WEST KOOTENAY — The Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) would like to thank the huge number of people who have poured out volunteer services, letters and donations for over twenty years to help save the Society’s Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park Proposal. The fabled “jewel in the crown” of that park proposal was the primeval forest of the Incomappleux Valley, with trees up to 1,800 years old. The campaign for the Selkirk Mountain Caribou Park proposal began around 2002. On Wednesday, Minister of Environment George Heyman announced creation of a new Conservancy under BC Parks; it will cover the entirety of the Incomappleux unit of the VWS park proposal. At the announcement, Minister Heyman mentioned that letters in support of the Incomappleux had never stopped flowing in. Minister of Finance Katrine Conroy credited the VWS’s years of working for the park proposal. The story begins around 2002… (read more)
VWSThe BC government is using wolf culls to create an appearance of saving Mountain Caribou, while continuing to decimate the habitat of the caribou. The two greatest causes of caribou decline are habitat destruction and motorized recreation in winter habitat. These activities cause increased predation on caribou: clearcuts draw and increase wolves, roads give them highways for easy hunting, and snow packed by snowmobile and ski tracks provides them with easy access to caribou winter habitat. The most urgently needed conservation actions are protection of remaining old growth forest and exclusion of winter recreation in high-value caribou habitat. Please read more.
Three new BC provincial parks have been proposed to permanently protect the most ancient and ecologically rich remnants of the Inland Temperate Rainforest ecosystem in BC. This globally rare and significant ecosystem is a massive carbon bank and stronghold for rich biodiversity. Valhalla Wilderness Society needs your help to permanently protect it for future generations.
Along the scenic Highway 31A, between New Denver and Kaslo, a developer has proposed a luxury resort for skiing and mountain biking, with a capacity for 1,750 guests a day. Gondolas would carry up to 1,500 guests a day onto London and Whitewater Ridges. The whole area is prime grizzly bear and mountain goat habitat, and is frequently used by many residents of the region for noncommercial recreation.
Thank you to all who supported our work over the past year. This year was an extremely eventful one for BC and we have summarized some of the greatest challenges that VWS and the province has faced, as well as some of our achievements made possible thanks to your support in our 2021 newsletter.
Declining salmon, emaciated, starving grizzly bears, wiped out caribou herds, disappearing moose. Under a thin veneer of science and sustainability, the economic priorities of the BC government are slowly but relentlessly taking a toll on BC’s wildlife. Hunting organizations are applying intense pressure to reinstate the hunting of Grizzly Bears and increase the killing of Black Bears, Wolves and Cougars. VWS has release a 28-page report refuting their claims…
Valhalla Wilderness Society’s Western Toad conservation project continues for its 7th year at Fish and Bear Lakes in BC’s West Kootenay region. Click here to read more about the project and download a summary report on the first five years of study at Fish and Bear Lakes…
Thousands of scientists are warning: loss of biodiversity and climate change threaten the future survival of humanity. The disappearance of Mountain Caribou is part of both of these crises. Protecting them is British Columbia’s responsibility…
The Central Selkirk caribou are Deep-snow Caribou that range between Nakusp, New Denver and Kaslo. Environment Canada has declared that all the Southern Mountain Caribou are under imminent threat to their recovery and must have immediate action…
Besides killing wolves and cougars to increase west Chilcotin caribou herds, the government also proposes reducing moose, elk, deer and even wild horses. Essentially, these animals would suffer culls because they are wolf and cougar food, and if the predators are exterminated, their primary prey will have to be culled too, to prevent a population explosion and overgrazing of the range. While there are moose, deer and elk in many places across Canada, wild horses are relatively rare.
In 2018 Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) declared that BC’s endangered mountain caribou face imminent threat to their recovery under the Species at Risk Act. The Imminent Threat Assessment acknowledged that not enough habitat had been protected to sustain BC’s mountain caribou populations, and that BC’s ongoing wolf cull in the absence of further habitat protection would not protect caribou…
28 environmental groups, tourism businesses and conservationists have sent a letter to the BC Forests Minister, Hon. Katrine Conroy, stating urgent concerns about hunting and trapping of wolves in BC. Minister Conroy, in statements to media, has recognized the need for changes to the regulations, but suggested that they would be done in consultation with the BC Wildlife Federation (a hunter’s group) and the BC Trapping Association…