They have already logged out the best wood in the Sims.
There must be no further logging there to save grizzlies
---by John Clarke
A huge case can be made for no further extension of roads deeper into the Sims Valley. Today Interfor's logging road ends at the upper limits of the "high-value" forests. In the Sims, five years of intensive clearcutting has resulted in the lower valley being nearly logged out. In the steeper and narrower upper Sims Valley, the forest is of much lower timber value but its value to grizzly bears is very high.
Exploring beyond Interfor's proposed road route into the still virgin upper Sims valley, I found well used grizzly bear trails including a trail where the bears had put their paws in exactly the same spot, possibly for hundreds of years.
Because of the narrow nature of the Sims valley, Interfor's roads would have to go right over the bear trails and through the middle of their summer feeding areas---the avalanche chutes where leafy annuals, a food beloved by the bears, grow.
Interfor has already taken most of the large, very valuable Douglas firs and redcedars from the lower part of the valley. Astonishingly, because it argued that the wood was costly to access, Interfor received a government reduction on the stumpage fees it had to pay. This means that the taxpayers of B.C. subsidized Interfor's destruction of a spectacular ancient temperate rainforest of incredible beauty!
It would not be a big sacrifice---in fact it would make good sense---for Interfor to stop where it is now and go no further up the valley. Smaller trees and higher road building costs make it even less profitable without government subsidies. Do you want to subsidize the loss of grizzlies? View looking north to the still pristine headwaters of the Sims Creek. Note the many alder slide areas which are prime summer feeding areas for grizzly bears.
USA failed to protect their coastal grizzlies
...and now they're gone!!
Will our B.C. and Federal Governments allow the Elaho Valley grizzlies to be extirpated, too?
Every year since 1995, the first year the Wilderness Committee began working on its Elaho Valley-Stoltmann Wilderness trail projects, its volunteers have reported sightings of grizzly bears.
In 1998 the Wilderness Committee commissioned two biologists, Wayne McCrory and Cam McTavish, to conduct a grizzly/black bear habitat assessment of the Upper Elaho. Sure enough, they confirmed the area is an important refuge for female grizzlies with cubs and is also used as a travel corridor for grizzlies moving between the east and west slopes of the Coast Mountains. They also recorded evidence of the area's use by black bears, wolves, cougar and lynx. This is an amazing discovery given that, only a few hundred kilometers to the south, the U.S. coastal parks and wilderness areas have lost their grizzly bears and the full range of predators. Grizzlies cling to existence only in inland U.S. "islandized refuges" like Yellowstone Park. The roadless Upper Elaho and Sims Valleys in the Stoltmann Wilderness are the coastal grizzly's thin green defense line against an "extinction wave" that has been relentlessly moving north for two centuries.
The two biologists hired by the Wilderness Committee recommend that: "Given that the US. Forest Service has instituted moratoriums on roadless areas over 2,000 ha in grizzly bear recovery areas in the U.S., we would recommend that a similar moratorium be adopted, for the Upper Elaho, pending a comprehensive review of a grizzly bear recovery plan for the entire region. This would apply to wolf recovery in the area as well."
B.C.'s Environment Minister, the Honourable Joan Sawicki, has designated the Elaho Valley an official "Grizzly Recovery Area" but, since then, no recovery plan has been put in place; Interfor continues to build logging roads and to log the remaining habitat thus threatening the grizzly's survival. By failing to halt roading and logging of the Upper Elaho and Sims Valleys---the key grizzly habitats---Ms. Sawicki and the NDP government are risking grizzly extirpation in the Stoltmann Wilderness.
To read a summary of the Wilderness Committee's Grizzly report go to our website and click on "Grizzlies in the Stoltmann".
