News Room

Activists slam government as plan to save Mountain Caribou stumbles

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, MARK HUME

VANCOUVER - Six months after the B.C. government announced an ambitious plan to protect herds of endangered mountain caribou, the project has bogged down in complex negotiations and is far behind schedule, according to an audit commissioned by 10 environmental groups.

Most of the aspects of the caribou plan were supposed to be in place by early spring, but many deadlines have passed and work remains incomplete, the audit found.

Candace Batycki, a spokesperson for the coalition of environmental groups, said the finding is worrying because some caribou herds have declined since the plan was formulated last year.

"The audit shows that a growing number of shortcuts and setbacks are threatening the recovery of mountain caribou, with some herds worse off than before," said Ms. Batycki.

She said there have been budget shortfalls, poor communication between federal and provincial governments, and calculation errors that have shortchanged the amount of land that was to be set aside.

Ms. Batycki said one protected area in the Cariboo-Chilcotin region is 23,000 hectares - or 48 per cent - smaller than was planned.

She said it's hoped the audit will spur the government to put more effort into making sure the caribou recovery plan is fully implemented.

"The ink is barely dry [on the plan] and we're seeing the government waver in its commitments to caribou," said John Bergenske of Wildsight, which joined with ForestEthics, BC Nature, Sierra Club of Canada and other groups to fund the audit.

The study was done by Lee Harding, a former senior scientist and administrator for Environment Canada. Dr. Harding found there had been progress on some aspects of the plan and he acknowledged that a tremendous amount of effort had been expended.

But he reports that the recovery plan, which was announced last October, is still a long way from being fully implemented.

"The principal difficulty ... is the constraints imposed to protect commercial [logging] interests," Dr. Harding wrote.

He noted that in devising the plan, the government stipulated that land set aside for caribou protection should not hurt the forest industry.

But setting aside land for caribou without reducing the commercial forest base is proving to be more difficult and complex than first expected.

Dr. Harding said consultations with parties that have a proprietary interest and intensive modelling and mapping is required.

"Draft maps must be presented ... revised for each new set of recommendations ... and presented again. This takes time. Consequently, government staff and stakeholders have undertaken an enormous amount of work for each step of progress," he states.

"In the course of this enormous effort, technical issues have inevitably arisen that have delayed progress on specific tasks, despite the desire and commitments of all parties to reach a timely conclusion," Dr. Harding wrote.

He said a spring target date of March 21, which was set for concluding many aspects of the plan, passed without conclusion.

One aspect of the recovery strategy was to augment some of the smaller, more threatened herds, by moving in caribou from larger populations.

But Dr. Harding said that hasn't happened because of a number of factors, including fears that the source herds could be harmed by removing too many animals.

"The issues that delayed augmentation included concerns about source population viability, First Nations concerns about the source population in the Itcha-Illgachuz Mountains and concerns about the suitability of release areas to support caribou, such as habitat quality, predation levels and recreation management controls," Dr. Harding wrote.

He did say progress had been made on predator control efforts in some areas, and competition from moose and deer had been reduced by increasing hunting bag limits, although biologists are unsure whether those measures are effective.

In an effort to save B.C.'s endangered population of mountain caribou, the government has designated nearly 2.2 million hectares of land as specially managed caribou range. Much of that area was already protected within parks but large chunks fell in commercial forest lands.

The mountain caribou population in B.C. is estimated at 1,900 animals - down from historic levels of about 10,000.

The goal of the $3-million recovery plan is to restore B.C.'s 12 mountain caribou herds to the pre-1995 population level of 2,500 animals.