Submission by Graham Smith
Your Vision:
Most important is the protection and remediation of natural biodiversity.
We have a relatively well-populated province and our forest and mineral
resources have been extensively exploited. It is time to act with
urgency to protect the best remaining natural places, including coastal
areas, and to require more environmentally sustainable practices in
areas that are deemed suitable for industrial use.
Strengths:
Biodiversity is vital for wildlife habitat, protection of water supplies and
low-impact recreation. However we have lost much of our natural
biodiversity due to industrial activities such as forest clearcutting
accompanied by single-aged, single-species planting. Our forests are
in poor condition, suffering from years of over-harvesting,
non-selective harvesting and other factors such as acid precipitation.
Mineral extraction has been done, in many cases, without sufficient
regard for the natural environment and has been permitted to occur in
some environmentally sensitive locations. Our parks are insufficient
in numbers and size to properly protect representative areas of our
natural environment; nor are they sufficiently well connected to
permit green corridors for natural migrations.
Barriers and Issues:
The main barrier is that well organized industrial interests carry more
weight with legislators than does public opinion, which is less well
focused.
Community's Priorities:
The top priority is to
complete the network of protected areas, followed by development of a
policy for coastal areas. The government is committed to these goals,
but the process is slowed down by the fact that each candidate
wilderness area is dealt with separately, allowing a series of
challenges from industrial interests. All the while development
continues, often in places that should be candidates for protection.
Guiding the health and sustainability:
We need to follow the precautionary principle in the protection of our
best remaining wild places. This includes consideration of species at
risk, old-growth forest, coastal barrens and other sensitive
environments. We need natural places for many forms of human recreation
as well as for wildlife habitat and to help offset the effects of
climate change. This means that outdoor recreation that is damaging to
wildlife and natural places must be curtailed. In particular,
off-highway vehicles have no place in parks and protected areas.