Sitting on the sloping sandstone rocks of Saturna Island, the southernmost of B.C.’s Gulf Islands, marine biologist Lauren McWhinnie stares out at Boundary Pass and waits for the southern resident killer whales to surface.

It’s just before noon on July 6 — the first day the southern residents have been back in the Salish Sea since May. 

This area off the east coast of Saturna Island is one of three temporary sanctuaries for the southern residents, an endangered ecotype of killer whale. 

The zones, the first of their kind in Canada, came into effect on June 1 and are supposed to be completely closed off to all vessels — including recreational boats, fishing vessels and even kayaks and paddle boards. 

These no-go zones are an experiment, and their effectiveness this summer will help determine what measures will look like for the 2020 season — and beyond.

With a puff of air, a tall black dorsal fin emerges in the distance. “I’ve got whales!” McWhinnie shouts excitedly.

Lauren McWhinnie is a marine biologist and researcher at the University of Victoria. Photo: Lauren McWhinnie

Soon other orcas follow, dipping in and out of the water. A line of whale-watching boats jostle for position close by. Behind them loom bulk cargo ships passing through the international shipping lane.

The southern residents’ range extends from northern B.C. to central California, but they usually spend their summers in the Salish Sea, sometimes passing by Saturna twice in one day. 

But this season, islanders can count the number of times they’ve seen the southern residents on one hand. 

A new sanctuary

McWhinnie is a researcher at the University of Victoria who also works with the Saturna Island Marine Research and Education Society. She’s focused on qualifying and quantifying the number of small vessels going through Boundary Pass and how they affect the whales in the area.

The southern resident population, made up of what are known as the J, K and L pods, has just 73 surviving members; three members have gone missing this summer and are presumed dead. 

They’re up against tough odds. 

Scientists say they face a lack of prey (specifically Chinook salmon), acoustic and physical disturbance from vessels in their habitat, as well as bioaccumulation of contaminants, like pharmaceuticals, in their blubber. 

The plight of the southern residents has become a poster child for those protesting the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project, which will increase the amount of oil tankers in their critical habitat seven-fold.

Last year, the Canadian government committed to implementing new measures to protect the southern residents starting this summer, along with $61.5 million in funding. The map of these measures is a Kandinsky-esque canvas of overlapping colours representing different zones and closures. 

One of these new measures is the creation of three interim sanctuary zones: one off Saturna, one along the Pender bluffs and one beside Swiftsure bank.

A map from Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans outlining management areas for Southern Resident Killer Whales. Temporary sanctuary zones appear in yellow. Map: DFO

Detail of management areas near B.C.’s Gulf Islands. Map: DFO

Detail of management areas in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Map: DFO

The zone off Saturna is a long rectangle, intersecting the east tip of the island. At some points, the zone runs just a few hundred metres from shore. In other spots, it extends out to almost 700 metres. 

On the shoreline, McWhinnie’s colleague Sandra Frey, also a researcher at the University of Victoria, points a rangefinder at boats that seem to be on the verge of the sanctuary zone and calls out their distance from the shore to McWhinnie, who records it in her book.

A few houses down the road, Tricia DeJoseph sits on her deck watching the southern residents swim by, just like she has for the 12 years she’s owned this property, which overlooks the sanctuary zone. 

DeJoseph has gotten a reputation around the island as a “sanctuary cop” for her attempts to enforce the zone herself.

She has spent much of the summer sitting on her deck, watching power boats, sailboats and kayaks passing through the sanctuary — typically five to 10 every day.

With her camera, she tries to get pictures of their registration numbers to send to Transport Canada. She uses a microphone and amplifier to yell down at people in the zone and tell them about the sanctuary, letting them know they should stay at least 400 metres from shore. 

“Am I a sanctuary cop? You bet,” DeJoseph says. ”Because I care about these orcas, all of them, not just the residents, but the humpbacks, and the people that are in the water with them.”

But her patrolling of the sanctuary has become a point of contention with neighbours who don’t agree with her about the zone. Many islanders are frustrated they are no longer allowed to use the zone for recreation, especially when they see the measure as ineffective. But DeJoseph has pushed back against that idea.

“Most people immediately move off and go out a bit,” she says. “And then some people flip me off. And some people just ignore me.”

Lack of enforcement ‘disappointing’

When she first heard a sanctuary would be created around Saturna, DeJoseph says she was “elated.” Like many islanders, she and her husband, Al, have been reporting boats getting too close to the whales for a long time.

“I was absolutely thrilled because we’ve spent many many years phoning the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) for what we’ve viewed as harassment and encroachment on all sorts of marine wildlife,” she says. “So we felt like, ‘oh finally, they’re going to have breathing room around here.’ ”

But DeJoseph says she has yet to see a fisheries officer patrolling the area. Many of her reports have gone unanswered, and in a way she feels the sanctuary zone has made things worse. 

“There are times where it’s just so pointless, you just feel like ‘I don’t even know why I’m bothering.’ No one else is,” she adds. 

“If I saw [the Department of Fisheries and Oceans] on the water I would just feel so much better. If I could just see them every once in a blue moon to acknowledge that they’re trying to educate people, but they’re not.”

Michelle Sanders, director of clean water policy for Transport Canada, says the department has heard concerns about the number of boats in the zones, and has sent out over 1,000 communications to boaters through marinas, boating associations, clubs and docks.

With the San Juan Islands in Washington State so close, she says, they’ve also been working to get the word out to U.S. boaters.

Sanders admits that with the diversity of boaters on the water, outreach is challenging. She says the focus this summer is on education and data collection, rather than strict enforcement of the zones.

This is part of the message Sanders and Transport Canada have been trying to get out to locals. But questions — and vehement criticism — remain.

Southern resident killer whales viewed from East Point, Saturna Island. Photo: Miles Ritter / Flickr

Frustrations aired at town hall

On August 15, these frustrations and questions came to a head at Saturna’s community hall when representatives from Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans came to talk about the 2019 measures for the protection of the southern residents.

Saturna has only 300 full-time residents, yet more than 60 people filled the chairs.

At a table at the front of the room, Sanders tapped on an echoey microphone and thanked everyone for coming. Over the next hour, she tried to explain the new regulations, and what outreach Transport Canada has been doing. 

But it became clear that the audience was more interested in hearing what is being done to enforce the zone — and particularly whether anyone had been penalized for violating the sanctuary.

Although the zones were created by a Transport Canada interim order, Sanders says they’ve taken a “collaborative” approach to their enforcement. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans, Parks Canada, the Coast Guard and the RCMP have been tasked with monitoring and enforcing the zones. 

Transport Canada also has planes doing aerial surveillance of boats in the zones, which they can later use to identify violators, and are monitoring the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which tracks most vessel locations in real time.

At the meeting, Sanders told the crowd that from June 1 to August 1, there have been 106 reports of vessels allegedly entering the Saturna sanctuary, 963 at Pender and 149 at Swiftsure.

People found to be violating the interim order can be given an administrative monetary penalty of up to $250,000, fined up to $1 million or sentenced to 18 months in prison. 

But when Sanders told the crowd that no penalties have been handed out, only verbal and written warnings, the room broke out in exasperated laughter.

Willi Jansen, one of the three fisheries officers tasked with protecting whales in the area, took the mic to talk about what her team is doing in terms of enforcement. She explained that islanders won’t always be able to see them in a marked boat — they may be undercover, or watching from land or a plane.

“You may not be seeing us, but that doesn’t mean we’re not there and that doesn’t mean Transport Canada isn’t there,” she told the crowd.

But mostly, she says they are wherever the whales are. And where the whales are isn’t the Saturna sanctuary zone.

McWhinnie speaks to residents of Saturna Island about killer whales at East Point. Photo: Sarah Berry

‘Yet to be convinced’

When the floor at the town hall was opened up to questions, the list of speakers quickly filled up.

Priscilla Ewbank, who owns the island’s general store, stood with a page of notes in her hands. She’s frustrated with how much time is spent on education, consultation and research, when the situation with the southern residents is so dire. 

“You guys are going to study this to death until anything happens,” she says. “We want you to do something, we want action.”

Susie Washington Smyth, who has a beachfront property on the zone, told Sanders that the interim sanctuary zones mean she can’t play with her kids and grandkids in front of her house. 

“I’m willing to do that … if I think that you guys are doing the right thing,” she says. “I’ve yet to be convinced of that.” 

One by one, islanders shared their ideas for closing down the herring industry or regulating whale-watching or creating larger protected areas. Kayakers vented their frustration with not being allowed in the zone; people like DeJoseph asked why their reports to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans go unanswered. 

Mostly, they were met with explanations that there is a backlog of calls and that the regulations are complicated, just like the threats to the southern residents.

The next day, on Saturna’s Facebook forum, islanders complained that the town hall was the “same old same old from the feds.”

Effectiveness of zone called into question

The goal of the zones is to give the southern residents space as they forage, but McWhinnie says there’s no real evidence yet that the zone off Saturna is a key foraging area. 

From her observations, they mainly pass by the island, occasionally foraging on their way to more fruitful feeding grounds at the mouth of the Fraser River or off of San Juan Island. 

The Narwhal asked Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans for research indicating why the specific zones were chosen as critical areas, but neither was able to provide any sources before press time.

Peter Stolting is an islander who did a five-year stint as a driver in the whale-watching industry. From his observations, he says this is not an important foraging area, just a transiting one, and says the no-go zones are ineffective.

“It’s making the public happy. It’s not doing anything for the whales,” he says. “If it did even a tiny bit for the whales I would support this. ‘Cause I’m a big supporter of keeping these guys alive.” 

Slick, also known as J16, from the southern resident killer whale’s J pod creating a rainbow. J16 is the mother of J50, also known as Scarlet, the four-year old killer whale that died, likely as a result of starvation, in 2018. This photo was taken from East Point on Saturna Island in 2012. Photo: Miles Ritter / Flickr

Stolting says the blame needs to be shared, but he sees the government picking on the easy guys: sports fishermen and recreational boaters, rather than larger industries like commercial fishing and fish farms.

“If the government is serious, let’s do it!” he says. “Let’s do it and let’s do it right. It can be done.”

Boaters frustrated

Bordering much of the zone is an internationally recognized shipping lane, where huge oil tankers and cargo ships move through, blocking out the San Juan Islands behind them. 

As a boater, Stolting thinks the zone is forcing people out into the path of the large ships.

“It’s causing harm. And nothing the government does should cause harm. That’s how I see it,” he says. “So if this is what you’re going to do, make sure nobody gets hurt.”

The area is also a route for kayakers, as it runs between two popular campsites. A strong current wraps around East Point, and for less-experienced kayakers, sticking closer to shore can be safer.

Transport Canada has tried to address these concerns by including exemptions from the zone if someone is directly accessing their property or is in immediate danger. And Sanders says a buffer zone was intentionally left between the zone and the shipping lane to allow vessels to get around the zone safely.

For whale-watching boats, the sanctuaries are an inconvenience. Cedric Towers, owner of Vancouver Whale Watch and an executive of the Pacific Whale Watch Association, says whale-watchers are being forced out of areas rich in wildlife, not just the southern residents.

Transient killer whales, humpbacks, sea lions and harbour seals are also found in the sanctuary zones, and Towers says that excluding whale-watching boats from the zones will just put more pressure on other areas they are allowed to enter.

“We’re keeping stats on how many times we were excluded [from the Saturna zone], where we wanted to go look at the transients or humpbacks but couldn’t go in there because of the stupid zone!” he says. “It makes no sense.” 

Too little, too late?

The east point of the island has long been revered as a land-based whale-watching spot, but the large pods of southern residents that used to come by almost daily in the summer, were absent for the height of the season.

“If you look at the stats, for the last three years, it’s just a graph going downhill,” Towers says.

Paul Cottrell, who coordinates the marine mammal response network at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, says it’s hard to determine exactly why the southern residents haven’t been using the area as much as they used to. 

It could be due to the passing of Granny, J-pod’s leader; prey availability or disturbance from vessels, like whale-watching boats, power boats and commercial shipping.

Southern resident killer whale population since 1960. Source: Centre for Whale Research, DFO, B.C. Marine Mammal Commission. Graph: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

“But so far, the animals haven’t been here,” Cottrell says. “And even when they are here, they may not use the sanctuaries. There are lots of different foraging areas; they’re going to be where the chinook are.”

“Those are all things that are pieces of the puzzle, but we don’t know exactly what’s going on,” he says.

For islanders, who often refer to the southern residents as ‘our whales,’ not seeing them is demoralizing.

“I feel like we’ve failed them,” DeJoseph says. “It breaks my heart.”

What’s next?

If Saturna Islanders can agree on one thing, it’s that they’re not happy with the zone. And as the interim order comes to an end on October 31, the government will have to decide whether to give up on the zones, make changes or continue with them as is.

For now, Sanders says the effectiveness of the zones is being measured as they’re implemented and that after analyzing that data, Transport Canada will come back with measures for 2020 that may look the same or different from this summer.

Cottrell, from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, says he thinks the focus needs to be on the whales themselves, rather than a static zone. With real-time information from underwater microphones, the whales’ locations can be identified so that boats can avoid them.

As the southern residents face extinction, DeJoseph sees the sanctuary as a memorial to what has happened to that population, and a reminder that more needs to be done for the overall environment.

“This empty three kilometres of water, we should all look out at it and say, ‘we have screwed this up so bad,’ ” she says.

Space for hope

On August 19, four days after the town hall, J pod came through the Saturna sanctuary for the second time this summer. 

There is something, people say, about the southern residents that sets them apart — a certain joie de vivre.

Amidst all the news of dead calves and the debate over the zones it’s easy to forget what it’s like to see them in their element; how much joy they bring.

The sun glittered off the waves and the orcas were as breathtaking as ever. They slapped the water with their tails. They heaved themselves above the horizon, framed against the dark blue islands in the distance. In the space of 20 minutes, I counted at least as many breaches. 

For once, there was no lineup of boats fencing them in. There was room to breathe. A sanctuary. 

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Thousands of some of Canada’s most endangered trees are falling in logging operations in British Columbia on privately owned land due to lax regulations, The Narwhal has learned.  

According to a provincial government database, CanWel Timber Ltd. has logged more than 5,000 cubic metres of whitebark pine trees since 2016. The company’s operations include logging on 55,000 hectares of privately owned forest in the ecologically rich Elk Valley in southeastern British Columbia. CanWel took over Jemi Fibre Corp. in 2016.

The logging has occurred despite the federal government formally listing whitebark pine trees as endangered under Canada’s Species at Risk Act in 2012. According to the same database, only one company has logged more of the critically endangered trees since they were listed. That company, as detailed in a previous investigation by The Narwhal, is Canfor — B.C.’s largest forest company. The vast majority of Canfor’s logging occurs on public lands.

CanWel’s ongoing logging has many people in the region concerned, says Eddie Petryshen, conservation coordinator for Wildsight, an organization working to protect lands in the Columbia and Rocky Mountain regions. 

“Two hundred-hectare, steep-slope clear-cuts are popping up all over the place,” Petryshen says. “The whole landscape is increasingly becoming one giant cut-block.”

Recent steep slope logging above the Fording River near Elkford’s Josephine Falls. Photo: Bailey Repp

19,000 cubic metres of endangered trees cut, zero fines 

The Elk and Flathead valleys are considered a critical north-south wildlife corridor for grizzly bears and other wide-ranging species linking areas to the south in Montana to the Banff and Jasper national park complex to the north.

Because those parks are under direct federal government control, one company that logged just 38 endangered whitebark pine trees within the borders of Banff National Park was fined $2.1 million in 2018. But on Crown lands and private lands under provincial government control in B.C., no fines have yet been levied for a single whitebark pine tree being logged in the province, despite more than 19,000 cubic metres of the trees being logged since being listed as a species at risk.

Petryshen says CanWel’s logging is a growing concern not just because of its pace, but how markedly different it is from what used to occur when Tembec — which owned the land until 2014 — managed logging in the area. Partly in response to the urging of conservationists, Tembec embarked on a quest to have its logging operations across Canada independently certified as sustainable by an independent third party auditor under the auspices of the Forest Stewardship Council. The council is widely considered to be among the most stringent forest certification programs.

Tembec had logging operations in the East Kootenay certified under the Forestry Stewardship Council, including both operations on publicly owned or Crown lands and on private lands. As a result, the company did more partial-cutting or selective logging, its clear-cuts were smaller in size and it worked hard to protect “visual quality” in its Elk Valley logging operations.

Recent clearcut harvesting on CanWel’s Private Managed Forest Land contrasts with remaining intact forest in the Leach Creek drainage east of Fernie. Photo: Bailey Repp

“It was to a much higher standard than what we’re seeing [with CanWel] and to a much higher standard than what’s regulated under the Private Managed Forest Land Act,” Petryshen says. “And that’s one of the really big shifts. We went from, you know, that [private] land being treated essentially as Crown land to it being treated as: ‘Hey. We’ve got this property and we’re going to manage it for the short term.’ ” 

Tembec eventually ran into financial troubles and sold its private lands in the Elk Valley to Jemi in 2014. And with the sale the logging innovations ended.

B.C. government reviewing regulations for logging on private lands 

CanWel’s logging of endangered whitebark pine trees plays out against the backdrop of an ongoing provincial government review of private managed forest land regulations and a recently released report by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre which found much to be concerned about on private forest lands throughout the province.

The report concluded that in the 15 years since the Private Managed Forest Land Act came into effect in 2004, “private forest land has been logged at unsustainable rates, without adequate protection of sensitive public resources.” 

Among other things, the report recommends that the provincial government grant local governments the authority to introduce and enforce bylaws to protect streamside forests and community watersheds from private land logging; and for the provincial government to set “clear environmental standards that ensure private managed forests are logged sustainably.”

Eroded soils on steep slope harvesting on CanWel’s Private Managed Forest Land near the B.C.-Alberta border. Slope erosion can lead to increased sediment in streams. Sediment, which clogs gills and irritates mucous membranes, is dangerous to fish populations even in small amounts. Photo: Bailey Repp

“At a minimum,” the ELC report concludes, “privately owned forests should be held to the same practice standards as crown forestland under the Forest and Range Practices Act.”

The report also addresses an issue of major concern on Vancouver Island, where the largest expanses of private forests in B.C. are found. Under current rules, there is little to stop private forest land owners — including major corporations such as TimberWest and Island Timberlands — from clearing forests and then selling the logged lands for conversion into suburbs. And indeed, real estate has become a big part of their businesses.

The report concludes there should be strict limits on logging and flipping such lands and advocates for a return to the idea of a Forest Land Reserve, similar to the Agricultural Land Reserve, which was created to protect farmland in the province.

Endangered whitebark pine trees likely to end up as wood chips

An ongoing concern with the logging of whitebark pine trees — both on privately owned and public lands — is that the species is generally considered to have very low commercial value.

Many of the endangered trees fall in what amounts to the logging industry equivalent of the fishing industry’s “bycatch” phenomenon, says Sally Aitken, a professor in the department of forest and conservation sciences at the University of British Columbia.

The industry doesn’t really want to log the trees, but they are in the way much like an undesired fish species may be in the way of the more prized catch.

Aitken notes that many years ago, foresters knew the most accessible valley-bottom forests were running out and that an increasing amount of logging would occur in the “guts and feathers,” or forests far higher up the mountainsides.

And that is precisely where whitebark pine trees are found.

A winter harvested block on CanWel’s Private Managed Forest Land, with Teck Resources’ Coal Mountain mine in the background. In the Elk Valley, wildlife and ecosystems are dealing with the cumulative effects of logging, mining, development and recreation. Photo: Bailey Repp

As the logging companies go after the commercially desired spruce and subalpine fir trees, endangered whitebark pine trees fall too. Adding insult to injury, whitebark pine trees have very little economic value. If they are processed at all, they may become low-grade lumber or, more likely, they will simply be chipped to make wood pulp.

“It really is a waste,” Aitken says. “Nobody’s cutting it because they’re going to get something meaningful out of it.”

The Narwhal phoned Steve Williams, CanWel’s forest operations coordinator, to ask about the company’s logging of whitebark pine trees and was told to file questions by email, but the company provided no answers in response to the questions.

The major problem confronting whitebark pine is an exotic, introduced fungus that kills many but not all of the trees.

Provincial forests ministry officials have spearheaded efforts to plant whitebark pine seedlings grown from cones from trees that may have some natural resistance to the fungus. Dozens of plots have been planted and there is ongoing sampling of the plots to see how the trees are faring.

Logging by CanWel in a riparian area (the transition zone between land and water) near the town of Elkford. The majority of the Elk Valley’s riparian zones, which are rich in biodiversity, provide critical habitat to numerous species and are key travel corridors between low and high elevation terrain, are highly disturbed by industry and development. Photo: Bailey Repp

To date, roughly 60,000 whitebark pine seedlings have been planted in trials organized by the ministry, trials that are augmented by roughly 10,000 more planted by researchers at the University of B.C. and in the Smithers region. 

But the planting trials are just that. Only time will tell whether some of the seedlings planted in those trials will not succumb to the fungus once again and live to replace the thousands of whitebark pine trees that continue to fall to the chainsaw in British Columbia. 

This article was produced in partnership with the Small Change Fund.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

With only a handful of spotted owls left in B.C.’s wild, a national conservation group is demanding that federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna step in and produce a long-overdue habitat action plan to help save the iconic species from Canadian extinction.

In a letter sent to McKenna on Wednesday, the environmental law charity Ecojustice, acting for the Wilderness Committee, called on the minister to take action following decades of “mismanagement” by the B.C. government, which has prioritized logging in the owl’s habitat over legally required protections, according to an expert report.

“We’re saying ‘enough is enough,’” Ecojustice lawyer Kegan Pepper-Smith told The Narwhal. “This is about ensuring another step towards adequate protection for the owl.”

The demand letter comes as biologists at an experimental Lower Mainland breeding facility for the northern spotted owl tend three newly hatched chicks, in the hopes of adding to a captive population they hope will one day be robust enough to allow for the release of individuals into the wild. The successes and challenges faced by the breeding centre, the only one of its kind in the world, were documented last year in a feature published by The Narwhal.

The letter to McKenna follows the release of an ominous UN report on biodiversity that found nearly one million plant and animal species around the world face extinction due to human activity.

The report — compiled over three years by 145 expert authors from more than 50 countries — concluded that nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history, with grave impacts for people everywhere.

Spotted owls are now functionally extinct in Canada’s wild, where an estimated 1,000 of the raptors once lived in southwestern B.C.’s old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar. For 12 years, the B.C. government has steadfastly avoided identification of the owl’s critical habitat, required by the recovery strategy. Photo: Jared Hobbs

“The health of ecosystems on which we and all other species depend is deteriorating more rapidly than ever,” said Sir Robert Watson, chair of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) that put together the report.

“We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health and quality of life worldwide.”

Among other notable findings, the report concluded that the current rate of extinction is double to hundreds of times higher than the average over the past 10 million years. That rate is accelerating, with many at-risk species facing extinction within decades.

Scientists say we are in the midst of the planet’s Sixth Great Extinction. Close to 700 vertebrate species have already been driven to extinction by human actions since the 16th century, according to the UN report, released on Monday.

The primary threat to the spotted owl is the loss and fragmentation of its habitat —  mainly comprised of old-growth forests of Douglas fir, western hemlock and western red cedar — in southwestern B.C., the only place it is found in Canada.

Commercial logging, regulated and approved by the B.C. government, is the principal cause of habitat destruction and fragmentation for the raptor, which feeds on flying squirrels. Spotted owl populations in the province have plummeted from an estimated 500 pairs historically to only a few individuals in the wild at last count.

“The unfortunate reality is their old-growth habitat has overlapped with the epicentre of human settlement and old-growth harvesting throughout B.C.,” said Pepper-Smith. “As the forests have gone so have the owls.”

The spotted owl has been listed as endangered under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) since 2003, requiring Ottawa to take action.  

A 2006 federal recovery strategy for the spotted owl committed to producing an action plan within a year that would fully identify the raptor’s critical habitat and activities likely to cause destruction to it.

But documents made public through a subsequent court case reveal that the B.C. government told the federal government it would produce that habitat action plan, Pepper-Smith said.

“And here we are 12 years later. We know now that was never completed. There was no critical habitat identified for the owl. And, in fact, the B.C. government has maintained much the same approach as they did in the 1990s and throughout the 2000s — piecemeal, inadequate protection throughout the spotted owl’s range.”

Pepper-Smith said the demand letter had not been sent earlier because both organizations have been working on other pressing issues.  

“The unfortunate reality is that we both, as non-governmental organizations, have limited resources.”

In an emailed statement, the federal environment ministry pointed out that the spotted owl is a provincially managed species and said the B.C. government committed in 2006 to developing and implementing a spotted owl recovery plan.

“The government of Canada will work with the government of B.C. to determine the next steps in the protection and recovery of the spotted owl based on the best available information,” the ministry said.

B.C. has the greatest number of species at risk of extinction in all of Canada, yet is one of the few provinces without a stand-alone law to protect endangered species.

The provincial government promised to introduce a law to protect B.C.’s 1,807 species at-risk, and instructions to enact endangered species legislation were included in Premier John Horgan’s

2017 mandate letter to B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman.

But following a recent backlash about draft agreements to protect B.C.’s imperilled southern mountain caribou herds — based in part on fears that habitat protection will lead to job losses, particularly in the forest industry — the government is backpedalling on its pledge, leaving scientists gravely concerned.

In response to the Ecojustice letter, the B.C. government said it has allocated $400,000 in annual funding over the past five years “to help this important species recover.”

The funds have supported the captive breeding program, field research and inventories, and new technologies for monitoring and conducting habitat assessments, according to an emailed statement from the ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations.

The ministry said 303,850 hectares of forests are protected within provincial and regional parks, Greater Vancouver watersheds and wildlife habitat areas. About 66 per cent of that land consists of old and mature forests, which the government described as “preferred by the spotted owl.”

Charlotte Dawe, conservation and policy campaigner with the Wilderness Committee, stands in the Karen Creek clearcut. The Karen Creek watershed is located just east of Hope, B.C., and just off the Coquihalla Highway, within a Wildlife Habitat Area designated by the B.C. government to preserve spotted owl forest habitat. Photo: Wilderness Committee

The expert report, written by B.C.’s leading spotted owl biologist, Jared Hobbs, found that spotted owl recovery in B.C. is still technically and biologically feasible. It noted, however, that the province “will face several significant logistical, societal and economic challenges.”

Hobbs, a scientific advisor for the B.C.’s spotted owl recovery team from 2002 to 2006, found that recovery actions need to be implemented more “conservatively” with regard to timber harvest in spotted owl habitat and with “strict adherence to scientific principle.”

They also need to be implemented “without delay for improved habitat protection” if the province is committed to successfully recovering spotted owls in B.C., his report said.  

Joe Foy, co-executive director of the Wilderness Committee, pointed out that the U.S. has allocated four million hectares for spotted owl protection.

Canadian protection efforts have been “dismal” by comparison, Foy said, noting that only 218,350 total hectares of suitable habitat has been protected and the B.C. government continues to allow logging in old-growth forests suitable for spotted owls.

“This despicable state of affairs must stop now,” Foy said.

The UN report found that human actions have significantly altered three-quarters of the land-based environment and about two-thirds of the marine environment, with grim consequences for all life on earth.

Nature managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities is under increasing pressure but declining less rapidly than elsewhere, the report discovered.

The authors found that the global response to the biodiversity crisis is insufficient and that “transformative changes” are needed to restore and protect nature. However, they said it is not too late to make a difference if opposition from vested interests can be overcome for the greater public good.

The Wilderness Committee requested that McKenna let it know by June 30 of steps taken to produce a habitat action plan and that the plan be developed by the end of this year.

“Obviously we’d like her to see the urgency of this matter and react quicker than that,” Pepper-Smith said. “But we understand that there are other species out there who require action.”

He said it would be “completely unacceptable” for McKenna’s ministry to defer to the B.C. government once again.

“The evidence is in the forests with how few owls remain out there.”

Update Thursday, May 9 2019 at 4:08pm pst: This article was updated to include comment from Environment and Climate Change Canada that was not submitted before publication time.

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Fish scientist Eric Taylor wanted to make a difference.

He was more than happy to toil behind the scenes if it helped to save a slew of at-risk Canadian species, be they the iconic Pacific sockeye salmon or the obscure Acadian redfish.

After chairing the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) for the past four years, however, Taylor departs a frustrated, anxious man.

While the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) has done some good since it took effect in 2002, including increased monitoring, assessments and public awareness, the legislation remains too cumbersome, is riddled with political loopholes and is failing Canada’s most vulnerable species, such as salmon and steelhead populations in B.C.

“A long, winding and never-ending road,” is how Taylor, professor of zoology and director of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia, describes the federal process of formally listing a species.

“It just takes too damn long.”

Action plans with no action

COSEWIC is an independent body of scientists established to impartially assess the status of at-risk plants and animals and make recommendations to the federal government for SARA listings, including endangered, threatened or special concern.

Take a deep breath — the listing process is a cumbersome one.

First, COSEWIC makes a recommendation, then government provides a response statement, followed by a round of public consultation, a recovery-potential assessment, a regulatory impact statement analysis, more public consultation and, ultimately, a ministerial recommendation to cabinet — which then has nine months to list the species, to not list or refer back to COSEWIC for further consideration.

“There are several steps in the process, and all it takes is one of those steps … to hold everything else up,” Taylor laments.

Eric Taylor, professor of zoology and director of the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Freshwater fish specimens, stored at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum where Taylor is the curator of fishes. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Once the government finally decides to list a species as endangered, the process of developing a recovery strategy begins, including more public consultation and, finally, an action plan. Of the latter, Taylor snorts: “It’s a stupid term. It’s a plan to do something. Why not just frickin’ do it?”

When all is said and done, he adds: “There’s nothing in there, nothing mandated, that actually says you have to do anything to help the animals and plants on the ground.”

“They have to report on what they’ve done, and that report could say, ‘we haven’t done anything, yet,’ ” Taylor says.

Critical habitat ‘can be destroyed with impunity’

Indeed, lack of protection for critical habitat is another key weak point in the legislation.

Mike Pearson, an independent biologist and expert in endangered freshwater fishes and amphibians in the Fraser Valley, notes that the vast majority of species listed under the Species at Risk Act are threatened primarily by habitat loss.

The act protects the residence of an endangered species — say, a nest or den — and protects against the animal being killed or harassed.

At least, that’s the theory.

The Oregon spotted frog is the rarest amphibian in Canada and listed as endangered; critical habitat has been mapped and the recovery strategy completed.

Yet Pearson watched helplessly the other day as an Agassiz farmer torched a riparian area within the frog’s known breeding site — and in the middle of breeding season, no less.

A scorched riparian area at an Agassiz farm. Photo: Mike Pearson

Since biologists are not permitted to survey for the frogs on the farmer’s private land “there is no way to prove that the frogs/eggs were present at the time” of the fire, Pearson says.

“Essentially, a lot of endangered species’ critical habitat in B.C. can be destroyed with impunity.”

Few convictions for breaking species at risk laws

There’s been fewer than one conviction per year on average under the Species at Risk Act.

In October 2018, a World Wildlife Fund report concluded that at-risk populations continued to decline by an average of 28 per cent since the act took effect in 2002.

There are 451 vertebrate species in Canada experiencing population declines. Between 1970 and 2014 these species showed an average decline of 83 per cent. Source: Living Planet Index, WWF-Canada. Graphic: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

There are 64 vertebrate species listed under the federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) as of 2017. Between 1970 and 2002, when the act was adopted, these species showed a decline of 43 per cent. Source: Living Planet Index, WWF-Canada. Graphic: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

After the Species at Risk Act (SARA) was introduced in 2002, the 64 species listed in its registry showed a decline of 28 per cent between 2002 and 2014. Source: Living Planet Index, WWF-Canada. Graphic: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

In some cases, the federal government moves only after being hauled to court.

Ecojustice, a charity that advances environmental litigation, has achieved a handful of successes, forcing the federal government to act on critical habitat of endangered species, including the greater sage-grouse on the Prairies and both the Nooksack dace and southern resident killer whale in B.C.

Ecojustice lawyer Sean Nixon says one of the big problems is that provinces — not the federal government — own most of the land, yet Ottawa is reluctant to force provinces to protect habitat. “It’s jurisdictional timidity, just not willing to step on a province’s toes.”

Marine fishes less likely to be listed

In 1996, the provinces and the territories and the federal government signed an accord on bringing in legislation to protect endangered species. But 21 years later, Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan and the Yukon still have no stand-alone legislation (PDF) on endangered species.

In February 2018, a University of Ottawa study concluded that the Species at Risk Act’s failings included inadequate funding, insufficient incentives for stewardship among private landowners and industry, patchy efforts to protect the act on provincial and territorial crown land and private land and a lack of information on effectiveness of recovery actions.

The process of listing has been especially problematic for marine fishes. It’s no exaggeration to say you could fill an aquarium with all the species recommended for listing by COSEWIC that are still awaiting federal protection under the Species at Risk Act.

Ottawa is reluctant to list a species if doing so may have serious economic and social implications.

And when it does act, Taylor says, government tends to choose the least protective option, listing these species as of “special concern” — a category that avoids no-take, no-harm directives.

“It is a well-known fact that things hunted and fished tend not to get listed by the minister.”

As of 2018, he noted, almost 100 per cent of birds recommended by COSEWIC had been listed compared with fewer than 40 per cent for marine fishes — the lowest of 10 categories ranging from birds and mammals to molluscs and mosses.

“If you’re a bird and you get a recommendation for listing by COSEWIC, it’s almost always a slam dunk,” Taylor says.

“If you’re a marine fish, chances are you will not get listed.”

Government action not guaranteed for listed species

Typically, it takes two years for COSEWIC to reach a recommendation, but emergency assessments can be made much faster when there is an imminent and dire threat.

Even in those cases, there is no guarantee of government action.

In January 2018, COSEWIC recommended emergency listing for endangered Chilcotin River and Thompson River steelhead runs after the number of returning adults dipped to just 58 and 177 individuals, respectively.

Steelhead trout spawners over the last threegenerations have declined 79 per cent (over 15 years) for the Thompson River unit and 81 per cent (over 18 years) forthe Chilcotin unit. Source: Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Graphic: Carol Linnitt / The Narwhal

Fisheries and Oceans Canada has still not acted.

“They could do it in 24 hours if they wanted to,” Taylor says. “If the political will is there, they can do these things. SARA for salmon and steelhead? It’s a major disappointment. It’s done very little for those animals.”

COSEWIC strictly looks at the species’ conservation status, while Canada must consider the greater implications of a listing.

“Protecting species under the Species at Risk Act, even on an emergency basis, is a regulatory decision with potential impacts on Canadians,” federal fisheries spokeswoman Janine Malikian said in a written statement. “We want to ensure that decisions support sustainability and the best results for Canadians.”

“SARA for salmon and steelhead? It’s a major disappointment. It’s done very little for those animals.”

While a decision has yet to be made on Thompson and Chilcotin steelhead, Malikian said: “Conservation of these steelhead populations remains an extremely high priority and will be a focus of decisions with respect to fisheries management plans for the year ahead.”

Canada, Taylor argues, wrongly believes it can have it all.

“They don’t want to protect them because they have this crazy notion that you can somehow grow the economy and protect the environment at the same time. In most cases, they’re two opposites. You can’t have both at the same time.”

Endangered stocks can migrate upstream with larger healthier mixed-stock runs and become caught in fisheries, including First Nation gillnets in the Fraser River.

“I don’t really care who you are,” Taylor says. “No group has the right to fish something to extinction. Fisheries can be a very important part of reconciliation, but these fish shouldn’t be sacrificed to reconciliation and I don’t think any First Nation would want that.”

More public engagement, stricter timelines needed

Taylor asserts that the federal decision to list a species is influenced by business, jobs and votes. Climate-change related events, such as destructive floods and fires, may help to change public minds and pressure their government to act more quickly, including for marine fishes, he adds.

COSEWIC designated the Cultus Lake sockeye endangered in an emergency listing in 2002. The federal government decided against listing the population, citing “significant socio-economic impacts on sockeye fishers and coastal communities.”

Taylor said the public needs to be more engaged.

“You need millions of people to care about these animals and plants and most people just don’t. It’s sad but it’s true.”

Taylor at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Beaty Biodiversity Museum, University of British Columbia. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Freshwater fish samples, collected in B.C. in the 1950s and stored at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Little has changed on the ground since the Liberals took power in 2015, Taylor argues.

“The bottom line, I’d say that the state of our biodiversity in Canada hasn’t changed much since they’ve come in,” he says, noting it will take more than a single four-year term of office to reverse a “legacy of inaction.”

“You need millions of people to care about these animals and plants and most people just don’t. It’s sad but it’s true.”

The federal government announced several measures Tuesday to help protect depressed chinook stocks on the Fraser River, which prevents sport anglers in southern B.C. from taking chinook until July 14, followed by a daily limit of one per person through December 31. Season limits drop to 10 chinook from 30.

Commercial troll fisheries for chinook are closed until August 20, while First Nations’ food, social and ceremonial fishing is closed until July 15.

In 2017, Richard Cannings, a prominent naturalist and NDP MP for South Okanagan-West Kootenay, introduced a private member’s bill to amend the Species at Risk Act to impose stricter timelines on the government.

The bill would have required that after receiving a COSEWIC recommendation, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change would have one year to recommend to cabinet that the assessment be accepted and the species added to the list, the species not be added or the matter be referred back to COSEWIC for further consideration.

Cabinet would have one month to act or the minister would by order list the species, or provide reasons why not or what action is planned.

Under the current situation the clock only starts ticking on action once the minister informs cabinet of a COSEWIC recommendation — a loophole the former Conservative government of Stephen Harper exploited to ignore COSEWIC.

“It was a very reasonable bill,” Cannings told The Narwhal. “The whole point is to make it a timely, open and transparent process.”

A skeleton of a blue whale, on permanent display at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum. Photo: Taylor Roades / The Narwhal

Cannings withdrew the bill after Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna agreed that as a matter of government policy a decision on listing a species would be made within two years — or three years for commercial/hunted species.

“To give them the benefit of the doubt, they’re facing a very big backlog of species that have been ignored during the Conservative years,” Cannings allows.

Taylor’s solution is “very firm time limits” on when the minister must make a decision on recommendations for endangered species listing.

The feds should automatically accept COSEWIC recommendations for listing to avoid the “active harming or killing” of species at risk. Then “take all the time they want” to consider the social and economic consequence of maintaining or tweaking the listing.

“They should automatically go on the list, right away.”

Simply pouring more money into the problem is not the answer, he says.

Federal fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and B.C. Premier John Horgan announced last month that the two governments will provide a total of $142.8 million toward a five-year program to protect and enhance wild salmon.

“Come on people,” says Taylor, noting the time for concrete action is long overdue.

“They love to throw money at things … but it won’t do any good.”

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Slocan valley farmer Jim Ross spotted an unusual convoy on Monday as he pulled into a gas station near Salmo in the afternoon twilight — three B.C. government trucks and a stock trailer with plywood tacked over the slats.  

Intrigued, Ross asked the government employees what kind of animal was in the trailer while they filled up their vehicles at the snowy Centex station. He didn’t get an answer, so he asked again. And again.

“They all looked like deer in the headlights and behaved like they were on some secret mission,” Ross wrote that evening in a Facebook post. “When I wouldn’t stop pressing, the driver told me they were caribou.”

Inside the stock trailer were two female caribou and a male — three of the last survivors of two highly endangered caribou herds in southeastern B.C. known as the South Selkirk and South Purcell subpopulations.

The caribou, already fitted with radio-collars, had been tracked by helicopter that morning, captured with net guns, blindfolded and hobbled, sedated, flown to staging areas, and loaded into the trailer as part of an elaborate government rescue mission that B.C. wildlife biologist Leo DeGroot estimated cost between $20,000 and $30,000.

After two hours on the road, the animals were still a five-and-a-half hour drive from their final destination — a pen near Revelstoke, where they would be sedated again the next morning and flown briefly by helicopter to join an orphaned caribou calf named Grace in the enclosure.

The Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild pen where the three individuals from the South Selkirk and South Purcell populations have been relocated. Photo: Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild / Facebook

“A sad day when the remaining caribou in the southern interior fit in a stock trailer with room to spare,” posted Ross, who raises hogs and has lived in the Kootenays for most of his life.

Thirty years earlier, Ross had chanced upon 40 to 50 caribou from the South Selkirk herd in a clearing near Kootenay Pass, a sight so arresting that he nearly drove into a ditch and then pulled off the highway to watch in awe, he told The Narwhal.

Now the unwitting Ross had become a witness to the same herd’s extirpation, or local extinction, as two more B.C. caribou herds join northern spotted owls on the list of wildlife populations recently extirpated from the province.  

“It just saddens the hell of me,” Ross said in an interview. “I have two daughters who are 19 and 21 and they’re never going to see a caribou. It’s just not going to happen for them unless they see it in an enclosure.”

“I got home and I thought ‘man this is frickin’ epic. I should post this.’ So I did.”

The loss of the two Kootenay-area herds erases the southern boundary of B.C.’s caribou populations, redrawing the line closer to Nakusp, and also makes history through the disappearance of the transboundary South Selkirk herd, the last herd in the contiguous United States.

It comes as the B.C. government promises a plan of action to protect endangered caribou herds, following a declaration last May by federal environment minister Catherine McKenna that southern mountain caribou face “imminent threats” to their recovery and require immediate intervention.

If McKenna is not satisfied that B.C. has a suitable plan of action to protect endangered herds, she can ask the federal Cabinet to approve an emergency protection order under the federal Species at Risk Act.

That would allow Ottawa to make decisions that are normally within the jurisdiction of the B.C. government, including whether or not to grant permits for logging in caribou critical habitat.

DeGroot, a wildlife biologist with B.C.’s ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations, confirmed that the South Selkirk herd is now extirpated while the South Purcell herd, with only three males remaining in the wild, is functionally extirpated.

“It’s sad to see these animals go,” DeGroot said in an interview. “It’s such an iconic animal. They’ve been on this landscape for thousands and thousands of years. Due to human influences largely, they’re gone now.”

Human disturbances, including clear-cut logging, mining and oil and gas development, have given natural predators like wolves easy access to caribou whose habitat has been destroyed or fragmented right across the country, with disastrous consequences for once-robust herds.

Land tenures in the Kootenay Boundary Region. Mining, smelting, logging, hydroelectric power generation, agriculture, ranching and tourism are all important drivers of the local economy. These activities have put tremendous pressure on local species of caribou, goat, sheep, elk, moose, wolf, lynx and cougar — all of which have become extirpated in many other ranges across North America. Image: Priority Threat Management Pilot Report

Thirty of B.C.’s 54 caribou herds are at risk of local extinction, and 14 of those herds have fewer than 25 animals.

DeGroot said three males from the South Purcell herd who evaded capture, sheltering in the trees and refusing to emerge even when buzzed by a helicopter, will likely be left to live out their lives in the wild. One was a youngster previously unknown to biologists that was missed in the last caribou count, he said.

“From an animal welfare point of view it’s probably best just to leave them. They’re all males. They’re not biologically important to another herd.”

Biologists plan to release Grace and the three adult caribou from the pen in the hope that they will join the Columbia North herd. At close to 150 animals, it’s by far the largest of what were once eight caribou subpopulations in the Kootenay Boundary area, home to 56 of B.C.’s 1,800 species at risk of extinction.

DeGroot said the arrival of the relocated caribou was welcomed by the calf named Grace, who has been the pen’s only occupant since August. Her mother was killed by wolves and the youngster was chased by a black bear and a grizzly bear before being let back into the enclosure where she was born.

In photographs taken Tuesday by ministry staff, the shaggy eight-month-old calf — who hasn’t yet grown antlers — is seen expressing great interest in the new arrivals, who are lying groggily in the snow in one photograph and then rising to their feet as sedation drugs wear off.

Grace bonded with one of the newly arrived cows. Photo: B.C. FLNRO

In this photo, Grace, the lone youngster in the Revelstoke caribou pen, approaches the newly arrived individuals as they wake from sedation. Photo: B.C. FLRNO

“She bonded with one of these cows immediately,” DeGroot said. “From what I heard it was kind of a heart-warming story for this Grace to have other members of her species dropping from the sky.”

Scientist Chris Johnson said the extirpation of the two herds is “not a surprise to anyone,” noting that scientists have been sounding the alarm about imperilled caribou populations for almost two decades.  

“We’ve watched these herds — and we’ve watched them in other places — decline slowly…These caribou are going to disappear,” said Johnson, an ecology professor at the University of B.C. who sits on committees advising the federal government on caribou recovery.  

The B.C. government has very few options when it comes to dealing with caribou populations so depleted, Johnson pointed out.

“One is to cross your fingers and hope you get lucky and that they have a whole pile of good years, that they produce a calf every year and that predation is really light and in some miraculous world that the population naturally rebuilds.”

He said that scenario is unlikely and that if the three animals hadn’t been captured they would likely “wink out on their own.”

“Obviously we should have dealt with this before,” Johnson said. “That’s the lesson. Whether we learn from it or not is another question. At this point in time there’s no options other than to let them disappear or remove them.”

‘We have left it too late’: scientists say some B.C. endangered species can’t be saved

According to DeGroot, the B.C. government plans to launch a captive breeding program where caribou will be raised in a year-round facility, the location of which has not yet been determined.

Once the program has produced “surplus offspring,” they will be released to augment wild populations, he said.

“We’re not ruling out that they won’t be returned to the South Selkirks or the South Purcells. That decision will have to be made at the time.”

Habitat protections in the South Selkirks and South Purcells will remain for now, DeGroot said, noting it will be more difficult to release “naïve animals that grew up in a facility into an environment devoid of caribou” than to release them onto a landscape that is still home to caribou populations.  

Johnson said caribou are fairly easy to breed in captivity, pointing out that penning projects, while expensive, have had cautious success.

But he described penning as a “stop-gap measure” that won’t work on its own unless underlying reasons for the precipitous decline of caribou populations are addressed, including the loss of low-elevation habitat to human disturbances that include logging, mining, and oil and gas development.   

And then there’s the question of whether captive breeding programs can even be called conservation, Johnson said, given that “you’re effectively growing caribou in a pen and throwing them to the wolves or the cougars.”

Ross said even though he is not a biologist or a caribou expert he has a strong association with caribou and “it’s hard to see” their demise.

Yet he said he’s had to admit that he’s “as much of the problem as anybody else,” noting that he drives over the Kootenay Pass that bisects caribou habitat.

“I’m talking to you on a phone that runs on electricity,” Ross said. “I heat my house with propane but it could be natural gas which is what the line is that runs through there [caribou habitat]. My house is built from wood. Minerals and the results of mining are everywhere in my house in all kinds of my devices.”

“That saddens me too on some level.”

McKenna’s press secretary Sabrina Kim said the federal government is “working very closely” with the B.C. government to finalize a province-wide caribou conservation agreement.

The agreement will contain immediate and long-term measures to support the recovery of southern mountain caribou, Kim said in an e-mail to The Narwhal.

She also confirmed that Ottawa is working with the B.C. government and West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations to finalize a partnership agreement that will focus on key conservation measures to support the recovery of southern mountain caribou populations in the nations’ traditional territory in the Peace region.

The two nations took matters into their own hands in 2014, launching a unique caribou penning project that has boosted the population of the imperilled Klinse-Za herd from 16 to 66 — for a price tag of about $125,000 for each caribou calf born in the pen.

News of the arrival of the three caribou to the Revelstoke pen comes after the B.C. government released the results of a Kootenay region pilot project on priority threat management, described as “a mathematical equation to determine how to save as many species as possible for the least cost.”

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They call her Grace. She was born last spring in a maternity pen for endangered caribou in the Columbia mountains north of Revelstoke, B.C. It was a difficult year for the Rearing Caribou in the Wild project; three females died during or soon after giving birth and two calves were euthanized after sustaining injuries.

The deaths were hard on volunteers and scientists who had spent almost five years working on the $2.4 million pilot project to try to save the Columbia North caribou herd in the Kootenay Boundary region from local extinction. Fearing additional mortalities, and facing unseasonably hot weather, they released the remaining 17 cows and 11 calves in June instead of in July as planned.

But more tragedy struck.

On June 29, when Grace was less than two months old, her mother was killed by wolves, and then other predators moved in. “The calf was observed on game cams around the pen and up the hill…being chased by a black bear and a grizzly bear,” says Darcy Peel, acting director of the B.C. government’s caribou recovery program.

Biologists feared the worst for Grace, named after the mountain where her mother had been captured. “But then she showed up at the [pen] gate,” Peel told The Narwhal. “The decision was made to bring her back into the pen, because she was not reconnecting with caribou…She went back in on August 9.”

Grace has lived in the pen by herself ever since, a solitary symbol of the nation-wide crisis that has befallen the species engraved on the Canadian quarter.

A mother and calf released from the Revelstoke maternity pen in July of 2016. Photo: Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild / Facebook

The Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild pen where Grace now lives in solitude. Photo: Revelstoke Caribou Rearing in the Wild / Facebook

Human disturbances, including clear-cut logging, mining and oil and gas development, have given natural predators like wolves easy access to caribou whose habitat has been destroyed or fragmented right across the country, with disastrous consequences for once-robust herds.

Plans are now underway to tranquilize the lone survivors from two other imperilled herds in the Kootenay Boundary region — the South Selkirk herd with only two females left and the South Purcell herd with four animals — and helicopter them to the pen, about a 90-minute drive north of Revelstoke.

The hope, Peel explains, is that those six survivors and Grace will eventually be released to find their way to about 145 animals in the Columbia North herd, the region’s largest remaining subpopulation of southern mountain caribou.

Grace, now about seven months old, is “doing really well” in the pen, says Peel. “She’s growing. She’s thriving.”

Triage

But even as the province leads the rescue mission, a B.C. government pilot study warns that caribou in the region are so perilously close to local extinction that penning projects and other management strategies are unlikely to recover populations, no matter how much money is spent.

Out of eight caribou subpopulations in the Kootenay Boundary area, five are now functionally extinct, according to information the provincial government provided to The Narwhal.

“We have left it too late,” says UBC scientist Tara Martin, who helped lead the 2017 pilot study, a joint initiative of the B.C. environment ministry and the ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations.

“We have prioritized industrial development over the last 50 years and we haven’t been prioritizing conservation of caribou.”

Martin, a professor of conservation decision science in UBC’s forestry faculty, is at the forefront of a new approach to saving Canada’s at-risk species, and the B.C. government has taken a keen interest as it develops promised legislation to protect the province’s 1,807 species at risk of extinction.

B.C. approved 83 logging cut blocks in endangered caribou habitat in last six months

A mathematical approach to the conservation question

Known as priority threat management, the methodology has already been adopted by New Zealand and the state of New South Wales in Australia, where a majority of species vulnerable to extinction are now recovering.

Martin describes the methodology as “a mathematical equation to determine how to save as many species as possible for the least cost.”

“We are continuing to invest in species with a low likelihood of recovery at a very high cost,” she explains in a telephone interview from her home on Salt Spring Island.

“And while we do that a whole raft of other species are likely to become more endangered. So in order to avoid having more species in that critical state we need to think more carefully about how we’re using those resources.”

Priority threat management is similar to triage in the medical world. Used widely in World War 1 battlefields in France, army medics assessed the severity of injuries and prioritized stricken soldiers for treatment. Some soldiers were so grievously wounded their chances of survival were slight no matter how much medical attention they received. Doctors, equipped with woefully insufficient resources, focused on doing the greatest good for the greatest number of patients.  

If we think of B.C.’s at-risk species as early casualties of the extinction epidemic sweeping the globe, Martin says we need to identify which species in the province have the highest likelihood of recovery.

If no actions can be taken to ensure that species like caribou have a greater than 50 per cent chance of recovery, “these are the species that we should triage” so we can devote limited resources to helping species that stand a greater chance of persisting, she says.

“This approach is really about identifying those actions which have the highest chance of recovering as many species as possible. It also identifies which species are potentially beyond recovery.”

Martin wants to be perfectly clear that the issue is not that Kootenay Boundary caribou are too expensive to save. The B.C. government has contributed more than $500,000 to the Revelstoke penning project, for instance, and the federal government has dished out almost $1 million, according to an e-mail from the ministry of forests, lands, and natural resource operations.  

Land tenures in the Kootenay Boundary Region. Mining, smelting, logging, hydroelectric power generation, agriculture, ranching and tourism are all important drivers of the local economy. These activities have put tremendous pressure on local species of caribou, goat, sheep, elk, moose, wolf, lynx and cougar — all of which have become extirpated in many other ranges across North America. Image: Priority Threat Management Pilot Report

Rather, Martin says caribou in the region have “have basically gone beyond a tipping point because we haven’t acted soon enough.”

The analysis in the 96-page pilot study, which the provincial government released to The Narwhal upon request, suggests, as Martin puts it, that  “there’s very little you can do to have a self-sustaining population of caribou in 20 years in that region.”

“Of the options that are left on the table it’s likely that none of them are sufficient to bring caribou back,” says Martin, a prospect she calls “chilling.”

“The only time that this type of methodology suggests giving up on a species is when there’s no actions left on the table to take.”

Are we ‘giving up’ on some species?

UBC biologist Sarah Otto, who sits on the federal Species at Risk advisory committee, points out that Canada’s current approach to saving at-risk species is simply not working.

“We’ve got to try something different,” Otto says in an interview.

If being listed under the federal Species at Risk Act is the equivalent of going to hospital, getting a bed in the ICU signals that the overall health of vulnerable populations is likely to take a significant turn for the worse.

According to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2018 Living Planet Report, the populations of species listed under Canada’s Species at Risk Act have declined by an average 28 per cent since the Act was adopted in 2002.

Otto says funding is scattered among at-risk species without being prioritized “in an overarching fashion,” and in the absence of sufficient information about whether or not management strategies will be effective.

“That scattershot approach, I would say that’s the metaphor for having field medics that aren’t triaging,” she observes. “They’re running around trying to figure out what they can do.”  

Priority threat management has worried some scientists, who point out that the federal government is legally required to oversee recovery of more than 700 species listed under Canada’s Species at Risk Act, including southern mountain caribou. The David Suzuki Foundation fears the methodology could be used by governments and industry as an excuse for the continued destruction of endangered species habitat, a leading cause of extirpations and extinctions.

“It provides a perverse incentive to industrial players that drive species to the point at which they are deemed ‘too costly’ to save,” scientist David Suzuki wrote in an October blog post. “If species are abandoned, so are requirements for habitat protection and restoration that many industries see as limiting to their bottom line.”

“I absolutely in my heart wish it weren’t a business case issue…”

But Martin says priority threat management strengthens the business case for protecting as many at-risk species as possible.

“I absolutely in my heart wish it weren’t a business case issue because I have such a strong intrinsic valuation for species,” she says.

“What we’re doing is providing guidance. We’re saying that ‘there’s limited resources to invest, here’s how you invest them to save as many things as possible.’ At the moment we just don’t know the price tag for saving all of B.C.’s species at risk, or all of Canada’s species at risk. We need to understand what this will cost so we can close the funding gap.”

Brass tacks for B.C.’s Kootenay Boundary Region

In an e-mailed statement, the B.C. environment ministry confirmed that the provincial government plans “to build” on the pilot study “and lessons learned” as it develops species at risk legislation, “in order to help ensure that our recovery efforts provide the highest conservation benefits for taxpayer dollars.”

At Queensland University in Brisbane, Australia, Martin studied with the famous mathematician and biologist Hugh Possingham, who twinned species conservation with the field of decision science.

“It was definitely an ‘aha’ moment when I realized [that] trying to save everything was not going to work given that we didn’t have the resources to save everything,” Martin recalls. “We were squandering those resources, chasing species that had the lowest chance of recovery at the highest cost.”

Martin extended Possingham’s work on individual species to entire ecosystems, with an eye to highlighting management strategies — for example, habitat protection, disease management, or pollution and pesticide management — that would benefit as many species as possible.

She returned to B.C. in 2012 with a PhD that predicted the impact of livestock grazing on Australia’s woodland bird populations like the black-chinned honeyeater, a crow-sized bird that extracts nectar from flowers.

B.C.’s former Liberal government heard about Martin’s work and asked her to help lead the pilot study in the Kootenay Boundary area, a rugged mountainous landscape in B.C.’s southwest that covers eight million hectares.

The biodiverse region is home to 56 species and four ecological communities that the B.C. and federal governments list as vulnerable to extinction. They include fish such as white sturgeon and bull trout, mammals like the American badger, the Gillette’s Checkerspot butterfly and birds like the bobolink, a small blackbird with a bubbly, tinkling song that winters in South America.

The region is also home to 150,000 humans and an abundance of activities that have impacted species now struggling to persist, including extensive mining, smelting, logging, agriculture, hydroelectric power generation, ranching and tourism.

When Martin and government scientists applied priority threat management to the Kootenay Boundary area, they discovered that four species, including southern mountain caribou, are so close to local extinction that fast-disappearing populations are unlikely to persist no matter what actions are taken.

Joining caribou on what Martin calls the regional “extreme intensive care” list is the sharp-tailed grouse, a prairie chicken that congregates in places known as leks, where males pouf out their purple neck pouches and hold elaborate, foot-stomping dancing competitions to attract a mate. According to the pilot study, the grouse is already extirpated from the region.

The northern leopard frog, and the southern maidenhair fern — species which, along with the sharp-tailed grouse, are at the extent of their range in the Kootenay Boundary — are also on the list.

A sharp-tailed grouse in flight. The species is extirpated, locally extinct, in the B.C. Kootenay Boundary Region. Photo: Murray Foubister / Flickr

If we spend $1.6 million a year on optimal management strategies, the pilot study found that 51 of those 60 at-risk species have a greater than 50 per cent chance of persisting in 20 years. Those species include the blotched tiger salamander, of the world’s largest land-dwelling salamanders.

If we toss in another $4.5 million a year, the prairie falcon and Kootenay River white sturgeon are also likely to persist in the region in two decades.

And for $22 million a year over 20 years, all of the at-risk species and ecological communities — minus the four on the extreme intensive care list — are likely to persist “at levels sufficient to maintain viable, self-sustaining populations or ecosystems,” according to the study.  

Governments ‘shirking their responsibilities’

Martin says governments are “shirking their responsibilities and are not prioritizing conservation of species.”

“We’re in a position where we have insufficient resources,” she says. “And I think a large reason for this lack of resources is that we haven’t presented a clear business case for saving biodiversity. We have not articulated what it costs to save species and what the likelihood of success is.”

Martin and her postdoctoral fellow Laura Kehoe have also applied priority threat management methodology to Saskatchewan’s south of the divide region and B.C.’s intensely developed Fraser River area.

The 101 at-risk species in the Fraser area range from iconic southern resident orcas to the short-eared owl, a trio of bat species, and coastal ecosystem species such as the horned lark, western bumblebee and barn swallow.

For just under $500 million spent on optimal management strategies in the Fraser, there is a greater than 50 per cent chance that every single one of those species — including orcas — will have viable, thriving populations in 20 years, Martin says.

“If we act quickly we have a chance to save these species from extinction, but they’re already in a very dire state,” she cautions.

Otto, a Canada Research Chair in Theoretical and Experimental Evolution, also sees value in knowing how much it will cost to save at-risk species and comparing that to current spending levels.

“Then we have better information to tell the public and government, ‘well, at this level of conservation investment we’re not going to be able to protect the species we care about.’ In that sense, the goal is really to say where’s the mismatch between what we want as a society and what we’re doing and investing.”

The pilot study only looked at the Kootenay Boundary region, and not at other regions with endangered southern mountain caribou, including in the Peace, where construction of the W.A.C. Bennett hydro dam in the 1960s severed a key migration route, setting off a downward spiral from which local caribou populations have never recovered.

“The caveat is that we’ve only looked at this one particular region,” says Martin.

“If caribou have a chance, we need to be looking at management actions beyond the Kootenay region. It’s not the nail in the coffin necessarily for southern mountain caribou.”

This report was produced with financial assistance from the Unchartered Journalism Fund.

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The B.C. government has approved dozens of new logging cut blocks in endangered mountain caribou critical habitat since May, conservation groups revealed at a Monday news conference that included renowned Canadian naturalist and artist Robert Bateman.

The 83 new logging cut blocks, the equivalent of 11 Stanley Parks in size, are in the critical habitat of B.C.’s eight most imperilled southern mountain caribou populations, found mainly along the province’s eastern border.

“The clock is ticking and caribou need protection now,” said Charlotte Dawe, a spokesperson for the Wilderness Committee, which discovered the new cut blocks approved by the B.C. ministry of forests, lands and natural resource operations, one of the two provincial ministries in charge of leading recovery efforts for the species.

“If the province was serious about the federal Species at Risk Act and about protecting caribou then they would have at least rejected the permits for these cut blocks.”

Thirty of B.C.’s 54 caribou herds are at risk of local extinction, and 14 of those herds now have fewer than 25 animals.

Dawe, along with Bateman and representatives from four other conservation groups, called on the provincial government to declare a moratorium on new development in caribou critical habitat while it works on a recovery plan to save southern mountain caribou populations. “We are asking that the B.C. government put an immediate stop to all destructive activities in critical caribou habitat while the plan is underway,” said Dawe. “And if they fail to do this then the federal government needs to step in.”

Clearcut near Wells Gray from The Wilderness Committee on Vimeo.

The same eight B.C. herds facing new logging in their habitat were singled out in May by federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna when she declared that southern mountain caribou faced “imminent threats”  to their recovery and said immediate intervention was required. They include the Quintette, Kinbasket, Narraway and South Monashee herds.

If McKenna is not satisfied that B.C. has a suitable plan of action to protect endangered herds, she can ask the federal Cabinet to approve an emergency protection order under the federal Species at Risk Act.

That would allow Ottawa to make decisions that are normally within the jurisdiction of the B.C. government, including whether or not to grant logging permits.

“We wanted to see what had changed on the landscape since that big federal announcement,” Dawe told The Narwhal. “So we looked on the landscape to see how the provincial government was responding. We wanted to see if the provincial government was taking this seriously and they’re not.”

At the press conference, Candace Batycki, a spokesperson for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y), held up a hefty antler from a caribou belonging to the locally extinct Burnt Pine caribou herd in the Peace, another region where shrinking caribou herds are struggling to survive in the midst of habitat fragmented by mining, oil and gas development, logging, road-building and other disturbances.

“We’re seeing smaller and smaller herds and then they wink out,” she said.

West Moberly First Nations went to court to prevent a logging company, First Coal Corp, from mining in the Burnt Pine’s critical habitat, but a favourable court ruling came too late and the last 11 surviving members of the herd perished.

Batycki said “nothing has changed for caribou on the ground” since the B.C. government’s 2017 announcement that it would invest $27 million into caribou recovery efforts, despite a “clear scientific consensus” that habitat loss is driving the species’ rapid decline.

The only change is the dramatic decline of two more herds, including the Gray Ghost herd in the southern Selkirk mountains which is down to three animals, said Batycki, B.C. program director for Yellowstone to Yukon, which works with scientists in Canada and the U.S. to conserve one of the world’s last intact mountain ecosystems and North America’s longest wildlife corridor.

Those two herds, which are now functionally extinct, were not included in McKenna’s announcement or in the Wilderness Committee’s map of new cut block approvals.

“We have repeatedly requested that the B.C. government call a pause to create some breathing room, while putting development moratoriums in place while recovery planning proceeds,” Batycki said.

“Our pleas have fallen on deaf ears,” she said. “I had hoped that the days of ‘talk and log’ were over.”

Batycki pointed to the “expensive and drastic actions” that some communities have been forced to take in the face of what she called “government intransigence,” including an elaborate First Nations-led caribou penning project in the Misinchinka mountains in the Peace region.

Doug Donaldson, minister of forests, lands and natural resource operations, told The Narwhal his government has been “working hard” on the caribou issue since the federal government highlighted new concerns in May.

“We’re very concerned about an iconic species in B.C.,” Donaldson said. “We want to see caribou not just survive but recover.”

Donaldson said 2.2 million hectares of prime caribou habitat has already been set aside from logging. “There has been logging continuing in areas where caribou are present, but not in critical habitat areas.”

But Dawe said the new approved cut blocks are all found in critical habitat designated by the federal government.

Donaldson described a conservation agreement — one the B.C. government was compelled to pursue under the federal Species at Risk Act — as the “first of its kind in Canada.”

“We’re working diligently on a section 11 agreement with the federal government to ensure we have recovery of this species,” the minister said. Section 11 of the federal Species at Risk Act authorizes a minister to enter into a conservation agreement to protect a species in peril.

Scientists have roundly criticized a “resource document” produced by Donaldson’s ministry as part of the caribou recovery program, described by the government as a “new, made in B.C.” initiative even though recovery strategies already exist to save the antlered mammal engraved on the Canadian quarter.

“We fear that intentions to develop a ‘made in B.C.’ approach will amount to much wasted time, even as decisions are underway to degrade more prime caribou habitat,” scientists Justina Ray and scientist Chris Johnson wrote in a six-page letter to Donaldson’s ministry.

The June letter said the ministry’s discussion paper ignores scientific findings, adds “little if anything” to the probability of species recovery and has an overall approach similar to those that have failed in the past.

Asked if caribou have more time, Donaldson pointed to measures such as maternal penning, predator management and habitat restoration that are underway in the Peace region.

“Overall we’ve been taking a very aggressive approach to caribou management and it includes habitat restoration.”

Dawe said the B.C. government has come up with “caribou plan after caribou plan and consultation after consultation. But all of this will be for nothing because as we speak critical habitat is being loaded onto logging trucks.”

Eddie Petryshen, Wildsight’s conservation coordinator, said the province needs to start a captive breeding program for mountain caribou so they can be introduced back into areas where they are likely to succeed.

“Caribou have survived ice ages,” Petryshen said. “They’ve survived climatic shifts. They’ve survived fires that changed large swathes of their habitat. But they can’t seem to survive us.”

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Scientist Justina Ray has been studying caribou for fifteen years and still gets shivers up her spine when she spots their tracks braiding across snowy landscapes.

“Every sighting that I have in a natural habitat is a sensation,” said the senior scientist and president of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada (WCSC). “It’s extraordinary. They can make themselves look more numerous just through these gorgeous tracks.”

After witnessing the sharp decline of B.C. caribou herds, Ray and other caribou scientists were hopeful last November when the B.C. government was compelled — under the federal Species at Risk Act — to develop a conservation plan for woodland caribou recovery and protect their critical habitat in B.C.’s mountain forests.

But now their hope has shifted to “profound” concern following the publication of a B.C. government discussion paper billed by Doug Donaldson, minister of forests, lands, natural resource operations and rural development, as a “resource document” for a caribou recovery program.

New strategy ‘will amount to much wasted time’

The paper’s release followed the B.C. government’s surprising announcement that it will develop a “new,” “made in B.C.” program to save caribou, even though recovery strategies already exist to save the antlered mammal engraved on the Canadian quarter.

“We fear that intentions to develop a ‘made in B.C.’ approach will amount to much wasted time, even as decisions are underway to degrade more prime caribou habitat,” Ray and scientist Chris Johnson wrote in a six-page letter to Donaldson’s ministry.

The June letter said the ministry’s discussion paper ignores scientific findings, adds “little if anything” to the probability of species recovery and has an overall approach similar to those that have failed in the past.

Both scientists sit on committees advising the federal government on caribou recovery and they co-chair the terrestrial mammals subcommittee of the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), which in 2014 assessed the majority of B.C.’s caribou herds as endangered.  

Vague set of initiatives a delaying tactic: scientists

Thirty of B.C.’s 54 caribou herds are at risk of local extinction, including the Klinse-Za herd in the Peace region where First Nations are capturing pregnant caribou cows and penning them in a last-ditch effort to save the herd. Fourteen B.C. herds now have fewer than 25 animals, with only three animals remaining in the Gray Ghost herd in the southern Selkirk mountains.

Johnson, an ecology professor at UNBC, said in an interview that caribou are in a “crisis situation” and there is little time left for discussion.

“It just seemed to be a vanilla sort of flavoured discussion paper meant to appease people and give the impression that things are going to get better, without actually making any commitment or saying how things are going to get better for caribou,” Johnson said. “It seemed like a bit of a delaying tactic.”

In the letter, the scientists said they are “profoundly concerned” about the potential example B.C.’s $27 million caribou recovery program may provide for B.C.’s promised species at risk legislation if the new law follows the direction outlined in the discussion paper — which they characterize as a “vague set of initiatives that aspire to be something ‘new,’ but in fact look similar if not identical to the status quo that ignores legally mandated and scientifically supported recovery actions.”

The approach outlined in the discussion paper is not even legally consistent with B.C.’s obligation to protect critical caribou habitat under the federal Species at Risk Act, the scientists informed Donaldson’s ministry, which is responsible for issuing permits that impact caribou habitat, including for logging and road-building.

“This is because it spells out a direction that is more appropriately characterized as status quo than ‘new’ and ignores key tenets of clear and consistent scientific findings regarding caribou declines that suggest strongly that a ‘made in B.C.’ approach is both unreasonable and unnecessary,” they wrote.

Johnson said there is no need for a “made in B.C.” approach because scientifically supported approaches for recovering caribou already exist that focus on protecting critical habitat and limiting disturbance.

“The provincial government for the most part has ignored them,” Johnson said. “They’ve ignored most of their responsibilities under the [federal] Species at Risk Act.”

Plan would use triage approach

The discussion paper alludes to prioritizing recovery by herd, suggesting that recovering all of B.C.’s caribou herds may not be in the cards as far as the province is concerned.

But a triage approach would likely contravene current federal recovery strategies, Ray and Johnson told the ministry, calling for more transparency on the government’s objectives and strategies.  

“Triage may be part of that mix, but please state so clearly and with the intent of a real dialogue and with clear criteria that avoid a situation whereby extirpation of herds is inadvertently incentivized.”

In a statement e-mailed to The Narwhal, the ministry said it has not given up on any herds but that “unfortunately, there may come a time when hard decisions on supporting failing herds may have to be made.”  

A ministry spokesperson said the purpose of the discussion paper was to solicit feedback for the final caribou recovery plan, expected by the end of the year, and that the views of Ray and Johnson — with whom ministry staff have been in touch — will be considered, along with other feedback.

“The apparent omissions from the discussion paper do not mean they are not under consideration for the final provincial caribou recovery program paper,” the spokesperson noted.

The scientists told the ministry that one of the main problems with the discussion paper is that it “avoids a frank acknowledgment of the scientifically demonstrated risks” to long-term caribou survival in B.C. and elsewhere. Caribou, or Rangifer tarandus, the same species as reindeer, is vulnerable to extinction throughout most of its extensive Canadian range.

“It does so by undertaking the discussion of ‘challenges faced by caribou’ in a tentative manner, often relying on vague, jargon-laden language.” Well down the list is the primary driver of decline, human disturbance, they noted.

While the text eventually explains some of the primary factors causing caribou decline, it first sets a tone “that clearly avoids the key issues faced by caribou in B.C., namely multiple decades of cumulative clearing of habitat, mostly for commercial purposes,” Ray and Johnson said.

The term ‘cumulative impacts’ was not mentioned in the discussion paper.

The paper also ignores well-founded tenets of caribou research, according to the scientists. An accumulated body of evidence from several decades of research shows that increases in habitat disturbance result in a greater likelihood of population decline and local extinction, they pointed out.

“There is a solid grounding and understanding that the more habitat loss and disturbance there is in the landscape, the worse off the population is,” Ray said in an interview.

Even though limiting disturbance across caribou ranges and critical habitat figures prominently in federal recovery strategies, the B.C. discussion paper fails to acknowledge this, the scientists noted.  

“We are concerned that this departure from the well-accepted and legally-required approach for recovery serves as the foundation for a ‘A New Approach: Made in B.C.’”

Concern industry aims clash with caribou recovery

So-called “caribou-friendly approaches” emphasized in the discussion paper, such as best management practices, “will appeal to industry, but these shortcuts will not be effective without limiting the extent of habitat change across landscapes,” the scientists warned.

In fact, the B.C. government continues to entertain discussions about building open-pit coal mines in prime caribou habitat within several Central Mountain ranges, where every single herd is in decline, they pointed out.

One of those coal mines, near Tumbler Ridge, would further impact the already imperilled Quintette caribou herd.

The scientists noted that oil and gas activities —  the dominant cause for land use change for boreal caribou herds and some mountain caribou herds — and mining are not even mentioned in the habitat management section of the paper, which fingers forestry and recreation as the major culprits for habitat loss.

“We’re at a place now where we’ve got to stop talking about accommodating everyone and start doing things for caribou because they’re just disappearing,” Johnson said. “Those days of managing for everything on these landscapes are behind us, at least relative to caribou conservation.”

The ministry spokesperson told The Narwhal the government is “examining new guidelines on industrial development in the woodland caribou’s critical habitat,” but details were not immediately forthcoming.

Ray and Johnson also called out the discussion paper for suggesting B.C. is doing good work to recover caribou “when in fact this is more sleight of hand for public consumption.”

The paper overstates efforts made by the B.C. and federal governments to protect caribou, the scientists wrote, saying it is “disingenuous” to suggest there has been much progress during what they characterize as “two decades of inaction” on the part of B.C.

Other than publicizing recovery strategies for both mountain and boreal caribou, no substantive progress has been made through policies, targeted management plans or applying the federal Species at Risk Act, the scientists said.

They also questioned the paper’s description of caribou penning experiments as “innovative, while they should be thought of as desperate measures that should be avoided…”

Ray and Johnson say they are aware of no evidence demonstrating that strategies such as supplemental feeding, maternal penning and predator control have resulted in the long-term recovery of the few populations where such actions have been taken.

B.C. is ahead of many provinces when it comes to monitoring caribou herds and tracking their decline, Ray pointed out.

“It has a lot of good information at hand to make decisions,” she said.

Whether or not the species survives in the long-term will depend on hard decisions by government with socioeconomic consequences, Ray and Johnson stated.

“It has to happen if we want to maintain caribou across many of these landscapes,” Johnson said. “We’re at a breaking point right now.”

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If you ask biologist Misty MacDuffee what is responsible for the plight of the West Coast’s iconic southern resident killer whale populations, she’ll narrow it down to two major factors: not enough salmon and too much noise.

The one-two punch of declining Chinook stocks and loud, bustling ports and shipping routes in the Salish Sea are the crux issues for the endangered species, MacDuffee told The Narwhal. And that’s without even mentioning toxic contamination that bioaccumulates in the blubber of orcas, which starving orcas metabolize, leaving them invisibly poisoned.

It’s also before introducing the issue of the embattled Trans Mountain pipeline that would introduce the further risks of oil spills and increased ship strikes into the mix as well as the additional underwater racket — known as “acoustic smog” — that would result from the project’s seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic.

The Trans Mountain pipeline project would triple the amount of oil shipped from Alberta to export terminals in Burnaby, B.C., and result in a jump from five to 34 tankers traversing the Burrard Inlet and Salish Sea each month.

Lummi Nation vessel (top) releases live fish ahead of J50 during feeding trials near San Juan Island on Aug. 12, 2018. Biologists in an orange NOAA Fisheries vessel follow. Photo: John Gussman / NOAA Fisheries, under permit 18786 via Flickr

The fatal exclusion

“We’ve done a population viability analysis that found the conditions in the Salish Sea cannot get any worse if we hope to recover these whales,” said MacDuffee, a scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, one of the organizations that successfully challenged the National Energy Board’s review of, and the federal government’s subsequent approval of, the Trans Mountain pipeline.

“That’s exactly what Trans Mountain would do: it would make the conditions in the Salish Sea worse.”

Only 75 individuals remain in the southern resident population. Low birth rates and calf mortality became a subject of renewed attention this summer after a newborn died and was carried by her mother for 17 days in what experts have described as a display of grief.

During the review stage of Trans Mountain the National Energy Board (NEB) excluded the marine shipping element from consideration of the project’s environmental impacts.

The exclusion was a fatal one: alongside the federal government’s failure to adequately consult First Nations it ultimately led Canada’s Federal Appeals Court to rule the project’s review was irredeemably flawed.

The court declared the project quashed in an unforgiving decision, delivered by Justice Eleanor Dawson:

“This finding — that the Project was not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects — was central to its report. The unjustified failure to assess the effects of Project-related shipping under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act 2012 and the resulting flawed conclusion about the environmental effects of the Project was critical to the decision of the Governor in Council [cabinet]. With such a flawed report before it, the Governor in Council could not legally make the kind of assessment of the Project’s environmental effects and the public interest that the legislation requires.”

“The NEB made one fatal error which they compounded over time as they deliberated and as this went to cabinet,” Chris Tollefson, lawyer with the Pacific Centre for Environmental Law and Litigation, said.

“It undermined the whole exercise because that was a fundamental question they were bound to assess, they were bound to make a recommendation on,” he said.

Had the NEB considered that question, Tollefson said, they would certainly have found Trans Mountain would have significant, adverse effects on this population.

“Then we would have had a clear answer.”

The death of Trans Mountain pipeline signals future of Indigenous rights: Chiefs

Excluding marine shipping impacts from the project’s review limited what experts, scientists and conservation groups could raise as evidence during the Trans Mountain hearings. And simultaneously allowed government and industry to avoid the responsibility of articulating their plans for how they would mitigate the impacts of increased tanker traffic on an endangered marine species.

“They canned the part of the review that would have dealt with the terminal and tanker traffic,” MacDuffee said.

Research conducted by MacDuffee and her colleagues at Raincoast found the noise from tanker traffic alone would result in a 24 per cent chance of the southern resident killer whale population becoming functionally extinct over the next 100 years.

If you add in the risk of oil spills and ship strikes, the probability of extinction within 100 years jumps to 50 per cent.

“This is the piece of Trans Mountain that nobody was getting,” MacDuffee told The Narwhal.

A likely trade-off of the pipeline and tanker project is a loss of this unique population, she said.

“This is a dialogue Canadians have not had,” MacDuffee said.

“They not being told they’re making a choice between a population of iconic killer whales or pushing through this pipeline. The cost of this project has not been a part of the dialogue.”

Ignoring Canada’s protection for at risk species

Dyna Tuytel, lawyer with Ecojustice, the law firm that represented Raincoast and co-applicant, the Living Oceans Society, told The Narwhal that the recent Federal Court of Appeal ruling means new hearings will have to take place on the subject of marine shipping and impacts to marine life.

“We know the National Energy Board identified noise from shipping as a significant, adverse environmental effect,” Tuytel explained, “and they also identified the risk of oil spills.”

“But the board didn’t think it was its responsibility to deal with those things and didn’t deal with whether or how those impacts could be mitigated.”

Impacts on the southern resident killer whale population was considered under the National Energy Board Act but not under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, “where special considerations have to be taken into account,” she said.

If any significant, adverse environmental effects of a project are found under the Environmental Assessment Act, those effects must be justified by the final decision-makers on the project — federal cabinet.

“They would have to explain why those significant effects are worth it,” Tuytel said, adding under the act government would also be required to ensure measures are being taken to lessen or avoid the impacts on endangered species.

However MacDuffee argues there are no measures that can be taken to lessen the impacts of a seven-fold increase in tanker traffic in the habitat of the southern resident population.

“Oil spills and ship strikes are probabilities…noise is a certainty. Noise is the product of moving tankers — it’s inherent in moving tankers through the Salish Sea.”

Raincoast modelling found that the increase in tanker traffic would mean a “near-continuous presence” of vessel traffic in the whale’s habitat.

“They’ll be in the presence of a vessel — everything from a large ship to small whale watching vessels — more than 90 per cent of the time,” MacDuffee said.

“There are no scenarios under existing technology where Trans Mountain goes ahead where we hope to recover killer whales.”

She added Canada’s Species At Risk Act has all but been ignored in this case.

“We would argue that the Species At Risk Act deems that if you can’t mitigate then your project can’t go ahead.”

Facing down current threats

Just days after the Federal Court of Appeals ruling, Ecojustice launched a new court challenge in an attempt to force emergency measures from Canada’s ministers responsible for the southern resident killer whale population — Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna and Fisheries and Oceans Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

“Under the Species At Risk Act if a species is found to be facing an imminent threat there’s an automatic trigger — it’s mandatory the ministers must act,” Megan Leslie, executive director of WWF Canada, litigant in the new case, told The Narwhal.

Additional applicants in the case are Raincoast, the David Suzuki Foundation, the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council and the Georgia Strait Alliance.

There is no disagreement between government and the scientific and conservation community that this population is facing an imminent threat, Leslie said.

In early 2018 the groups filed a petition with the federal government, asking for an emergency order to protect the whales.

Since then, the federal government has introduced new measures aimed at protecting the species. But the efforts — including announcing the Oceans’ Protection Plan, small fisheries closures and identifying new critical habitat protections — have been roundly criticized as inadequate.

“Most of what we’ve seen has been announcements around funding and research,” Tuytel said. “Very little has been concrete, enforceable and timely.”

A new rule to keep whale watching vessels 200 metres from the endangered population took 10 years to implement, Tuytel said.

How Canada is Driving Its Endangered Species to the Brink of Extinction

In the court’s decision on the Trans Mountain review, Ottawa’s proposed action plan for the southern resident population and the Oceans’ Protection Plan were called “inchoate initiatives” that by themselves are “insufficient” in the face of the project’s inadequate review.

“If the government was serious there would be a Chinook fishery closure,” Leslie said. “We don’t see government taking that legislation seriously or helping these whales in a timely and critical manner.”

“This didn’t happen this weekend. This didn’t happen this summer. These whales were listed under the Species At Risk Act in 2003,” she said.

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Southern mountain caribou, most of which live in British Columbia, have been plummeting in numbers.

In the past year, they’ve dropped from 4500 to 3800 individuals, according to the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative.

Only three individuals remain in the South Selkirk herd (all female), making that herd functionally extinct. Such rapid declines concern biologists, like us.

Many of Canada’s other endangered and threatened species are also declining, at an average rate of 2.7 per cent per year, according to the Living Planet Report Canada.

On May 4, Minister McKenna of Environment and Climate Change Canada announced that there is an imminent threat to the recovery of the southern mountain caribou.

This announcement is a warning flag that if British Columbia doesn’t take action soon, the federal minister is legally obliged to step in with an emergency order to protect the species.

How did this happen?

In part, it’s because caribou, and other endangered and threatened species, are not actually legally protected in British Columbia — much to the surprise of many.

While they are protected federally by the Species at Risk Act (SARA), this protection applies only to the 1 per cent of B.C. that falls under federal jurisdiction, such as national parks (and post offices).

Provincial Crown land and private land isn’t covered unless the situation gets so dire that the federal minister issues an emergency order.

Waiting until a crisis happens reduces our options for protecting Canada’s endangered species.

It’s like ignoring a flesh wound until it’s festering and systemic — treating the problem early is much easier, cheaper, and more effective.

It’s also much less painful.

How do we treat the problem earlier?

Having studied endangered species declines and legislation, we would argue that one of the most important thing British Columbians can do is insist that the B.C. government create an effective endangered species act for our province.

Premier Horgan has initiated the process, and the Government has asked for public input. Please consider adding your voice.

With our research colleagues we have tracked what is and is not working to protect species across the country.

Key elements of an effective endangered species act are:

• Avoid delays: Immediately list species known to be at risk and place them under protection
• Require habitat protection: On provincial Crown land, mandate habitat protection in the places needed by endangered species
• Incentivize landowners: On private land, provide benefits for owners who take actions to protect B.C.’s endangered species, such as tax incentives, recognition and awards, and habitat restoration grants
• Periodic review: Require that the government track actions and impacts to measure progress

The last component is really important.

We need to focus money, conservation action, and habitat protection where they are most needed. To do this, we need to track which actions are effective, reinvesting where we see success and avoiding costly actions that don’t work.

What can we protect?

British Columbia is home to almost half of all Canadian species, and some of the most wonderful and inspiring wildlife and natural landscapes on the planet.

Strong provincial legislation can help us protect enough of this wilderness that endangered species can survive — and hopefully thrive.

Let us, as a province, identify and pursue the most cost-effective actions to protect the more than 200 species at risk in B.C. (at the very least, those listed under the federal Species at Risk Act).

Let us commit to shifting logging, road construction, and development away from the forests where the few mountain caribou, marbled murrelet, and northern spotted owl remain.

Let us commit to altering how and when pesticides are used to leave enough insects for the grassland birds, like barn swallows and bobolink, that have declined in numbers by more than 90 per cent.

Our endangered species are wounded, it is time to heal them.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Federal foot-dragging over protection of endangered southern mountain caribou herds has brought a strong rebuke from a Federal Court judge this week.

Groups struggling to protect caribou are hoping the judgment will speed up help for dwindling herds and act as a precedent for other species at risk needing help.

Justice Michael Phelan, in a decision on a judicial review launched by the Wells Gray Gateway Protection Society, described the lack of action by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna as “egregious.”

The Protection Society, which raised $33,000 from Upper Clearwater residents and received financial help from West Coast Environmental Law, asked for the judicial review after McKenna failed to respond to the group’s application for an emergency order to protect caribou under Canada’s Species At Risk Act.

Roland Neave with the protection society told The Narwhal that the application for an emergency order was urgent because Canfor Corp. has applied to log in caribou critical habitat, near the entrance to Wells Gray Provincial Park.

ICYMI: BC Liberals Grant Major Political Donor Permission to Log Endangered Caribou Habitat

“We applied for the emergency order in April 2017 and, under the regulations, the minister has 45 days to make a decision, but this took 13 months,” Neave said.

“Such fence-sitting is unconscionable when trying to protect a small herd of endangered caribou,” he said.

“We were delighted by Judge Phelan’s decision and his scathing comments about the minister’s long delay in reaching a decision.”

Under the Species At Risk Act the minister is obligated to recommend an emergency order if she believes the species faces imminent threats to survival or recovery.

The judgment says that citizens should not have to fundraise in an effort to force the minister to follow the legislation and Erica Stahl, West Coast Environmental Law staff lawyer, said she is delighted with that conclusion.

“It’s outrageous that the Wells Gray Gateway Protection Society had to go through such a lengthy, onerous process to get the minister to act,” said Stahl, who hopes the judgement will be a precedent for other cases where an emergency order is needed to protect an endangered species.

Logging near the south end of Wells Gray Park since 1984. Image: Damien Gillis via Google Maps

Earlier this month, days before the case was due to be heard in court, McKenna declared an “imminent threat” to the recovery of southern mountain caribou and told B.C. that more critical habitat must be protected from activities such as logging and oil and gas development or the federal government could step in.

The finding of “imminent threat” applies to 10 herds in B.C. and Alberta with less than 100 animals each and a detailed federal government recovery plan is expected in June.

If the minister issues an emergency protection order it means the federal government could make decisions about resource development that normally fall within the jurisdiction of provincial governments.

The crux of the question will be whether there is political will to stop industrial development in an effort to save the caribou.

“I don’t think there’s anything in legislation that says they can’t stop development, but we are going to have to wait and see the minister’s plan,” Stahl said.

Studies show that logging roads, oil and gas development and recreational back-country use opens up the large tracts of old-growth forests needed by caribou. As deer and other prey species move in, they are followed by predators such as wolves and cougars.

A controversial wolf cull program has been taking place in some areas of the province but, in the absence of a change in habitat management, numbers of caribou continue to shrink.

Habitat protection and restoration, not wolf culls, are a major part of the answer, Stahl said.

The southern mountain caribou population has dropped to about 3,800 animals this year, down from about 4,500 last year and some herds, such as the South Selkirk herd, with only three surviving members, are on the brink of extinction.

The Wells Gray herd, which sparked the request for an emergency order, had 120 animals last year, but a recent aerial survey found only 85 animals this year, Neave said.

“They are supposed to be running the survey again to try and find the missing animals,” he said.

Ironically, if the missing animals are not found, the Wells Gray herd should be included in McKenna’s definition of herds facing imminent threats to their survival, Neave said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.