A Slocan Valley bear biologist wants a logging company to spare a tree that he says shows all the signs of being a bear den. He wants them to leave a strip in their cutblock and move the planned location of a road.
But Wayne McCrory says the company, Yucwmenl煤cwu (Caretakers of the Land), owned by the Splatsin First Nation located near Enderby, has refused to move the road.
The cutblock is located in the Valhalla Range just north of Valhalla Park and Slocan Lake.
鈥淚 was hoping that they would be more amenable to this,鈥� McCrory told the Star, 鈥渆specially when they [initially] phoned me asking for input.鈥�
He said the company told him they would try to save the den tree but might have to 鈥渟tub鈥� it to make it safe by WorkSafe BC rules. Then they would cap it so a bear might be able to use it later.
McCrory said it may be only one tree, but it鈥檚 symbolic. Den trees only exist in old growth and he estimates that 80 per cent of the old growth forest in the Slocan Valley has been logged.
鈥淭his is symbolic of what is wrong with our resource management policies today when you don鈥檛 protect high biodiversity areas like this,鈥� he said. 鈥淲hether you stand up for one tree or many 鈥� or you stand up for one grizzly that was wrongly killed or the whole population, it is the same principle.鈥�
Yucwmenl煤cwu has not returned the Star鈥檚 calls or emails requesting comment.
McCrory was instrumental in pushing for the 2016 Great Bear Rainforest legislation that includes a provision that bear dens should be surrounded by a 30-metre buffer and no road construction.
What he鈥檚 recommending here is 鈥渓eave a strip 40 metres wide and 200 meters long, not a very big area. It mostly means moving the road. Having built lots of mining company roads, I don鈥檛 see the problem. It is not like we are asking them not to log or not to salvage, it is just moving things a bit to accommodate.鈥�
He said he鈥檚 been tracking and attempting to protect grizzly bear dens and old-growth black bear dens for the past 40 years and is now trying to get legislation that would apply outside of protected areas.
鈥淲hat I am talking about is not an economic threat to logging companies per se, it is just encompassing new knowledge and new information into more ecosystem-friendly logging, as has happened on the coast.鈥�
