New Land Use Commission Brings Hope
Everyone knows that giant bulldozers and hungry chainsaws are destroying BC’s coastal wilderness at a very rapid rate. But no one could say how much of BC’s ancient temperate rainforest remains, that is, until a few months ago when Conservation International / Ecotrust and Earthlife Canada released the results of their survey of coastal watersheds.
The study shows that of the 354 primary watersheds greater than 5,000 ha along BC’s coast, only 20 percent are pristine and 13 percent are slightly modified by man. Sixty-seven percent have already been developed. Virtually all of the larger watersheds (there are 25 over 100,000 ha) are well along the road to complete development. Only the Kitlope, found in the north-coast region, survives untouched.
These statistics alone do not reveal the extent of the loss of ancient forest biodiversity that has already occurred in BC. What’s already been lost, and can never, ever, be recovered, comes into sharper focus when the locations of these remaining undeveloped watersheds are compared to the BC Ministry of Environments map depicting the ecologically distinct coastal forest regions. The ancient temperate rainforests are of similar weave, but not of the same fabric. Ecologists have identified 16 different coastal rainforest subtypes, primarily the product of climate differences. While sharing many species in common, each region has unique features and has, or had at one time, unique species, especially in the insect realm.
Today, only 7 of BC’s 16 temperate rainforest ecoregions still contain wild primary watersheds. And conservation opportunities to protect whole watersheds in these 7 regions will soon be lost, too, unless conservationists are able to make the case for wild watershed preservation strongly enough to the newly created Commission on Resources and the Environment (CORE), headed by former ombudsman Stephen Owen. This commission has an important job to do and it is the duty of every environmentalist and conservationist to participate. A strategy to save an adequate number of wild watersheds and conserve our temperate rainforest heritage must include:
- Protecting representative samples of the different types of natural salmon streams – essential to the conservation of wild salmon stocks.
- The enactment of an Endangered Species Act that protects species’ natural habitat as well as individual members of that species.
- An industrial strategy on the lands not set aside for protection that is truly ecologically sustainable and that enhances the jobs-per-tree-cut ratio, so that the future productive capacity of the land is not compromised for short term profits.
- Land use designations such as tribal heritage areas and tribal parks that protect watersheds and ancient temperate rainforest areas while allowing low-impact native use. The Haisla Declaration on the Kitlope is a good model.
- Protection of ecologically representative wild watersheds in as large, contiguous units as possible, in every distinct ecoregion.
