Bear Matters BC

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

British Columbia sells itself to the world as “The Best Place on Earth.”

No question about it, our province is blessed with an exceptional diversity of wildlife and wilderness, on a par with the Serengeti and the Great Barrier Reef. We are Canada’s richest province biologically. Home to 76 per cent of our nation’s bird species, 70 per cent of its freshwater fish, 60 per cent of its evergreen trees, and thousands of other animals and plants.

Well over 3,800 species are found here, and many of these, such as mountain goat and mountain caribou, live mostly — or only — in the province and nowhere else on the planet. For others, such as the trumpeter swan and the sandhill crane, B.C. is a critical wintering ground or stopover in winged migrations that extend over thousands of kilometres.

Most remarkably, unlike most places in North America, B.C. still has all of the large and charismatic mega-fauna that were present at the time of European settlement, including grizzly bears, wolves and cougars. Indeed, the province is now the last safe haven for most of the large animals left on the continent.

For example, grizzlies still roam, feed and breed in the archipelago of islands and adjacent mainland valleys of the B.C. coast, whereas in California, this majestic bruin is now only found as an image on the state’s flag, having long been eliminated from the wild.

B.C. has a rich legacy to protect, yet the experts tell us that we are squandering our unique biological inheritance. This week the government and conservation organizations, under a partnership called Biodiversity BC, is releasing the most comprehensive scientific review of the health of B.C.’s wildlife and wilderness areas to date. The findings of the review are shocking.

More than four dozen species have disappeared from the province, and the casualty list is growing in length and urgency. Government scientists believe that a further 1,400 species (43 per cent of reviewed plants and animals) are at risk. Hardest hit have been reptiles and turtles, frogs, fish and plants. For example, fewer than two dozen species of frogs and salamanders live in B.C., and half of them could disappear from the province altogether.

Entire ecosystems have been nearly wiped out, such as grasslands in the Okanagan Valley and wetlands in the Lower Mainland. Scientists know what is causing this environmental crisis — urban development, logging of old-growth forests, pollution and global warming are destroying the homes and habitat of wildlife at an unprecedented rate.

Given the biodiversity crisis unfolding around us, the government’s response (also being announced this week) is terribly disappointing. Called the “Conservation Framework,” the B.C. government’s new plan recycles a patchwork of existing weak, piecemeal and discretionary regulations and actions that have failed to halt the decline in wildlife.

Despite B.C. having more biodiversity than any other province, and more species in trouble, the government’s new plan makes no mention of developing an endangered species law to legally protect the habitat of wildlife, a critical tool in the “toolbox” of conservation strategies that has proven successful in other jurisdictions.

Sadly, along with Alberta, B.C. continues to be the only province in Canada without a law to protect its threatened and endangered wildlife.

The provincial government has recently shown itself to be a world leader by tackling global warming in an innovative and timely manner. There is a tremendous opportunity to also demonstrate leadership through the implementation of a simple, clear law to recover our wildlife at risk, and to prevent species from becoming at risk in the first place by protecting their habitat.

While it’s helpful that government has provided further scientific information this week on the health of wildlife populations in the province, without a commitment to bring in an endangered species law that compels action, it is a bit like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.