Comprehensive Clayoquot Inventories Need Time
Tribal Park sign erected on Meares, 1985. The B.C. government has not recognized or establised this park designation. The Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht Meares Island Tribal Prak Declaration call s for total protection of Meares and spells out appropriate uses. First Nations' managed Tribal Parks could be land use designations within a Biosphere reserve.
We know where we come from. We know the names of the mountains, the names of the rivers,
streams and lakes. We know where we have to go to get our herbal medicines...We are people who came
from pristine forests where rivers were over-flwoing with fish. in 1996 there are people not able to
go out fishing because of the fish stocks. What are the effects in the headwaters where the forest
are gone? We want some lands where no human beings are going to go at all.
-Kla-Kisht-Ke-Is, Chief Simon Lucas,
Hesquiat First Nations, from speach in Tofino, July 6, 1996.
Environmentalists rejoiced when they read the July 6, 1995 government press release stating that it had decided to implement all the recommendations of the blue-ribbon Clayoquot Scientific Panel it had established in 1993. Especially heartening was the statement by then Forest Minister Andrew Petter that, “Undisturbed watersheds will not be open to logging until comprehensive ecological assessments are completed and the recommendations can be fully implemented.”
The Scientific Panel made it clear that these studies have to be holistic and integrative; encompass all forest values including biological, ecological, cultural, spiritual and recreational values; involve First Nations; and be based on long natural cycles such as storm events and fluctuations in wildlife. Scientific Panel reports specify 10 year and 100 year planning horizons. What a shock when the first supposedly comprehensive report on one of Clayoquot's pristine watersheds, the Interim Findings Report to Support Planning in the Ursus Creek Special Management Area and Lower Bedwell River, was released in April of 1996. Prepared by two government ministries (BC Environment and the BC Forest Service), it shows how little we know about the Ursus.
The only substantial work reported in this document was on marbled murrelets, a threatened seabird species that needs the thick mossy limbs of oldgrowth trees for nesting habitat. Independent researchers found that more than 25 percent of the known murrelets in Clayoquot use the Ursus. This is the highest density of murrelets on the entire B.C. coast. Contrast this with the bear study, done from a desk in Port Alberni; a Roosevelt elk study done from a helicopter and a recreational study done from air photos. The inadequacy of these studies is undoubtedly linked to the study team's timeline: the work had to be done in just one year. Driving the process was MacMillan Bloedel's desire to access timber in the Upper Bulson and its statement to the study team that the company's only viable road access to the Upper Bulson is via the Ursus.
If environment groups are to trust in the use of inventories to make final decisions about further protection of Clayoquot's pristine areas, they need assurance that the inventories will indeed by thorough and full, as called for by the Scientific Panel. The government's first Ursus report is not the way to go.
