in North America, have dwindled to just 1,900, almost all of which live in B.C. Some herds have been reduced to as few as two or three caribou -- far fewer than the 75 to 100 animals needed to sustain a herd.

"There's been an enormous drop in the caribou population in the last 10 years," said Frank.

Forest Ethics, an environmental organization focusing on forest protection, said many of the businesses that signed a letter urging Premier Gordon Campbell to protect the habitat of the caribou were from the U.S. Among the Canadian supporters were Mountain Equipment Co-op, Thompson River University and Ethical Funds, an investment company managing $2.4 billion in assets.

A spokesperson for Campbell said the premier was not available for comment.

But B.C. government officials say they are already doing what they can for the caribou and that their recovery strategy now under review offers the best hope the 14-member science team could come up with for caribou recovery.

The government will decide in coming weeks on implementation of the recovery plan, which it believes will help the beleaguered mammal make a full recovery.

"We're optimistic. This is something we should be able to do," said Mark Zacharias, director of the Species at Risk Co-ordination Office at the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands. "We think that if government endorses a recovery implementation plan that it will be sufficient to recover mountain caribou."

Environmentalists are taking a wait-and-see approach.

Forest Ethics' Candace Batycki said habitat is the key.

"They're not going to survive for the long term without sufficient habitat," Batycki said.

Unfortunately for the caribou, and B.C.'s 1,300 other endangered and threatened species, that habitat is also the cornerstone of B.C.'s resource-based economy.

And resources, not habitat, are the Liberal government's focus, says NDP environment critic Shane Simpson. Simpson is calling on the government to incorporate better species-at-risk protection into the current review of the Wildlife Act.

"The government has not deemed this to be particularly important," he said. "You need to protect habitat in order to protect species."

Simpson's worried the number of species at risk is growing and will worsen as climate change takes hold.

But Environment Minister Barry Penner disagrees.

"We're working very hard to protect those species that need extra habitat," he said. "A lot of land has been set aside."

Penner lists off 46 provincial parks created since 2001, nine habitat areas created in June 2006, and 65 conservancies established this April as signs of progress.

He also promised more land would be set aside in the future, but said 14 per cent of B.C. is already protected. "That's more than any other province in Canada," he said.