Horgan NDP okays destruction of critical wildlife habitat

[Gone_Fishin]

South aspect, NDT4 ecotype - and the Horgan NDP allows it to be clear cut. This area was finally restored to be productive wildlife habitat with the burn, but now the Horgan NDP is turning it into another massive clear cut. Shameful, but typical of the NDP's lack of concern for the environment and wildlife. Wildlife dies in dusty, dry clear cuts on south aspect winter range, Horgan!


https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-s ... htm#225759

[common_sense_guy]

South aspect, NDT4 ecotype - and the Horgan NDP allows it to be clear cut. This area was finally restored to be productive wildlife habitat with the burn, but now the Horgan NDP is turning it into another massive clear cut. Shameful, but typical of the NDP's lack of concern for the environment and wildlife. Wildlife dies in dusty, dry clear cuts on south aspect winter range, Horgan!


https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-s ... htm#225759

Where does the story say anything about critical wildlife habitat. And if it does what makes it critical when it's beside the highway

[seewood]

After the burn in 2003, the burned area was salvaged to harvest the trees. Big void above the Mission. All this was replanted with appropriate species.
The same is going to happen at the Joe Ritch burn. The ability to replant while the burned logs are still standing is a non starter. No one will go in with the chance of a tree coming down unannounced. If just left to let nature take its course, the delay in reforestation can be a 10 year difference between natural re-gen and a planting regime. In the meantime as the trees eventually fall down, the deadfall will take away from the habitat for ungulates. Movement is not impossible but hampered.

[CapitalB]

If you don't harvest the dead burned trees they basically become kindling for the next fire.

[gordon_as]

Some sore losers just can't pass up the opportunity , ANY opportunity to bash the NDP. I would bet that the decision to harvest this area was made by people in the ministry of forests who have been in their bureaucrat jobs significantly longer than 10 months. But hey , lets just blame Mr. Horgan.

[Queen K]

South aspect, NDT4 ecotype - and the Horgan NDP allows it to be clear cut. This area was finally restored to be productive wildlife habitat with the burn, but now the Horgan NDP is turning it into another massive clear cut. Shameful, but typical of the NDP's lack of concern for the environment and wildlife. Wildlife dies in dusty, dry clear cuts on south aspect winter range, Horgan!


https://www.castanet.net/edition/news-s ... htm#225759

Gone_Fishin, please attend every forestry mill in BC and look at ALL the logs cut down/harvested.

Add up all the logs harvested for the last 16 years before that too. Every time I see a logging truck laden down with logs I have the same thought, "there goes the forest habitat for ..... all the flora, fauna and bird life."

Wild life may benefit from some aspects of deforestation, opening up sun to plants and regeneration, but I'm thinking what is good for Bambi may not be good for woodpecker species.

Leaf-licker be damned.

[Urbane]

Some sore losers just can't pass up the opportunity , ANY opportunity to bash the NDP. I would bet that the decision to harvest this area was made by people in the ministry of forests who have been in their bureaucrat jobs significantly longer than 10 months. But hey , lets just blame Mr. Horgan.

Oh the irony . . .

[Gone_Fishin]

Absolutely criminal what the Horgan NDP has authorized in this area. That hillside should have been left as nature intended it, and not as a monoculture fibre-farm.

http://hunterconservationist.ca/salvage ... ce-matter/

The Time to Act is Now

Currently there is an outbreak of the spruce bark beetle in BC covering an estimated 1600 square kilometers. To date in the summer of 2017, wildfires have burned 12,000 square kilometers of the province. There is a gold rush about to take place in the province and the gold is black charred timber some of which is critical to leave untouched for the benefit of wildlife and biodiversity conservation. Under the current forest management system in BC there will be no involvement of scientists and no meaningful opportunity for the public to influence what happens to their fish, wildlife and habitat unless there is significant opposition unleashed by the public and First Nations that forces a change in direction from the new government.

If you care enough to change the way fish, wildlife and habitat will be treated after the 2017 fire season is over you must act now. Demand that your government mandate a new and better approach to protecting fish, wildlife, habitat and biodiversity values in the forests that were burned this summer. Tell elected officials that the business-as-usual approach to forest management in BC will not be acceptable to plan harvesting in fire affected wildlife habitats.

You must demand that your fish, wildlife and habitat values be assessed at a landscape-scale using a roundtable approach that includes scientists, biologists, ecologists, First Nations, hunters, anglers, trappers, guide-outfitters and conservationists.

The future of your (burned) public land is in your hands. Contact your elected official today.

[kelownman]

removed.

[seewood]

Some sore losers just can't pass up the opportunity , ANY opportunity to bash the NDP.

Well, the NDP deserve ALL the bashing they get. Also, if losers are meant to be Liberal supporters, wrong, NDP lost the election again, Liberals had 2 more seats.

I would bet that the decision to harvest this area was made by people in the ministry of forests who have been in their bureaucrat jobs significantly longer than 10 months.

You are correct in this assumption. Standard practice to salvage merchantable timber as soon after a fire as possible.( then replanted asap) Can take a year to get the cutting permit in order.
Not all can be salvaged for a number of reasons ( accessibility for one) so the timber and all other aspects of the forest fire are left to their natural progression.

[Gone_Fishin]

In 2003, the Okanagan Mountain Park fire in burned approximately 25,000 ha of dry forest habitat south of the City of Kelowna. 10 years prior to the fire the Mountain Goats in Okanagan Mountain Park numbered around 8 animals. 10 years after the fire they had increased to 85 animals (962% increase). This increase is directly attributed to improved population dynamics resulting from habitat enhancement caused by the fire.

In game management units MU 8-9 and 8-10 the hunter harvest of mule deer and elk increased 32% and 144% respectively in the decade following the fire. This increase in harvest occurred with about a 15% decrease in the number of hunters and 15% decrease in the number of hunter days in those management units.

snip

Prior to the fire there were no mountain sheep in the area. Between 2007 and 2009 around 53 sheep were transplanted to the burned habitat and over the next 6 years the herd size increased by 14%. It is likely the favorable habitat and forage value created by the fire acted positively on mountain sheep population dynamics.

Huckleberries are fire tolerant and fire creates the conditions for huckleberry plants to thrive, expand and persist on the landscape. Since the early 1900s the Flathead grizzly bear population management unit (GPMU) in southeastern BC has had the shortest fire return intervals (most frequent fire) and the highest percentage of the land base burned by fire on an annual basis. Because of the fire regime in the Flathead and abundance of huckleberry plants, huckleberry production is a strong bottom up regulating factor for grizzly bears in the Flathead.

snip

Populations of woodpeckers including the black-backed woodpecker depend on having significant areas of standing burned snag forests. The literature suggests this woodpecker species may be declining in BC, although trend data are difficult to interpret due to the low sample sizes. Fire suppression and post-fire salvage logging have negative implications for the species yet BC has not identified this woodpecker as a species of concern to be considered in how much of a burned forest should be logged. However, over the next few years in the United States, the potential listing of the black-backed woodpecker may lead to federal legal challenges when lumber companies plan to clearcut forests burned by wildfires.

Dr. Chad T. Hanson and his group, the John Muir Project of the Earth Island Institute in Berkeley, Calif., calls any burned forest where the trees have been left alone a “snag forest”. Dr. Hanson has pressed the argument over the past decade that snag forests are among the most important plant and animal habitats in North America. Dr. Hanson has made himself a thorn in the side of state and federal agencies in the US, pestering and sometimes suing them. But gradually, policy makers have begun to acknowledge that burned forests must be viewed as special places.

[Queen K]

^^^This type of post is what I like about you best GF.

[Gone_Fishin]

^^^This type of post is what I like about you best GF.

Get on board and do something about it! Quit supporting a government that devalues wildlife like this.

It's decisions like this by the Horgan NDP that are destroying wildlife habitat in this province. He's also piped up with a big push to clear cut the entire Cariboo region that was burned last year, and bragging about mono culture reforestation in those areas that should be left to nature to provide the critical habitat for wildlife. He's hell bent on ruining what is a huge opportunity for habitat, and you can look squarely at the $650,000 that the sawmill union (USW) gave him last year to do it.

[Queen K]

I'll address this later when I actually have time.

Now go make something nicer than a tuna sandwich for lunch, k?

[Catsumi]

You would think that Horgan would have advisors, biologists, forestry management and fisheries around to consult. Or, does he just not listen?

Even a schoolkid knows a monoculture planting is a crop, not a forest.