Comments Deane has made

This greenwash ensures caribou extinction

"The government's announcement focuses on protection of winter mountain caribou habitat," says Pettitt. "That means high-elevation forest of little worth to logging companies. This suggests that a large amount of lush low- and mid-elevation old-growth forest may have been traded off to the logging companies in return for preserving forest that the caribou can use only one season of the year. Without four-season habitat, the mountain caribou will continue to disappear. The mountain caribou has been a victim of planning hoaxes for years," says Sherrod. "That's why Valhalla Wilderness Watch and many other environmental groups need to see the details of this plan, to scrutinize exactly what it means for the caribou. The ten environmental groups that are now in partnership with the government and these collaborating vested interests can't very well provide that scrutiny. "This has come as a real shock because this is the first time that a BC government has decided who will represent the environmental movement."
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The mountain caribou range within an area that's more or less 14 million hectares. With the 2.2 million hectares that the government says it will bring up to protection, that's protecting 15% of the area. As opposed to about 34% that was protected on the mid- and north-coasts and the 50% that scientists say must be protected to maintain species. Now, let's say we get that much protected, and that leaves 85% of the mountain caribou range to continue to be logged. An animal that is now on the brink of extinction because of the degree of logging of its habitat is not going survive having logging go on over 85% of its range. We saw we could no longer afford the luxury of being able, with a sweep of our arm, to point out how much the loggers have left to support their livelihoods. They've logged so much of it that a species like the mountain caribou is on the verge of extinction and its critical imperillment means critical imperillment for a whole list of species connected with old growth. Nor is it any accident that Slocan Forest Products pulled out, that Pope & Talbot is fighting bankruptcy, that the cedar logging outfit up in the Robson Valley went bankrupt. This is no longer about leaving a good whole bunch of forest for logging. This is about the fact we've almost logged it all and we have to decide whether we are really going to kill off our wildlife to strip what old growth remains. We can't escape what we know now: The critical links of the mountain caribou's habitat have to be preserved now or we are going to kill a major species and wipe out a whole constellation of low-elevation old-growth species. 380,000 hectares of new protection is enough only if we don't mind that. And if we don't mind it, we are in a lot of trouble on other fronts. As you know, we are losing 10 million hectares of dry pine forests. Our forests are our carbon sinks, and in the humid forests there are huge trees and ancient soils that hold huge quantities of carbon. By what insanity are we continuing to log our humid forests when that's all we have left to help mitigate global warming? The difficulty that Valhalla experienced, that you experience, at the crossroads where we must try to save or abandon a wide-ranging, old-growth dependent species is the same torpor that could wipe out the human race.
wildernesswatch@netidea.com On How chainsaw toting underwear models helped save America's most endangered large mammal posted 2 years, 1 month ago 7 Responses