In 2007, Sierra Club BC celebrated a major milestone after a three-year campaign to protect mountain caribou habitat in eastern B.C.

On October 16, 2007, the BC government announced that it will pass legislation to set aside more than 2.2 million hectares for the endangered mountain caribou. The area includes more than 380,000 hectares of new protections—an area larger than all of Clayoquot Sound—and upgraded protections for hundreds of thousands of additional hectares.

Only 1,900 caribou remain in B.C., a 25 percent drop since 1992 and an enormous decline from the 10,000 that previously roamed our province. Some smaller herds are very near extinction.

Mountain caribou depend on large tracts of old-growth forest for survival. Their habitat, which occurs more abundantly in BC than in any other part of North America, is threatened by logging, road-building and flooding from dams.

New Recovery Plan

The new mountain caribou recovery implementation plan committed the government to protect, by the spring of 2008, more than 2.2 million hectares of old-growth cedar, pine and spruce forests identified by a BC government science panel as prime caribou habitat. The plan also required the development of more environmentally-friendly forest management approaches in the surrounding forest habitat.

The recovery plan will also mean the development of stewardship agreements for snowmobiling, heli-skiing and cat-skiing, and legal access closures for other areas important for the caribou.

A Three-Year Campaign

The three-year campaign, waged by Sierra Club BC and nine other conservation groups, included targeted advertising, public service announcements and community outreach, and messages sent to the BC government by more than 16,000 Canadians and Americans.