Archive for category: News

Final announcement February 1, 2016.

Spirit Bear Mother and Cub

On February 1, 2016, the province and coastal First Nations announced the “final” protection agreement for the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR) on the BC coast. Since 1/3 of the GBR was protected in 2006, ten years of negotiations between the larger environmental groups, forest companies and coastal First Nations finally resulted in a GBR conservation agreement. Part of this can be found at: https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/TASB/SLRP/LRMP/Nanaimo/CLUDI/GBR/Orders/GBR_LUO_Signed_29Jan2016.pdf

There is some cause for celebration since noteworthy improvements have been made in coastal logging guidelines and in adding 10 new partially protected areas which brings the grand total of parks, conservancies and partial protection designations to 38% overall. This is near to the minimum of 40-50% full protection agreed to in 2004 in a landmark GBR-ENGO protocol. One of our favourite watersheds, The Green, will be protected, but unfortunately, Gribbell Island, mother island of the white bears won’t be. Also will be some reduction of the grizzly bear trophy hunt.
Read the full review

Summer 2015 logging of old growth hemlock forests by BC Timber Sales in unprotected mountain caribou habitat on the west side of Trout Lake

MOUNTAIN CARIBOU PLAN FAILED TO PROTECT
ADEQUATE INLAND TEMPERATE RAINFOREST

While the Province doles out tax dollars to kill wolves and pen caribou, logging
continues to destroy the caribou’s habitat, putting many other species at risk.

Ten environmental groups have sent a letter to BC Premier Christy Clark, urging the creation of new parks in the Interior Wetbelt. The groups say the parks would be for mountain caribou and for all species associated with Inland Temperate Rainforest.  BC’s Conservation Data Centre website shows 40 red- and blue-listed species in the humid/wet cedar-hemlock forests where the mountain caribou range. The proposals are the Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park Proposal, the Quesnel Lake Wilderness and the Walker Wilderness in the Robson Valley. These areas have some of the highest biodiversity in the Interior Wetbelt, and they have formerly been recognized by the BC government as having high values for old-growth Inland Temperate Rainforest and Mountain Caribou. Instead the government is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on experimental techniques to kill wolves and pen pregnant mountain caribou. If the caribou are lost, all the habitat protected under the recovery plan could revert to logging and other industrial use. The BC taxpayers could be left with nothing to show for millions of dollars spent on years of caribou conservation: no caribou and no new parks to help other species at risk, while the caribou conservation zones revert to logging and other industrial use.

Download the full text of the press release
Download the letter to Premier Christy Clark
Fact Sheet on the Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park Proposal
Fact Sheet on the Quesnel Lake Wilderness Area Proposal

NEW RESEARCH SHOWS HABITAT LOSS DRIVING
SOUTH PEACE CARIBOU TOWARDS EXTINCTION

Eight environmental groups, Valhalla Wilderness Society, Pacific Wild, Raincoast Conservation Foundation, Wilderness Committee, Wildlife Defence League, The Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals, Wolf Awareness Inc., and Bears Matter, applaud a recently published scientific report that reveals how much habitat the caribou in the South Peace region have lost. The title of the report says it all: ‘Witnessing Extinction – Cumulative impacts across landscapes and the future loss of an evolutionarily significant unit of woodland caribou in Canada’ (Johnson et al., 2015).

“The findings of the report are shocking, but this is the very first time that, for a rapidly disappearing caribou population, we’ve had actual measurements of the amount and kind of habitat they’ve lost,” says Anne Sherrod, spokesperson for the Valhalla Wilderness Society. “Now that we know the habitat loss is severe, it puts a heavy responsibility on government to do something about it.” Full Text

HEARTLAND OF THE KHUTZEYMATEEN GRIZZLY BEAR SANCTUARY
THREATENED BY PROPOSED PRINCE RUPERT GAS LNG ROUTE

Trans Canada Pipeline Company has been contracted by Petronas, a state company owned by the Malaysian government, to plan and build Canada’s biggest natural gas pipeline through two provincially protected conservancies that adjoin the Khutzeymateen Grizzly Bear Sanctuary on the BC North Coast. Survey work has already started for a major 200 foot-wide right-of-way that will include a major industrial road and compressor station needed for the 4-foot diameter pipeline.

According to VWS bear biologist Wayne McCrory “The survey is apparently being carried out with no park use permit, but with endorsement from the Premier’s office. However, a permit will be required for the next stage of creating drilling pads, and may soon be issued by the government; yet the public has been kept totally in the dark, only learning of the surveys from commercial bear viewing operators in the Khutzeymateen Inlet. Any permits issued in the protected conservancies will be in violation of the Park Act”.

If allowed, the roaded pipeline corridor through the wilderness parks will set a bad precedent and allow for more pipelines or transmission lines to follow. According to McCrory the pipeline corridor will shatter the ecological integrity of the whole area, and is a threat to every grizzly bear for miles around. People are urged to write Premier Christie Clark and Environment Minister Mary Polack to ask that the surveys be stopped immediately and the pipeline not be allowed in parks and conservancies (See Take Action). See also links to VWS press release and map below.

• Download Sept. 5/13 Press Release
• Download Map of pipeline route through area

A New Project Initiative for the Valhalla Wilderness Society
Wolves and Wild Horses, Secrets of the Brittany Triangle

The Valhalla Wilderness Society  has teamed up with Friends of the Nemaiah Valley (FONV) and the Xeni Gwet’in community of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation to foster research surrounding the dietary habits of grey wolves, Canis lupus. The project area is in the unique wild horse region of BC’s Chilcotin in and around the Brittany Triangle and the Nemaiah Valley. The groups are sponsoring graduate-level research by wolf biologist Sadie Parr to fill an important knowledge gap about predator-prey interactions among wolves, wild horses and domestic livestock.  This knowledge will help us in our efforts to foster coexistence among wolves and people as we combine science with community-level outreach goals.  Sadie has prepared a Rancher’s Toolkit for predator friendly practices.

Download VWS newsletter on Sadie’s Wolf Study

Download Toolkit for Predator Friendly Practices: www.wolfawarenessinc.org