by Mark Hume / The Globe and Mail
British
Columbia’s government has been meeting with the forest industry to
develop plans to save endangered caribou, and the province appears to
have launched its controversial wolf cull program to avoid putting
further restrictions on logging.
The wolf kill, which started last January,
has drawn international condemnation from environmentalists, but the
B.C. government has defended it as necessary to save dwindling caribou
populations. Mountain caribou, which need old-growth forest to survive,
are listed under the federal Species At Risk Act (SARA), and the
province is required to take action to save them.
But briefing notes prepared for meetings
between B.C. Environment Minister Mary Polak and industry
representatives in 2014 suggest the government was prompted by the
forest industry to launch the wolf cull because of fears a federal
recovery plan for caribou would demand more logging areas be set aside.
“Tolko
[Industries Ltd.] is concerned about potential impacts of the federal
recovery strategy for the woodland caribou,” says one of the notes,
released in response to a Freedom of Information application. Ottawa’s
recovery strategy states that caribou need large tracts of “undisturbed
habitat rich in mature to old-growth coniferous forest.” It is up to the
province to decide how much forest land to set aside. Environmentalists
have long complained that B.C. has not made enough old-growth forest
off limits to logging.
At the time of Ms. Polak’s meetings, the
B.C. government’s mountain caribou recovery implementation program,
known as MCRIP, had already set aside some forest land, established a
captive breeding program for caribou and limited recreational snowmobile
access in caribou areas. But a proposed wolf cull had not yet been
launched.
“Actions within the MCRIP have largely
been implemented with the exception of effectively managing wolf
populations. Industry has criticized government for failing to
effectively implement this recovery action, and will be very reluctant
to forgo additional harvesting opportunities to meet any additional
habitat targets imposed by the federal recovery strategy,” states a
briefing note from April, 2014.
B.C.’s wolf cull began several months later.
The briefing notes also show that the
forest industry and government were interested “in aligning strategies
with respect to dealing with the federal government” on the caribou
issue.
One entry states that the province’s
caribou plan “had been ‘tested’ with numerous high-level stakeholders,
including the Council of Forest Industries,” which represents forestry
companies in B.C., before it was posted for public comment.
Wilderness Committee director Gwen Barlee,
who filed the FOI application that pried the documents loose, said she
is alarmed by how closely the government and the forest industry appear
to have been working.
“Are we having the B.C. government write
recovery strategies for species at risk, or are we having logging
companies writing recovery strategies for species at risk?” she asked.
“A recovery strategy is supposed to be a
document created by science,” Ms. Barlee said. “Obviously, the recovery
strategies are becoming polluted with the economic interests of logging
companies … and that is not supposed to be the case.”
Sean Nixon, a lawyer with Ecojustice, also found the government briefing notes disturbing.
“This looks like the forest industry in
B.C. is either directing the government’s policy on species at risk
where that might affect timber harvesting, or at a minimum the
provincial government is running the policy by the forest industry to
make sure that it’s okay with them. Either is troubling,” he said.
If a provincial government does not
“effectively protect” any endangered species listed under SARA, Ottawa
can impose regulations on provincial land. Given B.C.’s approach so far,
which seems more concerned about logging interests than the needs of
caribou, the federal government may have to do just that.
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