Inland Rainforests - Rarest of Rare
The Inland Rainforest is found nowhere else in the World but in BC, where it runs in a north-south belt from Prince George to just over the border into northern Idaho. The Inland Rainforest owes its unique character to heavy precipitation falling when prevailing easterly-flowing air masses encounter the big interior mountain ranges - the Monashees, Selkirks and Purcells - which lie just west of the Rockies.
There are more tree species found here than anywhere else in BC including western red cedar, western and mountain hemlock, western larch, lodgepole, ponderosa and western white pine, Douglas-fir and sub-alpine fir, three species of spruce, western yew, trembling aspen and paper birch trees. Beneath their canopy grow a mix of shrubs such as devil's club, Pacific yew, and mountain box. A rich variety of ferns and mosses carpets the forest floor.
BC's Ministry of Forests and Parks Canada staff have recognized the ecological importance of this area, in particular that its forests are extremely old and valuable to wildlife. Lichenologist Dr. Trevor Goward has coined the term "antique" forests to describe forests that have been free of "catastrophic disturbance" for longer than the age of the oldest trees within them. In inland rainforests trees grow up to 1500 years old and up to 40 feet in circumference.
The BC government considers any forest older than 250 years to be old-growth; no distinction is made for these much-older "antique" forests, meaning they have no specific legal protection. For example, in the Incommapleux River valley south of Revelstoke, antique forests are slated for logging by the US-based timber company, Pope & Talbot.
"The oldest old-growth rain forests of inland British Columbia are at risk," Andre Arsenault, a plant ecologist with the Ministry of Forests, bluntly warned in 1999. "More specifically, their future contribution to biological diversity may be diminished as a result of several interacting factors including: ...their past and ongoing fragmentation as a result of timber harvesting, natural disturbance and flooding for dam construction."
Cutting Down the Rarest of the Rare
It took only ten years for corporate logging interests to cut down half of the Inland Rainforest's oldest trees. As those old trees go, so too will some of this region's most endangered species. Today, the region's mountain caribou, dependent on old-growth forests for food and refuge from predation, can claim the dubious distinction of being as rare as black rhinos. Mountain caribou are dependent on lichens, a defining species of the Inland Rainforest, and logging removes lichens. Caribou populations have plummeted from 2,450 in 1997 to less than 1,900 today, and many herds have decreased by half.
Confronting the Myth of Protection
The BC government says we'll always have "large amounts" of old-growth. Yet only 9.2% of the Interior Cedar-Hemlock zone is protected, and more than half of the forest types found in this zone have less than 4% protection.
With the oldest trees in the region on the chopping block, and old-growth dependent species in severe decline, one wonders just where those "large amounts" of old-growth will be found.
It's time to end all clearcutting of the Inland Rainforest's endangered antique and old-growth forests, and protect more of this globally unique ecosystem.
