Grassroots Environmental Declaration for
Twelve environmental organizations in the southern and central Interior of BC say that the area is losing many species of plants and wildlife that are dependent upon old-growth forest and wilderness.
The groups have signed a declaration that says the major cause is habitat loss due to logging, roads and hydroelectric development. The declaration calls upon the federal and provincial governments to cease logging all old-growth forest over 140 years of age.
"The public needs to know that after 40 years of industrial clearcutting, we have very little old-growth forest left in this part of BC. There is very little old-growth protected in our parks, and most of it is high elevation, which leaves unprotected the large ancient trees at low and mid elevations on which so many species depend," said Chris Blake, Project Manager for the Quesnel River Watershed Alliance.
“If we protect the habitat of a large species, like the mountain caribou, we are actually protecting many more species that depend on that ecosystem."
The declaration says that federal and provincial programs to save the mountain caribou have been inadequate.
"The chief problem with the current recovery process is that the government has been dragging it out for years while the logging of mountain caribou habitat is going on," says Colleen McCrory, Executive Director of the Valhalla Wilderness Society.
"This talk-and-log process is a sham. Logging old-growth forest reduces mountain caribou numbers, it just does it more slowly than if the animals were shot or killed by predators. The government doesn't get to claim it is trying to save caribou while in fact it is allowing its habitat to be destroyed."
The signatories to the Declaration are the Applied Ecological Stewardship Council, Argenta Creek Concerned Water Users, Fraser Headwaters Alliance, Friends of the Lardeau, the Granby Wilderness Society, Kids for Caribou, Perry Ridge Water Users Association, Purcell Alliance for Wilderness, Quesnel River Watershed Alliance, Save-The-Cedar League, Western Canada Wilderness Committee, and the Valhalla Wilderness Society.
"We call this the Grassroots Environmental Declaration
for