Government setting aside land for caribou

The announcement is good news for conservationists, but it is just a first step, said Candace Batycki, a director with Forest Ethics.

More than two million hectares of land in the B.C. Interior will be off-limits to logging and road-building as part of a plan to restore the mountain caribou herd to its former glory, the government announced Tuesday.

Since 1995, the number of mountain caribou has dropped from 2,500 to 1,900, Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell told a news conference in Victoria. The government has been working with conservationists, recreational users of the land and the forest industry since 2004 on a plan to reverse the trend.

"We are working together in this historic collaborative approach to implement a balanced and effective plan that will succeed in recovering mountain caribou in this province to sustainable numbers," Bell said in a news release.

The main thrust of the plan is to set aside an additional 380,000 hectares of protected forest within the mountain caribou range, bringing the total area protected to 2.2 million hectares.

The plan also calls for managing human recreational activities in the area to ensure critical habitat areas are protected, and to manage predator populations of wolf and cougar that are contributing to the demise of the caribou.

The government will provide $1 million per year for three years to support adaptive management plans.

The announcement is good news for conservationists, but it is just a first step, said Candace Batycki, a director with Forest Ethics.

"There's 21 endangered species that share these forests with the mountain caribou, and the environmental community in British Columbia has been calling for over a year now for one strong law to protect endangered species habitat in this province," said Batycki, who joined Bell for the announcement.