Environmentalists await decision on Flathead protection

Conservation groups are anxiously awaiting a response to the long-awaited World Heritage Committee (WHC) mission report on the Flathead which is expected to come from the committee’s meeting in Brasilia, which starts July 23, 2010.

Last year, Wildsight, Sierra Club BC, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) and eight other groups successfully petitioned the WHC to draw attention to energy and mining threats in the Flathead. The result was a February 2010 ban on mining and energy development.

However, the conservation groups say that the Flathead is still under grave threat from impending clear-cut logging and quarrying, mining, expanded road access and trophy hunting and that this will impact the adjoining Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site.

“We hope the World Heritage mission will agree that a comprehensive trans-boundary wildlife management plan is urgently needed for the Flathead and adjoining habitat,” said CPAWS-BC Executive Director Chloe O’Loughlin. “B.C.’s Flathead is an exceptional wildlife nursery, and it has the highest density of inland grizzly bears in North America.”

The BC government continues to allow the extraction of 20,000 tonnes of Flathead rock a year, without environmental oversight, from a quarry just outside of the World Heritage Site, according to Casey Brennan, Southern Rockies Program Manager for Wildsight. “The Flathead River Valley remains under threat and is far from protected,” she says.

Last month, the conservation groups sent a letter to the WHC in which they indicated their concern with the lack of a binding Flathead agreement at the federal level, since either BC or Montana can, at any time, revoke their commitments which they made in the February 2010 ‘Memorandum of Understanding’. Last year, the WHC requested that the state parties monitor and report continuing threats to the World Heritage Site and there is grave concern over the lack of oversight by these parties.

Sometime this summer, large clear-cut logging operations with extensive road building are due to begin and motorized road access in the Flathead was recently increased next to the World Heritage Site. Regionally, two new coal strip mines in the adjoining Elk Valley and new coal exploration in the proposed Wildlife Management Area are seriously threatening wildlife connectivity, making the long-term viability of regional grizzly bear populations a great concern.

“We’re alarmed that it’s business as usual in the Flathead, with the exception of some mining and energy development,” said Sierra Club BC spokesperson Sarah Cox.  “It’s time for B.C. to agree to a National Park in the south eastern one-third of the Flathead.”

Sierra Club BC, Wildsight and CPAWS-BC are calling for the completion of the Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site with a National Park in the southeastern one-third of the Flathead River Valley. The groups also urge the establishment of a Wildlife Management Area in the rest of the Flathead and adjoining habitat, to preserve a vital wildlife corridor stretching from the Waterton-Glacier World Heritage Site to Canada’s Rocky Mountain Parks.