I published an article in The Conversation today. It is reproduced below as Facebook appears to be blocking reposting of Canadian news articles.

The Article

The devastating wildfire that destroyed the historic Maui town of Lahaina in Hawaii was still making headlines when the Northwest Territories issued an evacuation order for Yellowknife and British Columbia declared a provincewide state of emergency.

All 22,000 residents of Yellowknife are being evacuated in advance of a wall of flame from out-of-control wildfires converging on the capital city. Yet this isn’t the first time an entire Canadian town has been cleared.

In May 2016, all 90,000 residents of Fort McMurray, Alta., were evacuated shortly before wildfires engulfed 2,400 homes and businesses with a total cost of more than $4 billion.

In 2017 in British Columbia, the wildfire season led to the evacuation of more than 65,000 residents across numerous communities, costing $130 million in insured damages and $568 million in firefighting costs.

Let’s not forget the June 2021 heat dome resulting in temperature records being broken across British Columbia three days in a row. The heat wave culminated in Lytton, a village in the southern part of the province, recording 49.6 C on June 29, the hottest temperature ever observed anywhere in Canada and breaking the previous record by five degrees. The next day, wildfires engulfed Lytton, destroying more than 90 per cent of the town.

Long, hot summer

The summer of 2023 is one for the record books. June and July were the warmest months ever recorded, and extreme temperature records were broken around the world.

By mid-July, Canada had already recorded the worst forest fire season on record. And British Columbia broke its previous 2018 record for worst recorded forest fire season. With several weeks to go in the 2023 forest fire season, more than six times the 10-year average area has already been consumed by wildfires

And yet, this pales in comparison to what we can expect in the years ahead from ongoing global warming arising from greenhouse gas emissions released through the combustion of fossil fuels.

Predicted outcomes

This year’s fire season record will be broken in the near future as warming continues. And once again, it’s not as if what’s happening is a surprise.

Almost 20 years ago, my colleagues and I showed that there already was a detectable human influence on the observed increasing area burned from Canadian wildfires. We wrote:

“The area burned by forest fires in Canada has increased over the past four decades, at the same time as summer season temperatures have warmed. Here we use output from a coupled climate model to demonstrate that human emissions of greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosol have made a detectable contribution to this warming. We further show that human-induced climate change has had a detectable influence on the area burned by forest fire in Canada over recent decades.”

It appears little has been done to prepare rural Canada for what’s in store as governments deal with immediate, rather than transformational approaches to wildfire management.

This, despite the existence of the national FireSmart program designed to assist homeowners, neighbourhoods and communities decrease their vulnerability to wildfires and increase their resilience to their negative impacts.

Forest management practices including forest fire prevention, monoculture reforestation and the use of glyphosate to actively kill off broadleaf plant species, will all have to be reassessed from a science- and risk-based perspective.

Growing number of court cases

Pressure is certainly mounting on decision-makers to become more proactive in both mitigating and preparing for the impacts of climate change.

An Aug. 14 pivotal ruling from the Montana First Judicial District Court sided with a group of youth who claimed that the State of Montana violated their right to a healthy environment.

A similar case brought by seven youth against the Ontario government after the province reduced its greenhouse gas reduction targets has also been heralded as groundbreaking.

As the number of such court cases grow, governments and corporations will need to do more to both protect their citizens from the impacts of climate change, and to aggressively decarbonize energy systems.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Alberta government is next to be taken to court by youth after Premier Danielle Smith’s outrageous economic and environmental decision to put a moratorium on renewable energy projects.

States of emergency

While attention is currently turned to the evacuation of Yellowknife, it’s sobering to remind ourselves that they are not alone. The village of Lytton, burnt to the ground just two years ago, has been put on evacuation alert as wildfires approach.

Kelowna has just declared a state of emergency as the McDougall Creek fire starts consuming homes in the region. And this, coming on the heels of the 20th anniversary of the Okanagan Mountain Park fire, when more than 27,000 people had to be evacuated and 239 Kelowna homes were lost.

Canadians will take solace as summer turns into winter and the immediacy of our 2023 wildfire situation wanes. Unfortunately, it will be Australia’s turn next to experience the burning wrath of nature in response to human-caused global warming and the 2023 El Niño.

Rather than waiting to respond reactively to the next fire season, proactive preparation is the appropriate way forward. For as the old adage states: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

I had the distinct honour of addressing delegates at the British Columbia Wildlife Federation (BCWF) Annual General Meeting & Convention in Fort St. John today. Below I reproduce the text of my speech.

Text of Speech

Introduction:

Hello and thank you for inviting me to join you here today at your AGM.

I’m glad to be here again to hear first hand from you about the challenges you see on our land base.

As many of you know I live and work in the Victoria region, well removed from the day-to-day experiences you have with your land and the wildlife you share it with.

That’s why I think it’s so important for me to come here and listen to your experiences. We are currently in the midst of the Spring legislative session, which means I have to be within 3-minutes of the legislative chamber at all times when the House is sitting in case there is vote – so that makes leaving Victoria quite tricky, but I’m glad I was able to fly up for today, even though it is a quick turn around.

I have been an MLA for almost 6 years now, and am grateful for every trip I get to take to Interior and Northern communities. Every time I am here I am reminded that there are no better caretakers of the land than those who have lived on it for generations.

You are impacted by the policies passed in Victoria, and see the consequences firsthand when they have been built on inadequate consultation or when they lack necessary local and traditional knowledge.

I think this is something that government and politicians of all stripes need to do better- myself included. That’s why I’m here today. And it is why I’ll be back with my colleagues again this summer as we travel through the Interior and Northern BC, learning from people who aren’t able to meet with us very easily in our community offices.

With wildlife policy, the importance of linking science with local and traditional knowledge is even more important. While we must all be guided by evidence about the state of our province’s wilderness and wildlife, that doesn’t replace the engagement of communities and the conversations that must take place about what the reality is on ground where the policies will apply. You cannot effectively have one without the other… As we’re seeing with the mess government has made of the caribou recovery situation.

To start, I will give a quick recap about the status of this minority government and revisit some of the remarks I made at last year’s AGM about wildlife population trends generally, because, unfortunately, things have not substantially improved since then.

I will also talk about the work my colleague Adam Olsen has been doing on wild salmon.

And, finally, I will provide an update on my perspective on glyphosate – touching on issues concerning climate change, cumulative effects, and the importance of stewardship along the way.

CASA/Minority Government:

Back in Spring 2017 – When the election results came in, indicating a minority government, with the BC Greens holding the balance of responsibility- we felt an enormous weight on our shoulders. We took our decision very seriously.

In the end, we decided to go with the party that was open to working on climate policies and that is why we chose to support a BC NDP minority government over the BC Liberal minority government.

There have been ups and downs in our relationship, and there are things we simply won’t ever agree on.

My Green caucus colleagues and I don’t have the power to dictate the NDP’s agenda. We are consulted on policy and we bring our concerns, solutions, and perspective to the table. We collaborate on certain files like climate policy, professional reliance, child care, and initiatives to build a sustainable economy. But, ultimately, at the end of the day they are government, and we are in opposition.

In that role, we are also the recipient of a staggering amount of correspondence about environmental, economic, and social concerns from people all across the province. Anyone with environmental concerns that they feel aren’t being adequately addressed by the NDP or Liberals – which is pretty much all of them – comes to our office for support. I wish we could lean into every case and solve every problem, but there are only 3 of us and we have a very small, though determined, team.

It has been a learning experience.

For the first while after the election we tried to tackle every case, but we quickly learned that we were spreading ourselves so thin that we were no longer being effective. Instead, over the last year and a half, we have tried to focus strategically on our foundational issues and overarching policies. For that is where we can do the most good and have the biggest impact.

For example, rather than taking on every incidence of companies harming the environment by cutting, polluting, or contaminating, we made government review the overarching professional reliance model that governs industry’s work. This strategic focus means we can advance big picture policy changes that will restore some of that critical oversight and regulation back to government. Likewise, our work on the new Environmental Assessment Act requires early and upfront involvement of First Nations and better evaluation of cumulative and climate impacts before projects are approved.

This work isn’t as catchy or captivating as fighting every case of environmental injustice, but, from a governance perspective, it is more effective and more responsible.

And as I said, one of the main reasons we decided to form the agreement with the NDP is because I wanted to work on meaningful policies to address the looming climate crisis.

I know many of you see this firsthand – In many respects, your communities are on the frontline of climate change.

You are directly impacted by the pressure that climate change is putting on the forestry industry through pests, droughts, and fires, for example.

Where we only see the smoke of wildfires in Victoria or Vancouver, many of you actually fight the flames and experience the evacuations, displacement and devastating loss of property that can come with it.

I do not underestimate the physical, mental, emotional, and financial toll that can take on a person or on a community.

Ensuring that you live in a healthy environment – that you can hunt and fish and live on the land with your children and grandchildren – that is what motivated me to sign with a party that I thought was more likely to take climate action and environmental stewardship seriously.

While most politicians seem to be governing exclusively for the next election cycle, my Green caucus colleagues and I are trying to also govern for future generations and the long term well being of the environment we all depend on.

Science and state of the environment:

Prior to running for office, I was a climate scientist. So, while I do not have specialized knowledge about all species or ecosystems the way a biologist, forest ecologist, or someone with deep local or traditional knowledge might, I do share that commitment to trying to solve problems from an evidence-based perspective.

I have dedicated my career to understanding our world and its problems through science and have been surprised at how difficult it is to convince governments to consistently follow scientific reasoning. While the concept of science-based wildlife management has generally been endorsed in B.C., it has not always been applied.

There have been some successes. But the selective application of even sound policy has led to more disasters.

Many wildlife populations are in jeopardy today. Mountain caribou are facing extirpation, wild salmon – a foundation species – are in shocking decline, spotted owls are virtually extinct, and moose populations, which many families rely on, are in trouble across the province.

What we find in almost all of these instances is that there has been inadequate science, particularly concerning cumulative impacts, and that an unacceptable loss or alteration of vital habitat has occurred.

The management of wildlife, and the application, or not, of scientific principles, continues to stir great controversy and emotional debate in B.C. Understandably so.

Wildlife management conflicts in which species are pitted against one another are truly challenging, but I have always maintained that humans – elected representatives in particular – have a moral obligation to prevent endangered species from going extinct.

Often, extreme situations are created because government has failed to act. They are typically situations that – for a variety of industrial, social, or budgeting excuses – have been allowed to escalate far past a point of simpler intervention.

Some say that humans should not interfere with nature, but sadly, intervention is sometimes necessary. Simply put, many ecosystems have been altered so drastically that we can no longer just stand by and let nature take its course.

Predator control, hunting closures, and restrictions that stop industries from undertaking resource developments are all difficult matters for governments to deal with.

But things aren’t going to get easier. The management of wildlife is becoming increasingly complex and fraught with risk.

Habitat loss is mounting.

The human population is growing.

Roads and pipelines have been spreading into the farthest reaches of the province, and researchers have discovered how such developments increase predation, shift wildlife distribution, and impact abundance.

Adding to all these other stressors is climate change. The full implications aren’t yet clear, but we cannot situate our wildlife strategies in the past. Our environment is changing and will continue to do so.

Government must be prudent and precautionary as we manage our changing landscape as the planet warms. The timing and abundance of food availability, for instance, will shift for some plants and animals. Species reliant on their stability will need space and additional resources if they are to adapt.

In many respects, Northern BC, the Interior, and the people who live off those lands are on the front lines of climate change.

You are the ones fighting forest fires and flooding.

You are the boots on the ground when government is slow to act.

For far too long government has shortchanged wildlife management in B.C.

It’s fine for Ministers to say they support science-based decisions – but where is the science? Where are the field researchers? Where are the basic boots on the ground that are needed to keep a close watch on our wildlife populations and habitat? I’d say many of them are in this room.

The necessary funding just isn’t there.

B.C. ranks behind its neighbours in the northwest when it comes to investment in wildlife management. Alberta, Washington, Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Utah – all spend more on managing less.

The shameful underfunding of wildlife management has taken place under successive Liberal regimes. Now we have a new NDP government, but it has yet to fully embrace – or fund – science-based management.

B.C. is Canada’s most ecologically diverse province but if we are to maintain that rich biodiversity, we need to see a serious commitment to science-based, evidence-based wildlife management – and we need to have dedicated wildlife funding put in place, so managers have the budgets, and the staff, required to do the job.

As the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services recommended in its Report on the Budget 2017 Consultations, license fees collected from natural resource users (hunters, anglers, ecotourists, etc.) should be directed into conservation and wildlife management services, rehabilitation, enforcement and education.

Effective natural resource management is reliant on funding, science, and social support. We seem to have consensus on this within the B.C. government, but it needs to be put into action.

Prior to the election, I campaigned on establishing a Natural Resource Commissioner who could lead a Natural Resources Board responsible for establishing sustainable harvest and extraction levels and reporting on the state of B.C.’s environment and natural assets. The NRB, I proposed, would conduct cumulative impact assessments, and oversee the application of the professional reliance model.

There is much we can do to advance the values of scientific monitoring, reporting, and cumulative assessment.

Managing wildlife has always been difficult, but never more so than now, in the face of climate change.

We need a comprehensive science- and ecosystem-based approach to wildlife management. We simply cannot continue to perpetuate the slow, methodical extirpation of native species in B.C.

Ecosystem-based management calls for natural resources, habitat, and species to be managed collectively, over a long time frame, rather than just looking at a single sector or single species.

Cumulative impacts are assessed – an approach which B.C. urgently must follow because of the sweep of industrial development now taking place in many sectors of the province.

Given the countless challenges facing wildlife in our province, two of the most important things we can do to protect biodiversity is to work with local communities to leave key habitat areas intact and restore and improve funding to conservation, monitoring and scientific management efforts.

As British Columbia continues to warm and precipitation patterns continue to change,

as flooding and drought becomes more frequent and extreme,

as out of control wildfires become more common and more damaging,

as pest infestations become more diverse,

and as between 20 and 30 percent of the world’s plants and animals becoming at risk of extinction by mid century,

we have a responsibility to take steps now.

It won’t be easy. But proactively protecting ecosystems to improve resiliency and adaptive capacity to the changes a warming climate will bring is vital.

Salmon:

My colleague Adam Olsen, the MLA for Saanich North and the Islands, has dedicated much of his time to fighting for the protection and restoration of wild salmon in BC.

Adam made it his mission to speak for the salmon in the BC Legislature; raising their challenges repeatedly in question period and canvassing the six Ministries with salmon jurisdiction in estimates. Nearly every Minister’s answer was some version of… ‘I care about wild salmon too, but, unfortunately, that’s not my job.’

Amidst the finger pointing and confusion about who is doing what, Adam identified a possible path forward and called on the government to establish a Wild Salmon Secretariat to streamline all the work being done within the BC government and – importantly – be a strong defender of wild salmon in negotiations with the federal government.

After all, he reasoned, good salmon policy is good environmental, social and economic policy.

Last Spring, Adam organized a special forum that brought together a wide range of stakeholder groups to discuss his proposal in greater detail.

Representatives of First Nations, fish and wildlife organizations, conservation groups, non-profit advocacy agencies and a commercial fishing union met to discuss how the province could play a more effective role in the management of wild salmon. BC Wildlife Federation, of course, was in attendance.

Salmon are largely a federal responsibility, but several speakers at the forum highlighted the province’s responsibility for watersheds. Salmon are vitally important to British Columbians, they said, and the province should prioritize their well being.

The majority of participants also relayed frustration in trying to deal with the provincial government on salmon issues, having been passed from department to department because there was no single ministry in charge of the file.

When government tries to balance every competing interest, wild fish are the losers. Adam argued instead that when we put wild fish first, long-term benefits flow to all interests.

With six different provincial ministries, in addition to DFO federally, involved in the management of salmon and steelhead proactive protection is very rarely achieved. These ministries (the Ministry of Environment being the exception) all have mandates to advance development that is detrimental to salmon.

They are tasked with mitigating damage where possible, but it is not the priority. In addition, no one in government is tracking the cumulative impact of all these activities.

Even if each ministry only has a moderate impact on fish habitat, it can add up to salmon being hit at every stage of their development: spawning grounds are constrained by municipal expansion, streams are channeled under roads, rivers are polluted with agricultural runoff, watersheds are logged causing waterways to cloud with silt and get too hot, migratory routes are lined with fish farms… No one in government is taking the perspective of the salmon.

With the encouragement of stakeholders and First Nations, Adam released a report and challenged the government to pick up his proposal to create a wild salmon secretariat for the province, based in the premier’s office.

Government agreed… but then put their own spin on it. They did create a wild salmon secretariat in the premier’s office, but instead of giving them a mandate to streamline and coordinate the work being done for salmon and steelhead, they struck a 14-person wild salmon advisory council and tasked the salmon secretariat with coordinating their work…

It wasn’t exactly what we were going for: we wanted one leader and more coordination – not 14 additional voices.

We were told the Wild Salmon Advisory Council would write a report and then refer it to a legislative committee for official public consultation around the province.

To keep the work moving, we agreed to support the Council on the condition that their assignment be done with urgency. Adam was on the council and advocated to have more conservation representation. When that didn’t happen he worked to represent that voice himself.

Other challenge came when government decided to scrap the idea of having the legislative committee do the consultation and instead got the council to hold last-minute town halls. We disagreed with that approach because it lacked official transparency and was disproportionately focused on coastal communities at the exclusion of inland areas that also rely on salmon.

We declined to attend any of those town halls.

Despite the disorganized process, the Wild Salmon Advisory Council drafted a strong report and submitted their final recommendations to government this winter. Glad to have their work completed Adam focused on the next hurdle: getting government to action and fund the salmon restoration and protection measures we all know are needed.

In our 2019 budget submission, four of our top five requests were salmon and habitat restoration focused. Adam tweeted a salmon and steelhead demand at government every day – threatening to keep going until they found some money for wild fish.

He repeated, countless times, his demands:

1. Government needs to protect vital and intact ecosystems (like the Heart of the Fraser acquisition BCWF has been working on),
2. Government needs to restore habitat by funding local restoration projects, and
3. Government needs to coordinate and streamline the responsibility for wild fish within the provincial government – if we allow 6 ministries plus DFO to all take a “lead role” on fish we will manage them to zero.

I was getting sick of hearing Adam rant about salmon all day every day, so gratefully, this March we got notice that the money was coming and the tweets could stop. The province and federal governments came together to allocate $142 million dollars over five years for salmon in BC.

The first round of applications have been submitted (on an expedited timeline because of the federal election) and there are some really exciting projects in the mix.

Adam recently got an update from government on the funding and is feeling cautiously optimistic that some strong community and First Nations-led habitat restoration projects will be approved.

The next phase of his salmon and steelhead work will focus on making sure government approves and funds projects in a coordinated, strategic manner so that the money is actually effective at restoring or protecting fish. If we approve a million dollar spawning ground restoration project, for example, but continue to allow gill netting downstream or clear cutting upstream we won’t achieve much… So the work continues.

I really appreciate Adam’s dedication to this file and his willingness to stay at the table focused on the end goal.

In regards to the recent chinook closures, our position was similar to BCWFs, I believe. Obviously, we support conservation closures for species at risk of extinction (especially of gillnet fisheries which are non-selective), but we also call on both governments to reconcile their ongoing contributions to climate change and ecosystem destruction that has led to the decline of wild salmon in the first place.

Governments have to go beyond partial measures to address the more systemic problems limiting salmon productivity so that theses sacrifices from hard working British Columbians and local communities are not made in vain.

Yes, we are at a point with many of these salmon and steelhead stocks where everyone has to make sacrifices and all of the stakeholders and First Nations we’ve spoken to are willing to go without to support recover. But, in our perspective, that needs to be everyone – governments and industry included.

They need to address the root causes of their declines: climate change effects (ocean acidification, extreme weather, floods, mega-wildfires, drought and increased water temperatures) and land management effects (over logging of watersheds, which leads to hotter, siltier rivers; water pollution from mines, other industry, and agriculture; and the destruction of habitat, especially key spawning grounds).

As it currently stands, it’s hard not to feel that Ottawa is making British Columbians pay for their decades of mismanagement.

Glyphosate:

To glyphosate, my colleagues and I have been challenging government on this issue in question period and estimates since it was brought to my attention by your leadership.

As you well know, every years tens of thousands of hectares of forest in British Columbia are aerially treated with glyphosate. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, the weedkiller at the centre of the Monsanto case that recently revealed a corporate campaign to cover up the risks that this chemical poses to plant, animal, and human life.

We’ve been treating forests with glyphosate because it kills off broadleaf plants, allowing trees that are valuable for logging, such as lodgepole pine, to proliferate. In other words: it creates monocrops rather than the diversified forests that our landbase is supposed to support. In turn, monocropped forests are vulnerable to more frequent and destructive wildfires and beetle infestations.

For decades researchers have also been reporting reduced numbers of rodents, moose, insects, and birds in forests that have been sprayed.

In other words, there is overwhelming evidence that we shouldn’t be treating our land base with glyphosate. Our environment is facing many challenges in this era of climate change: we shouldn’t be adding a harmful chemical on top of that.

I’m keen to continue to work with you on this file and appreciate the input you’ve given me so far.

Conclusion:

Our province, and indeed our world, are facing more challenges than ever before. And you are at the front lines of these challenges as the environment changes in unprecedented ways. We need your perspectives; we need your expertise. Combined with scientific evidence, I believe your local and traditional knowledge holds the answers for the big problems we face.

If there’s one thing my colleagues and I have learned since the election of 2017, it’s that the best solutions come from collaboration. The best solutions come out of meaningful consultation with all stakeholders involved; from collaborating with parties with whom you may not always agree. When we stop listening to one another or overlook one group’s opinion, we impede our ability to leave a better world for future generations to inherit.

I’m hopeful that in the face of mounting environmental challenges, we’ll be able to adapt and thrive.

Thank you for your continued stewardship and guidance.

Today in the legislature I rose during Question Period to ask the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations two distinct questions. In the first, I asked how he reconciles his Ministry’s efforts to preserved at-risk caribou herds while at the same time issuing more hunting permits for the same caribou.  In the second question I ask him what he plans to do to preserve the last remaining old growth valley-bottoms on Vancouver Island.

Below I reproduce the text and video of our exchange.

Video of Exchange

Question

A. Weaver: I’ve just been walking around with a smile on my face today from ear to ear, and I continue to ask that question in that spirit.

There are 54 caribou herds in British Columbia, 30 of which are at risk of extirpation. Fourteen have less than 25 animals, and the B.C. Government website lists that one of these herds has precisely one individual, whereas another has three. Since the information was posted on the site, it’s likely that they’re gone as well.

British Columbia’s caribou herds are in crisis, and scientists have been raising the alarm for many, many years. After nearly managing the species into oblivion, we’re now desperately trying to save them by any means possible. Yet, at the same time as we try to avoid extirpation in one area, in a neighbouring area, the government issues and permits a legal caribou hunt.

To the Minister of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations: aside from the First Nations’ food, social and ceremonial hunt, how many caribou is he permitting to be hunted in British Columbia in the 2019-2020 limited area hunt and general open season in management units 617 to 620 and 622 to 627?

Answer

Hon. D. Donaldson: Thank you to the Leader of the Third Party for the question to talk about an important animal, an iconic species in B.C. and across Canada and internationally. That is the caribou.

I think it’s been pointed out already in question period so far that unlike the old government, we take the decline in caribou populations very seriously. Going back to 2003, the previous government ignored calls for action to protect caribou habitat for over a decade and kept in place a patchwork of measures that don’t meet federal standards, putting jobs at risk and caribou at risk.

As far as the hunting of caribou that the member asked about, we know that the Chase, Wolverine and Itch-Ilgachuz herds are classified as threatened, and the herd populations continue to decline. That’s why we closed the caribou hunt for these three herds this past March, and this hunt will remain closed until further notice. There are some herds that are still available for hunting, and those are the Carcross and Atlin herds in my constituency, in the northwest corner of B.C. Both herds have in excess of 800 animals.

The member is right. When it’s based on the best available science, and when conservation is the top priority, followed by First Nations’ food spiritual and ceremonial needs, only then is hunting allowed. There are very few animals available for hunt — approximately ten.

Supplementary Question

A. Weaver: Well, that’s inconsistent with the information I have here, where it looks like 268 permits have been issued for caribou in Skeena region 6, which would be ironic in light of the fact the minister just mentioned 800-some animals in and around that area.

The point I’m making here is we’re hunting caribou while we try to save caribou. There’s no overall strategy. Caribou, as we know, are dependent on old-growth boreal and mountain economic systems. For many herds, their main food source is lichen that grows on old trees, and cutblocks and logging roads make them much more vulnerable to predators, as we all know.

Yesterday the United Nations released a landmark study reporting that over a million species are now at risk of extinction, and habitat loss is the driving factor. In B.C., we only act when it’s already too late. For example, our invaluable Vancouver Island valley-bottom old growth is globally rare and is an essential habitat for many species.

My question is again to the Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. Will this government stop its Loraxian approach to resource management and step in to protect the last intact, productive valley-bottom old growth on Vancouver Island?

Answer

Well, I understand we were talking about caribou. There are no caribou on Vancouver Island. I’m sure the member knows that. As far as old-growth forests go on Vancouver Island, we’re committed to creating an old-growth plan in consultation with industry, in consultation with environmental NGOs and in consultation with communities.

We know that old-growth forests provide incredibly important habitat for biodiversity. There are over 500,000 hectares of old growth already protected on Vancouver Island through protected areas and parks. We also know that old-growth forests provide important revenue for communities and important jobs for forestry workers. We’ll continue to manage old growth in a sustainable way, and we’ll continue to work on the caribou file to protect jobs and to protect caribou.

Today I had the distinct honour of attending Ducks Unlimited Canada’s 80 years in Canada | 50 years in BC Celebration at the Delta Ocean Point Resort in Victoria. George Heyman, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy, Andrew Wilkinson, the Leader of the Official Opposition and I each were asked to speak for a few minutes. Below I reproduce the text of my speech.

Text of Speech

Thank you. It’s a distinct honour for me to be here tonight at the Ducks Unlimited 80 50 Anniversary Celebration and I am grateful to be given the opportunity to say a few words.

While I am not a member of Ducks Unlimited, I am in fact the proud owner and winning bidder of two Ducks Unlimited prints from the Ross Bay Pub.

I picked up “Morphing Landscape” by Derek Wicks a couple of weeks ago and it now stands behind my desk in the BC Legislature. Prior to that I obtained Kevin Johnson’s pencil art print “Endearing Moments – Mother Seal and Pup”.

Prior to becoming the MLA for Oak Bay – Gordon Head and the leader of the BC Green Party, I was an atmosphere-ocean-climate scientist, with a background in applied mathematics and physics, at the University of Victoria.

As a scientist I come from an environment where decisions flow from evidence.

But I’ve found it challenging at times over my last five years in the legislature watching so much of the opposite occur — the so-called decision-based evidence-making wherein ideological positions are taken and evidence is sought after the fact to support them.

Never is this more prevalent than in wildlife, watershed and environmental management.

While the concept of science-based wildlife and environmental management has generally been endorsed by governments in B.C., it has not been consistently followed.

There have been some successes. But as you likely know all too well, its selective use has led to many more poor outcomes.

Numerous wildlife populations and ecosystems are in jeopardy today. Mountain caribou are facing extirpation, wild salmon – a foundational species – are in shocking decline, spotted owls are virtually extinct, moose populations are in trouble across the province, and Shorebird populations have declined by an estimated 70 per cent across North America since 1973.

What we find in almost all of these instances is that there has been inadequate science, particularly concerning the cumulative impacts of human activity, and that an unacceptable loss of vital habitat has occurred. For wetlands, in particular, the situation is critical.

Our province lacks a wetland policy and in developed areas of the province, over 80 per cent of fresh water and tidal wetlands have already been altered or destroyed.

Things are not going to get easier. The management of ecosystems is becoming increasingly complex and fraught with risk.

Habitat loss is mounting.

The human population is growing.

Industrial development is expanding.

Adding to all these other stressors is, of course, climate change.

Our climate is changing at an unprecedented rate. And it will continue to do so. Rising temperatures are drying up wetlands and receding glaciers threaten their long-term regeneration.

A recent analysis of data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), a NASA-led mission that combined 14 years’ worth of satellite data, shows that the global water supply is rapidly shifting. In Canada that has made some regions wetter and more flood-prone. While others, like the western sub-Arctic, have become much dryer.

We must be prudent and precautionary as we manage our changing wetlands because so much is at stake.

Those declining shorebirds I mentioned earlier, for instance, are among the many who rely on wetlands, open landscapes and shorelines for their survival. These are the same areas your members and volunteers are working so tirelessly to protect.

As one of Canada’s greatest science reporters, Margaret Munro, writes:

“The birds are so tuned to the natural pulse of the planet that they know where and when to touch down on their ultramarathon migrations. As the climate shifts and key habitats shrink and degrade, researchers say the migrations are growing more dangerous, and more deadly. Many long-distance migrants are in serious decline.”

Effective natural resource management is reliant on funding, science, and social support. We seem to have consensus on this within the current B.C. government, but it needs to be put into action.

My colleague Adam Olsen organized a forum in April to speak to experts about his proposal to create a Wild Salmon Secretariat in B.C. Your Director of Regional Operations, Les Bogdan, generously made the trip to be there.

Fins and feathers working together, he said. He also said something that mirrors my experience in the BC legislature: we are planning nature to death. We have so many plans, we need to start implementing them. We need to get on the ground and get to work.

Where governments have failed in that regard, Ducks Unlimited and its community partners have excelled.

Your service to BC over the last 50 years has been incredible. By protecting wetlands and shorelines, you are protecting the people and animals who live in here, preserving our water quality, moderating the effects of flood and drought, and providing a buffer against climate change.

As an organization I hope you continue and expand this important work. As a government I hope we can follow your lead.

Thank you for all of your hard work, and congratulations on your incredible success.

Yesterday I had the distinct honour of addressing delegates at the British Columbia Wildlife Federation (BCWF) Annual General Meeting & Convention in Kamloops. Below I reproduce the text of my speech.

Prior to my speech, I offered a brief explanation of what motivated me to get into politics. I then spent a few minutes discussing our Confidence and Supply Agreement with the BC NDP and our role as an opposition party.

Text of Speech

At the time of European contact, wildlife were so abundant in British Columbia that early explorers marveled at the richness of the land.

But, by the late 1800’s wildlife losses were so widespread, the public began demanding an end to the free-for-all.

In 1859 the first ordinances “providing for the protection of game” were passed in B.C.

In 1905 the government organized wildlife management, establishing the Department for the Protection of Game and Forests, although it didn’t get funding until 1908.

The annual budget: $10,000.

In 1933 Aldo Leopold, an American conservationist and writer, published Game Management, a book that has been credited with creating the discipline of wildlife management through the application of scientific principles. Indeed, his work planted the seeds of what would eventually become the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation.

One of the key tenets of the model, which is now widely applied across the continent, is that science – not the dictates of special interest groups – should guide wildlife policy.

I have dedicated my carreer to understanding our world and its problems through science and have been surprised at how difficult it is to convince governments to consistently follow scientific reasoning. While the concept of science-based wildlife management has generally been endorsed in B.C. it has not always been applied.

There have been some successes. But its selective use has led to more disasters.

Many wildlife populations are in jeopardy today. Mountain caribou are facing extirpation, wild salmon – a foundation species – are in shocking decline, spotted owls are virtually extinct, and moose populations, which many families rely on for sustenance, are in trouble across the province.

What we find in almost all of these instances is that there has been inadequate science, particularly concerning cumulative impacts, and that an unacceptable loss of vital habitat has occurred.

The management of wildlife, and the application, or not, of scientific principles, continues to stir great controversy and emotional debate in B.C. Understandably so.

Wildlife management conflicts in which species are pitted against one another are truly challenging, but I have always maintained that humans – elected representatives in particular – have a moral obligation to prevent endangered species from going extinct.

Often, extreme situations are created because government has failed to act. They are typically situations that – for a variety of industrial, social, or budgeting excuses – have been allowed to escalate far past a point of simpler intervention.

When you start rationalizing culling one species to protect another you also introduce an ethical element that needs to be considered alongside scientific findings. Let one – or both – of those species become threatened or endangered and your situation becomes immensely worse.

Some say that humans should not interfere with nature, but sadly, intervention is sometimes necessary. Simply put, many ecosystems have been altered so drastically that we can no longer just stand by and let nature take its course.

If we don’t continue to intervene with the mountain caribou crisis we are currently facing, for example, it will not be long before the remaining herds in the South Selkirk and Peace regions are extirpated.

Predator control, hunting closures, and restrictions that stop industries from undertaking resource developments are all difficult matters for governments to deal with.

But things aren’t going to get easier. The management of wildlife is becoming increasingly complex and fraught with risk.

Habitat loss is mounting.

The human population is growing.

Roads and pipelines have been spreading into the farthest reaches of the province, and researchers have discovered how such developments increase predation, shift wildlife distribution, and impact abundance.

Wolves, as many of you know, use road and pipeline clearings to get a good line of sight on caribou, expanding into new territory to more efficiently track down their prey.

Increased road densities and human activity in wilderness areas elevates human-caused mortality of grizzly bears and reduces the number of bears in the area, scientists at the University of Alberta have recently found.

I believe some of those scientists are here today – thank you for your work!

In a paper recently published in the journal Conservation Biology, scientists wrote about threats to biodiversity from cumulative human impacts in B.C., “one of North America’s last wildlife frontiers.”

“Land-use change is the largest proximate threat to biodiversity yet remains one of the most complex to manage,” they wrote.

“For ecosystems, we found that bunchgrass, coastal Douglas fir, and ponderosa pine have been subjected to over 50% land-use conversion, and over 85% of their spatial extent has undergone either direct or estimated indirect impacts.”

Adding to all these other stressors now is climate change. The full implications aren’t yet clear, but we cannot situate our wildlife strategies in the past. Our environment is changing and will continue to do so.

Government must be prudent and precautionary as we manage our changing landscape as the planet warms. The timing and abundance of food availability, for instance, will shift for some plants and animals. Species reliant on their stability will need space and additional resources if they are to adapt.

In many respects, Northern BC, the Interior, and the people who live off those lands are on the frontier of climate change. You will be the first to feel the effects of climate change.

You are the ones fighting forest fires and flooding.

You are the boots on the ground when government is slow to act.

A few years ago, with concerns growing about how B.C. was managing wildlife in the face of growing pressures, the Liberal B.C. government assigned an MLA to do a comprehensive review of its policies.

“There has never been a time in British Columbia’s history where balancing the cumulative impact of resource development and biodiversity has been so complex.” Liberal MLA Mike Morris wrote in his 2015 report, Getting the Balance Right: Improving Wildlife Habitat Management in British Columbia.

“There is an urgency and heightened concern amongst resident hunters, guide outfitters, trappers, the wildlife viewing industry and conservationists that the province is not acting quickly enough to address the decrease in wildlife populations and the degradation of wildlife habitat,” Morris wrote.

He called for more wildlife management staff and “better planning, better science and more timely and effective implementation of policies and programs.”

But the government never delivered.

“B.C. balks at changing law to protect wildlife and biodiversity” said The Vancouver Sun headline at the time.

“The B.C. government will not be changing laws or considering hiring more staff as recommended in a report by one of its own MLAs on how to protect wildlife and biodiversity from the effects of resource industries,” the story said.

For far too long government has shortchanged wildlife management in B.C.

It’s fine for Ministers to say they support science-based decisions – but where is the science? Where are the field researchers? Where are the basic boots on the ground that are needed to keep a close watch on our wildlife populations and habitat? I’d say many of them are in this room.

The necessary funding just isn’t there.

B.C. ranks behind its neighbours in the northwest when it comes to investment in wildlife management. Alberta, Washington, Montana, Oregon, Idaho, Utah – all spend more on managing less.

The shameful underfunding of wildlife management has taken place under successive Liberal regimes. Now we have a new NDP government, but it has yet to show if it will embrace – and fund – science-based management.

So far, things aren’t looking great. Recently, as you are all keenly aware, the government has struggled with its policy on grizzly hunting. The BC NDP campaigned on “banning the grizzly bear trophy hunt” without defining what that is or was. They came up with an initial cockamany idea of requiring people to surrender the head and coat and pack out the meat. Then they decided to ban all grizzly hunting.

I stood alone in the legislature for three years trying to get emotion out of the discussion of wildlife management but the Liberals and NDP wouldn’t budge from their divisive positions.

There is no doubt that the decision to ban the hunt was purely populist and was not informed by science. Unfortunately, by ignoring public opinion for so long, pent up opposition became overwhelming and rational discussion was thrown under the bus.

Government let that discord fester for so long – often putting people in this room in a challenging position, I would imagine – that it was really hard to find an appropriate balance between science and representing the views of people in my riding.

I am really worried that this populist approach to wildlife management will continue. I don’t think it serves anyone.

Not the people in this room, certainly, but I don’t think it serves the people advocating for it either, because it rarely helps protect animals in the long term.

To be blunt, I am willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the number of grizzlies that are shot on an annual basis will barely remain unchanged (after an initial short term drop). Conservation officer grizzly mortalities will go up as these officers deal with problem bears (as in the US); poaching will go up too.

B.C. is Canada’s most ecologically diverse province but if we are to maintain that rich biodiversity, we need to see a serious commitment to science-based, evidence-based wildlife management – and we need to have dedicated wildlife funding put in place, so managers have the budgets, and the staff, required to do the job.

As the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services recommended in its Report on the Budget 2017 Consultations, license fees collected from natural resource users (hunters, anglers, ecotourists, etc.) should be directed into conservation and wildlife management services, rehabilitation, enforcement and education.

Effective natural resource management is reliant on funding, science, and social support. We seem to have consensus on this within the B.C. government, but it needs to be put into action.

Prior to the election, I campaigned on establishing a Natural Resource Commissioner who could lead a Natural Resources Board responsible for establishing sustainable harvest and extraction levels and reporting on the state of B.C.’s environment and natural assets. The NRB, I proposed, would conduct cumulative impact assessments, and oversee the application of the professional reliance model.

Since the election, the government has been working with us to improve the professional reliance model and B.C.’s environmental assessment process.

There is much we can do to advance the values of scientific monitoring, reporting, and cumulative assessment.

Managing wildlife has always been difficult, but never more so than now, in the face of climate change. According to data released by scientists at NASA, 2017 was the second warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880, second only to 2016. And Arctic sea ice is at record lows.

In the face of great challenges, it is clear to me that we need a comprehensive science- and ecosystem-based approach to wildlife management. We simply cannot continue to perpetuate the slow, methodical extirpation of native species in B.C.

Ecosystem-based management calls for natural resources, habitat, and species to be managed collectively, over a long time frame, rather than just looking at a single sector or single species.

Cumulative impacts are assessed – an approach which B.C. urgently must follow because of the sweep of industrial development now taking place in many sectors of the province.

Given the myriad challenges facing wildlife in our province, two of the most important things we can do to protect biodiversity is to leave key habitat areas intact and restore and improve funding to conservation, monitoring and scientific management efforts.

As British Columbia continues to warm and precipitation patterns continue to change,

as flooding and drought becomes more frequent and extreme,

as out of control wildfires become more common and more damaging,

as pest infestations become more diverse

and as between 20 and 30% of the world’s plants and animals becoming at risk of extinction by mid century,

we have a responsibility to take steps now.

It won’t be easy. But proactively protecting ecosystems to improve resiliency and adaptive capacity to the changes a warming climate will bring is vital.

And the continued good work of the BCWF will play a critical role in these conservation efforts.

Thank you.