QAfter months of questions, speculations, and rampant fear-mongering, the long awaited draft agreement around caribou has come down, but many locals are still as perplexed as before.
“There’s no mention of summer time motorized access,” says Tim Croston, president of the Grizzly Valley ATV club. “That scares me.”
Croston is worried this leaves the door open for access closures in the future.
Even access for winter recreation, especially snowmobiling, is left up in the air, with promises for consultations “to inform decisions.”
While the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Provincial Caribou recovery portal does state flat out that the province is not planning on closing down all snowmobile and trails to access the backcountry (“No, this is not true,” says the document), the draft agreements fail to address what sort of closures are being considered.
“The Province understands that outdoor recreation is an important part of community identity and serves as an opportunity to diversify resource-based economies,” says the document. “However, recreational snowmobile use can pose a risk of displacing caribou which may discourage caribou from accessing their preferred habitats and may affect their fat reserves or exposure to predation.”
As the Province moves forward with caribou recovery, they will be looking at the impacts that snowmobiling has on caribou recovery.
“BC will be hosting open houses in the South Peace to start a dialogue about managing snowmobiling in critical caribou habitat.”
The date of these open houses is unspecified, stating only that they plan to host these open houses “after the engagement on the draft Section 11 and draft Partnership Agreement are complete.
When the draft proposal finally came down, there was not one, but two draft plans. The first is an agreement between the governments of BC and Canada, under section 11 of the Species at Risk act, outlining commitments, measures and strategies for the recovery of Southern Mountain Caribou in BC.
This affects 21 local population units (LPU) across the province, from the Cranbrook and Nelson LPUs, which end at the US border, to the Chase and Graham LPUs, northwest of Fort St. John, and the Telkwa LPU, which runs almost as far west as Prince Rupert.
The second agreement is between the provincial and federal governments and West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations.
While the Draft Section 11 agreement is fairly vague, the Draft Partnership agreement has a lot more specific details, including a detailed map outlining which areas will be open to resource activity, which will be closed under an interim moratorium, which areas are expected to be zones as Protected Areas and which areas lay outside the agreement.
According to the agreement, all parties recognize these proposed measures could have impacts on industry sectors such as forestry, energy, mining and the tourism and recreation sectors. “The governments of Canada, B.C., West Moberly and Saulteau First Nations are collectively committed to minimizing the social and economic impacts associated with caribou recovery efforts.”
The B.C. government is seeking consultation and feedback until the end of April on the two draft caribou recovery agreements. Visit https://feedback.engage.gov.bc.ca/193557 to offer your feedback.
