Old-growth forests north of Revelstoke have entered the spotlight again as the region's environmental organization slams recent logging activity on key habitat for threatened caribou.
On Sunday, June 15, Wildsight publicly shared a video of conservation specialist Eddie Petryshen along the northern Selkirk Mountains east of Mica Dam, with a freshly-felled ancient red cedar behind him. This cut block, next to an old-growth deferral area, had already lost about two of its 29 hectares, according to Wildsight.
"And now, the rest of that is probably being logged as we speak," Petryshen told Black Press Media.
"It's kind of devastating," he said, noting he'd been in the area after hosting a run event with Wildsight Revelstoke at the Downie Arm old-growth stand that attracted dozens of people. "It's one of those places that's irreplaceable."
He described the "super-fresh hand-felling of this beautiful ancient forest" he found, along a 200-metre road that had been "punched through." At their most impressive, trees such as the ones Petryshen found toppled and wrapped with car cable reach 220 centimetres in diameter, and are between 500 and 800 years old.
When Petryshen left the area the next morning on June 16, he reportedly saw Stella-Jones loggers heading back there. A Stella-Jones spokesperson confirmed Wildsight's details with Black Press Media, noting that logging in this area will continue over the summer but that this isn't the latest cut block the company has started.
In collaborative research with Vancouver-based environmental groups Stand.earth and the Wilderness Committee, Wildsight has estimated more than 5,700 of old-growth and other ancient forests are approved or pending approval for logging companies across three southern mountain caribou herds.
This includes the Columbia North herd, a 200-strong population that migrates in spring past Mica Dam and down as far as Downie Arm. These federally threatened caribou exist at the southern tip of a range that's retreated over time from the U.S. and farther south in B.C., and continue to require deep-snow, leafy and lichen-rich ancient forests to survive.
The red cedar cut block Petryshen recently documented is part of this critical habitat for the Columbia North herd.
According to Wildsight's collaborative research, more than two-thirds of the herd's core habitat remains unprotected by provincial legislation and at risk of logging. In the Columbia North range, Stella-Jones has the largest amount of land pending logging approval, at more than 600 hectares, along with almost 100 hectares already approved.
Wildsight also reported that Salmon Arm-based Canoe Forest Products is the company with the most logging approved in the Columbia North herd鈥檚 range, at about 480 hectares.
鈥淭he B.C. government has set up endangered southern mountain caribou as collateral damage, despite promising to protect the forests that these animals need,鈥� Tegan Hansen, senior forests campaigner for Stand.earth, said in a release.
Lucero Gonzalez, a conservation and policy campaigner for the Wilderness Committee, added that an important step is for the provincial government to withhold logging permits pending approval for critical caribou habitat. Excluding old-growth forests slated for logging, 41 per cent of habitat for the Columbia North and two other herbs in the region 鈥� more than 889,000 hectares 鈥� have been disturbed by humans.
"If that level of destruction is deemed unacceptable under federal law, it shouldn鈥檛 be considered acceptable on the ground either," Gonzalez said in the release.
Petryshen said he hopes to see more lumber licensees put a moratorium on their operations in caribou habitat until the provincial government and First Nations weigh in, which BC Timber Sales is already doing this year.
"There's an urgency here in terms of caribou," he said. "If it is a priority for the province to recover these lands, it has to be now."
