Governments Resist Owl Preservation
Drinking watersheds best owl sanctuary candidates
The Capilano/Seymour/Coquitam watersheds that provide Greate Vancouver residents' drinking water have ideal Spotted Owl habitat, maybe the best left in Canada. But even here, continued oldgrowth logging operations threaten to destroy the owls' living space.
Six active owl sites have been identified in these three watersheds. It's possible that a thorough survey could reveal as many as 10 more sites.
At present, logging in Greater Vancouver's drinking water reservoir areas is supposedly done only to enhance water quality. We know that no logging will enhance Spotted Owl habitat! Studies indicate that an end to all logging in the watersheds would lead to reduced landslides, decreased siltation and higher water quality. Owly environmentalists would be delighted if these precious watersheds became no-log Spotted Owl and pure drinking water sanctuaries.
The Spotted Owl became a hot issue in the U.S.A. about two decades ago when environmentalists realized that is populations were steadily declining at about one to two percent per year. In 1990, following 17 years of legal battles and intense public debate over forest practices and how best to protect the rainforest ecosystems of the Pacific northwest, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a recalcitrant U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWC) to declare the Spotted Owl, a known "indicator" of forest health, an endangered species. During the next few years the U.S. government declared 3.5 million hectares of oldgrowth Spotted Owl habitat from California to Washington State off-limits to logging.
Over $100 million worth of scientific studies have been conducted in the U.S.A. to understand this owl species and determine how much oldgrowth forest it needs to survive.
Now B.C. is bracing itself for the same battle. In 1986, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) added the northern Spotted Owl to Canada's endangered species list. But since neither Canada nor B.C. have Endangered Species Legislation to force government to do something about a COSEWIS-listed species, little action to save the owl ensued. Eco-groups in the U.S.A. relied heavily on their Endangered Species Act to provide legal clout to save the owl.
Finally, in 1990, the B.C. government appointed a Spotted Owl Recovery Team (SORT) to prepare an owl recovery plan. But for three more years the owl's habitat remained open to logging. Most of the known active owl sites were given interim habitat protection in 1993, but limited funding for inventory work kept the number of sites low.
In 1993, just when SORT was ready to release its draft recovery plan, its mandate was changed by the B.C. government. Instead of preparing a scientifically-based recovery plan specifying measures needed to rescue the owl from being endangered, the team was now instructed to prepare an "options report" that identified alternatives ranging from full protection throughout the historic range of the owl in Canada to no extra protection at all.
SORT's final report included "management options" with various levels of possible logging activity within identified specific areas where the Spotted Owl's were known to exist, called SOCA's (Spotted Owl Conservation Areas). The owl's status in the future could range anywhere from de-listed (saved) to vulnerable, threatened, endangered of extirpated (extinct in Canada) depending on which options the government chose to act on. Such formulation of options would be illegal in the U.S., because the law requires survival plans, not possible extinction plans.
SORT proposed 18 SOCA's, averaging 8,000 hectares each in size and less than 20 kilometers apart. They are smaller and farther apart than their U.S. equivalents.
In the summer of 1995, timed to coincide with the declaration of the Pinecone-Burke Park, the B.C. government publicly announced its plans for the Spotted Owl. It opened up 175,000 hectares of owl nesting and feeding habitat to logging.
Now the B.C. government says that all permanent owl conservation areas must fit under its ceiling of 104,000 hectares of new parks in the Lower Mainland. This spells sure extinction for B.C.'s Spotted Owls, who need their 254,000 hectares of habitat fully protected to survive. Causing the extinction of a species through ignorance is awful; knowingly doing it is immoral and unacceptable.
