An 8500 Hectare Caren Park is not too big
Snow blankets the Caren's ancient forest, Dec. 1995. Lyon Lake in mid-ground. Texada Island in background. Photo credit: Mavis Jones
The need to protect the Caren Range, located on the Sechelt Peninsula on British Columbia's "Sunshine Coast" has gained provincial, national and international recognition. Why? Credit goes to the Friends of Caren, a local grassroots environment group fighting to gain protection for the area. The Friends' volunteer researchers have documented the Caren's ridgetop oldgrowth forests to be the most ancient in Canada. Over the past five years they have guided over 3,500 people into the Caren to marvel at the intricate web of life in this long-lived ecosystem.
Volunteer researchers also discovered, in the summer of 1993, the first active marbled murrelet nest in Canada. The marbled murrelet, a seabird that depends on oldgrowth forests for its nesting habitat, is one of over 60 species threatened with extinction in Canada. Logging is the main threat.
If an area's biological credentials were the only factor determining park status, there is no doubt that the entire 8,500 hectare proposed Caren Range Provincial park would be protected without delay.
Analysis reveals that the Caren is rich in forest ecosystems that are seriously under-represented in the current parks system. Tree biogeoclimatic zones, the Coastal Douglas Fir, COASTAL Western Hemlock and the Mountain Hemlock, meet in the Caren. Two different ecosections (another way that scientists divide up the landscape based on distinctive ecological attributes) intersect there, too: the Georgia LOWLAND AND THE Southern Pacific Ranges. None of these zones or ecosections are sufficiently protected to ensure survival of their wild species; nor does preservation even come close to the government's 12 percent target.
About one-half of the proposed Caren Provincial park falls into the Georgia Lowland Ecosection. It is one of B.C's most threatened despite the fact that it coincides with the region of highest population and distinct region rises from the warm, low-elevation, southwest-facing arbutus slopes and dry bluffs above Pender Harbour to the cool, moist subalpine wetlands at the 4,000 foot level.
The other half of the Caren park proposal falls into the Southern Pacific Ranges Ecosection. It rises from the shores of Sechelt Inlet to a subalpine ridge. None of the existing parks within this ecosection include access to salt water...except the tiny 35 hectare Skookumchuck Narrows Provincial Park which the proposed Caren Range park encircles (see map,p.3).
Bonsai trees on the edge of Spectacle Lake, one of approximately 28 small lakes found within the park proposal. Photo credit: Mavis Jones.
In spite of all the good arguments supporting preservation, and over the strong objections by the Friends of Caren, in 1995 the B.C. Forest Service approved some logging within the proposed Caren park area. Now, in a Lower Mainland park planning process that is supposed to wrap up before the next provincial election, the vision of a sea-to-summit Caren Range park is being sold out.
Some enviro-compromisers, who have the audacity to think they can speak for the "movement", are sitting in the behind-closed-doors process, slashing park proposals put forward to government by local grassroots groups like the Friends of Caren.
They are part of the government's Regional Public advisory Committee (RPAC), that is supposed to figure out the final solution for a Lower Mainland park system. But they've been mandated not to exceed protecting 13 percent of the land base in the region. Representatives on the committee include the forest industry and IWA but not the provincial government's own Parks Branch. Committee members, including the hand-picked moderate environmentalists, have chosen not to hold public meetings. Western Canada Wilderness Committee and the Friends of Caren are not part of this undemocratic process!
In January of 1996, the coalition of environment groups who are on RPAC published and distributed a fancy brochure titled "Completing Our Park System in Southwestern British Columbia". It advocates protecting only 3,000 hectares in the Caren.
This is unacceptable. Like never before, grassroots supporters of the Wilderness Committee and Friends of Caren are needed to act to save wilderness on the Sunshine Coast.
We must not submit to a political agenda that compromises ecological sustainability. The locally proposed protected areas for the Sunshine Coast (a 1,500 ha Mt.Elphinstone ecological reserve to protect rare mushroom habitat, a 2,000 ha Mt.Richardson park, and 8,500 ha Caren Range park), combineed with the already-protected 6,000 ha Tetragedron Plateau add up to less than 2 percent of the Sunshine Coast Forest District's land base.
In the next few months the B.C.government is scheduled to make its decision on Lower Mainland parks. Have you made your voice heard about the need to protect what little wilderness is left on the Sunshine Coast...especially the Caren?
