Conservation groups in British Columbia say the federal government has dragged its feet for 10 years on fulfilling its duty to complete critical habitat mapping for endangered caribou herds, and without urgent action, the animals will disappear.
A letter sent to Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault by Ecojustice on behalf of the Wilderness Committee, Wildsight and Stand.earth says three populations of southern mountain caribou are in steep decline as logging and other industrial development cuts through their habitat.
Southern mountain caribou are currently classified as threatened under Canada鈥檚 Species at Risk Act, and a statement issued by the federal government in 2020 said they numbered roughly 3,100, a reduction of 53 per cent over about six years.
Ottawa released a recovery strategy and partial habitat mapping for the caribou 2014, but the conservation groups say the mapping has not been finalized, a requirement under the legislation and a key step toward stopping the decline.
The letter from Ecojustice lawyer Sean Nixon says the last update from Environment Canada indicated a proposed recovery strategy with critical habitat mapping would be released sometime in 2026, though its timeline may shift.
Eddie Petryshen, a conservation specialist with Wildsight based in B.C.鈥檚 East Kootenay region, says successive federal governments and environment ministers have 鈥渒icked the can further down the road,鈥� and that trend continues today.
鈥淚t鈥檚 just been this constant, decade-long plan to make a plan while caribou are disappearing and their habitat is being decimated and logged.鈥�
Petryshen says eight of 18 herds in the southern group have been extirpated, a term for local extinction, over the last two decades.
鈥淲e know what鈥檚 causing that extirpation,鈥� he says.
Southern mountain caribou depend on old-growth forests to survive, and Petryshen says an analysis by the Wilderness Committee found more than 190,000 hectares of the southern group鈥檚 critical habitat were logged between 2007 and 2023.
That analysis used Ottawa鈥檚 partial habitat identification from 2014, he says, while they used mapping from the provincial government in 2019 to find more than 310,000 hectares of critical habitat were logged during the same time period.
The Ecojustice letter dated Jan. 22 says Ottawa鈥檚 ongoing delays and inaction 鈥渁mount to a tacit endorsement of the extermination of a species.鈥�
