Save the Spotted Owl!
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- Published on Thursday, 28 August 2014 17:20
- Written by editor
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Tell BC’s Premier: Canada’s spotted owls need habitat – not money!
Hi PAOV,
A recent news story about a private hydropower company cutting a swath of trees in spotted owl wildlife habitat area near Harrison Lake BC has really got my blood boiling. The BC government allowed the company to simply donate money towards spotted owl conservation efforts, then go ahead and cut down the forest habitat of this same highly endangered species! This is shameful.
What are the spotted owls supposed to do with the money – eat it? Make a nest with it? Put simply, what spotted owls need is for the government to protect their remaining old-growth forest habitat from chainsaws and bulldozers.
Only about a dozen spotted owls are left in the wild in southwest mainland BC (the only place they are found in Canada) because of extreme logging of their old-growth forest habitat. Where once 500 pairs of owls thrived in these forests, now clearcuts, roads and power lines have tattered and fragmented the old forests to such an extent that the owls teeter on the brink of extinction in Canada.
The Wilderness Committee has been pushing the BC government to legally protect spotted owl habitat. We have met with some success—we’ve had tens of thousands of hectares set aside. The problem is that the government keeps making exceptions for industrial interests who want to keep cutting spotted owl forests down—even in Wildlife Habitat Areas which have been set aside to “protect” the owl.
Logging and hydro companies have recently gotten permission to operate in spotted owl habitat. This past spring, a Wilderness Committee on-the-ground fact finding expedition uncovered a chainsaw massacre unfolding in many of the spotted owl Wildlife Habitat Areas in the forest lands between Chilliwack and Pemberton. This simply has to stop.
Please write now to BC’s Premier and ask for a complete ban on logging in remaining spotted owl habitat. Also tell the government to enact a provincial stand-alone endangered species law, so that our children and grandchildren can see spotted owls, killer whales, and mountain caribou in the wild.
Thanks so much for taking action!
For the wild,
Joe Foy | National Campaign Director
Wilderness Committee
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