Caribou death by 1000 cuts?
If we have our way, it won't be death by a thousand cuts for endangered mountain caribou. B.C.'s recent decision to relax regulations on mining exploration in mountain caribou habitat makes for easy gray for mining company execs, but a lichen-free diet for caribou. It's time for B.C. and the mining industry to eliminate double standards and ensure that the industry is accountable to all British Columbians, and caribou.
The sharp edges of habitat loss in mountain caribou country. Photo by John Nelson
In 2009 we helped usher in B.C.'s recovery plan for interior rainforest and endangered mountain caribou. Yet caribou still suffer "death by a thousand cuts,” says John Bergenske of Wildsight. As part of the Mountain Caribou Project, Wildsight and Conservation Northwest are partners on everything caribou.
Implementation of the recovery plan put strict controls on logging and associated road building on 5 million acres of essential caribou habitat. Promises made regarding mining exploration, however, were more ambivalent.
Conservationists had wanted oversight of any mining exploration by local caribou biologists who could weigh in on how mining would affect caribou. But the BC government now says they won't prohibit mining exploration outright. Instead, it will allow mining companies to log caribou food trees and build roads up to "thresholds" that the Ministry of Energy Mines and Petroleum Resources determines are of "acceptable" risk to caribou.
B.C.'s Mineral Tenure Act of 1859 (just three years older than the achingly old-fashioned US mining act of 1862) already allowed mining exploration companies easy access to virtually every corner of the province, even private land, with the comparatively small geographical exception of parks, ecological reserves, and urban areas.
Unlike logging in the province, mining exploration companies operate on a "first come, first served" basis. Once a mining claim is made, now possible with the click of a computer mouse, it creates legal entitlement that supersedes other potential land uses.
That may be easy gravy for mining company execs. But not for mountain caribou.
We agree with Bergenske: It's time for B.C. and the mining industry to eliminate double standards and ensure that the industry is accountable to all British Columbians, and caribou.
Editor's note: Look for part two of Erin's look at the mountain caribou issue later this week.
