Several hundred kilometres to the north of Vancouver lies the mountain country of the St'at'imc Nation. Their land is one of the most awe-inspiring places on Earth, encompassing the biggest mountains, canyons, rivers and lakes in southwest BC. In this mountain paradise you find the 10,000 hectare Lost Valley, the largest unlogged watershed in the Cayoosh Range. Here the the St'at'imc discovered that BC Timber Sales - a logging operation owned and operated by the Government of British Columbia - were planning to log the Lost Valley.

Save Lost Valley

Wilderness Committee Educational Report Vol.24 - No.01 - Winter 2005

Lost Valley and Melvin Creek Valley forests keep the Cayoosh Range alive

Well worn foot path in Lost Valley

Lost Valley and the adjoining Melvin Creek Valley, which are both unlogged, are the green heart of the Cayoosh Mountain Range, providing critical low and mid-elevation forested wildlife habitat for a wide range of species.

The BC Ministry of Water Land and Air Protection estimates that about 280 mountain goats make the Cayoosh Range their home. That’s down from the 700 mountain goats back in the 1960s and ‘70s when sport hunting decimated their numbers and clearcut logging along the Cayoosh Range began to strip away the forests needed to shelter the herds in the winter. Today the goat population is slowly recovering with about 100 of the animals living in the area of the divide between Lost Valley and Melvin Creek Valley.

Grizzly bears also roam the Cayoosh Range. Provincial biologists consider this population to be threatened since there are less than half the number of bears living there that could be supported by the habitat. Some grizzly bears are thought to use the Cayoosh as a stepping-stone wilderness-route between the South Chilcotin Mountains to the northwest (thought to support about 100 grizzly bears) and the Stein Valley region to the southeast (thought to support about 60 grizzly bears). These big bears need big wild areas like the Lost Creek and Melvin Creek Valleys as refuge and linkage zones as they continue their journey across the landscape to find food, shelter and mates. Unfortunately, carved throughout the Cayoosh Range are logging roads and highways like the Duffey Lake Road (highway 99) that traverses the Cayoosh Valley from Pemberton to Lillooet. It makes travel a hair-raising experience for the grizzly bears that need to cross the roadways.

The Cayoosh Range straddles the transition zone between the coast and interior, which means it has pockets of both types of habitats, where plants and animals from the coastal rainforest and from the dry interior coexist in the same area.

Perhaps the most famous inhabitants of the Cayooh Range is the small population of northern spotted owls. Since about two dozen owls still survive in Canada, all of which are found in south west BC, these Cayoosh Range owls are considered critical to the species continued survival in Canada.