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This Week at Sierra Club BC (Archive)
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Several B.C. environmental groups hope a new World Heritage Committee report will lead to better protection for a unique southeastern B.C. region.
Eleven groups, including Wildsight and the Sierra Club of B.C., say the report on the Flathead River Valley and adjoining Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site in Alberta will be released Friday at a committee meeting in Brazil.
The report comes in the wake of concerns about mining and clearcut logging in the Flathead River Valley on the doorstep of the World Heritage site, straddling the border between Alberta and Montana.
Conservationists were pleased earlier this year when the province and state agreed to ban mining and energy development in the Flathead.
But the groups are worried by the lack of a binding federal deal for the valley and adjoining areas, since either B.C. or Montana can back out of the original pact.
Wildsight spokesman Casey Brennan says the Flathead desperately needs a transboundary wildlife management plan because it is an exceptional wildlife nursery with the highest density of inland grizzly bears in North America.
Impending clear-cut logging, mining, expanded road access and trophy hunting all threaten B.C.’s Flathead River Valley and will impact the adjoining Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site, conservation groups said today.
"The B.C. government continues to allow the extraction of 20,000 tonnes of Flathead rock a year, without environmental oversight, from a quarry just outside the World Heritage Site,” said Casey Brennan, Southern Rockies Program Manager for Wildsight. “The Flathead River Valley remains under threat and is far from protected.”
Wildsight, Sierra Club BC, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society and eight other groups successfully petitioned the World Heritage Committee last year to draw attention to energy and mining threats in the Flathead, leading to the February 2010 ban on mining and energy development. A long-awaited World Heritage Committee mission report on the Flathead will be made public during the committee’s meeting in Brasilia, which starts tomorrow.
“We hope the World Heritage mission will agree that a comprehensive transboundary wildlife management plan is urgently needed for the Flathead and adjoining habitat,” said CPAWS-BC Executive Director Chloe O’Loughlin. “B.C.’s Flathead is an exceptional wildlife nursery, and it has the highest density of inland grizzly bears in North America.”
In a June 2010 letter to the World Heritage Committee, the groups said they “remained concerned” by the lack of a binding Flathead agreement at the federal level, since either B.C. or Montana can at any time revoke commitments made in the February 2010 Memorandum of Understanding. The groups say they are also concerned by “insufficient monitoring and reporting by the state parties” of continuing threats to the World Heritage Site, as requested last year by the World Heritage Committee.
In addition to the on-going mining threat, the Flathead remains under threat from large clear-cut logging operations with extensive road building that are planned in the Flathead starting this summer, and motorized road access in the Flathead that was recently increased next to the World Heritage Site. On-going concerns also remain about the long-term viability of regional grizzly bear populations.
At the regional scale, two new coal strip mines in the adjoining Elk Valley and new coal exploration in the proposed Wildlife Management Area also pose a serious threat to wildlife connectivity.
“We’re alarmed that it’s business as usual in the Flathead, with the exception of some mining and energy development,” said Sierra Club BC spokesperson Sarah Cox. “It’s time for B.C. to agree to a National Park in the south eastern one-third of the Flathead.”
Sierra Club BC, Wildsight and CPAWS-BC are calling for the completion of the Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site with a National Park in the southeastern one-third of the Flathead River Valley. The groups also urge establishment of a Wildlife Management Area in the rest of the Flathead and adjoining habitat, to preserve a vital wildlife corridor stretching from the Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site to Canada’s Rocky Mountain Parks.
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Contact:
Casey Brennan, Wildsight: (250) 423-0402
Sarah Cox, Sierra Club BC: (250) 812-1762
Chloe O’Loughlin, CPAWS-BC: (604) 685-7445 x 23
A coalition of environmental groups launched a whale of a lawsuit against Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans over orcas.
The legal action started in Federal Court in Vancouver Monday after a suit was launched by Ecojustice – formerly the Sierra Legal Defence Fund – on behalf of the coalition, which includes the David Suzuki Foundation, Dogwood Initiative, Environmental Defence, Greenpeace, Georgia Strait Alliance, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Raincoast Conservation, Sierra Club of B.C. and the Wilderness Committee.
The coalition alleges DFO failed to protect all aspects of critical habitat for southern and northern resident killer whales, which those whales need to recover their populations.
Both whale populations, which live in the waters between Vancouver Island and the Mainland, are considered threatened because of their low numbers.
The coalition alleges that in 2008, DFO issued an unlawful protection statement which sought to safegaurd orca habitat through voluntary guidelines and non-binding laws and policies. The federal government issued an order in 2009 for resident killer whale habitat protection, but that order failed to address the biological aspects of critical habitat such as water quality, noise pollution and declining salmon stocks, which the whales feed on. In other words, the government unlawfully interpreted its own law and breached the terms of the Species At Risk Act.
“The crux of this is we’re trying to protect the animals’ habitat,” said Christianne Wilhelmsen, Georgia Strait Alliance executive director. “Not just in general terms, but the habitat they need to survive and recover.”
Wilhelmsen said habitat is not just specific geographic areas which are protected, but all of the land and water ecosystems that feed into those areas.
For example, if streams and rivers are polluted by urbanization, farming or deforestation and cannot rear salmon, then there is less food for whales and their numbers drop. Noise generated by shipping in coastal waters interferes with whale communication and navigation.
“This particular case deals specifically with the orca, but how they’re dealing with this species impacts endangered species across Canada,” she said. “If they can’t act properly to protect this species, it doesn’t say a lot for the less glamorous species that do need protection.”
John Ford, orca biologist with DFO, said all of these factors are currently under study as part of a developing strategy to protect whale habitat and help populations recover.
The current population of resident northern killer whales stands at about 250 whales distributed among 16 pods. The population is essentially what it was in the mid-1970s when the first census of that group was taken.
The southern resident orca population is now approximately 87 whales, up from about 60 animals in the mid-1970s.
“The southerns are a smaller population. They haven’t done quite as well,” Ford said. “There’s more of them now than in the ’70s, but that was at the tail end of about a decade of live captures for aquaria, so their numbers were depleted – as were the northerns.”
He said the southern whale population follows migrating chinook salmon and chum salmon. The whales are highly selective, though, and tend not to eat pink and sockeye salmon.
Urbanization, shipping, noise and chemical pollution and fluctuating food supplies all threaten the whales.
“How’s their habitat now compared to back then (1970s)? It really depends on which factors you’re looking at,” Ford said. “It’s probably noisier. Contaminant, though, may be lower - at least for PCBs, which were banned in 1977 in North America.”
Northern and southern orca populations suffered in the late 1990s when chinook salmon numbers dropped and over a 25-year-long study period researchers found a significant correlation between chinook salmon abundance and whale populations.
