Western Canada Wilderness Committee

What government and industry aren't telling you. At the start of the 21st century we are faced with the reality that only 22% of the world's original forest remains. Russia, Canada and Brazil hold 70% of that forest. In 1980's Conservation groups began campaigning in earnest for the protection of BC's. A decade later, while the area of land protected has increased, forest ecosystems throughout the province are in greater risk.

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B.C.'s Endangered Forests

Wilderness Committee Educational Report Vol.22 - No.02, Spring 2003

Endangered Species

According to the BC government's 2002 State of the Environment report, one-quarter of BC's mammal species, breeding birds and vascular plants are now threatened or endangered. Reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fish have been even harder hit. In half of all cases where a wildlife species is at risk of extinction in BC, it's due to loss of habitat from logging.

Most at risk are those species that are dependent on the same old-growth forests that have been targetted by the BC logging industry for the past century. These species include northern spotted owls, Vancouver Island marmots, marbled murrelets, mountain caribou, and certain populations of grizzly bears.

A look at the plight of the critically endangered northern spotted owl is a timely case in point. Less than 30% of the original low-elevation old-growth forest that the spotted owl calls home in southwestern BC remains. Given the precarious state of the owls, ten years ago the BC government developed a "Spotted Owl Management Plan". But like so many plans aimed at saving a species, it seems the species to be saved resides in a corporate office, not in the woods. Scientists refused to endorse the plan because it gave the owls only a 60% chance of survival. The government adopted it anyway, primarily because it had little, if any, impact on logging. In the intervening years, the population has dropped by half to just 25 breeding pairs.

In 2001 BC Environment officials alerted the Wilderness Committee to planned logging in a critical thread of spotted owl habitat which they had grave concerns about. With the Sierra Legal Defence Fund we went to court to challenge the logging permits but because Canada and BC had no endangered species legislation, the case rested on a tiny piece of BC's much-touted Forest Practices Code. Although the court suspended logging in the three cutblocks pending an independent review and subsequently upheld the ban in two areas, it allowed "experimental" logging to proceed in the third. The case is in the court of appeal.

Outside the court, extensive campaigns that included market pressure, resulted in two timber companies - Interfor and Canfor - agreeing to temporarily withdraw from logging owl habitat. Many planned cutblocks remain however, with the majority being done directly by the BC government through their small business forest enterprise program.

Without legislated and mandatory habitat protection on all lands - provincial, territorial, federal and private - the northern spotted owl and other critically endangered, forest-dependent species such as mountain caribou are in a lot of trouble in BC's endangered forests.

Endangered Forests

Naturally rare forests (eg. Inland Rainforest) are restricted in occurrence and extent globally due to a combination of climatic, geological, topographic, and ecological factors. These forests contain unique species adapted to conditions found in these rare forest types.

Anthropogenically rare forests (eg.Central Plateau) include remaining areas of forests that are rare due to historical human activities. Current ecological theory states that as natural habitats decline to less than 30% of original levels, extinction rates increase and vital ecological and evolutionary processes are jeopardized.

Intact forests (eg. Peace) are unfragmented blocks of natural forests large enough to support viable populations of indigenous species associated with that forest type. They have been undisturbed by human activities over periods long enough to allow natural forest structure, composition and functions to be determined by naturally occurring ecological processes such as fires.

Other ecologically important forests (eg. Rainshadow) are ecoregions where less than 30% of the original forest remaining is intact old-growth or primary forest. This category includes remnant patches of undeveloped primary forest, as well as secondary forests that serve as core habitat, movement corridors or buffer zones for threatened and vulnerable native species.