Mark Hume’s recent article in the Globe and Mail (November 2, 2015) clearly exposes the B.C. government’s failure to protect wildlife habitat whenever it interferes with resource extraction or logging profits.
Hume points to the mountain caribou in the Selkirks, the endangered goshawk on Vancouver Island and the moose in the Peace River valley as examples of animals whose habitat is systematically destroyed by resource development and logging.
One example he didn’t mention and which is of great concern in the Grand Forks area, is the continued road building and logging in one of the last remaining secure areas for our threatened Kettle-Granby grizzly. Instead of protecting the last parcel of unroaded habitat adjacent to the Gladstone Provincial Park, the government is planning to build new roads in the area to supposedly harvest trees impacted by mountain pine beetle.
Of course, they won’t just harvest beetle-attacked pine, they will also harvest fir, larch and other species unaffected by the beetle. And, even worse, by building another road in grizzly bear habitat that already has far too many roads according to grizzly bear biologists, ATV traffic will be able to drive right up to the park boundaries.
Where is this threatened bear population supposed to live?
– Margaret Steele, Grand Forks
