Wildlife Management

The conservation of biological diversity is a goal of the Forest Practices Code of British Columbia Act. The Identified Wildlife Management Strategy is designed to be the ‘fine filter’,  addressing habitat requirements of wildlife that require additional management attention.

The goals of the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy are to minimize the effects of forest practices on Identified Wildlife, and to maintain their limiting habitats throughout their current ranges and, where appropriate, their historic ranges. In some cases, this will entail restoration of previously occupied habitats, particularly for those species most at risk.

The term ‘Identified Wildlife’ refers to those species at risk that the deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks, or person authorized by that deputy minister, and the chief forester, agree require special management attention. Within the Code, the terms ‘wildlife’ and ‘species at risk’ have been defined so that endangered, threatened or vulnerable species of vertebrates and invertebrates, endangered or threatened plants and plant communities, and regionally important vertebrates may be designated as Identified Wildlife.

The Identified Wildlife Management Strategy can be applied only to Crown forest and range land or private land that is subject to a tree farm or woodlot licence. It only addresses forest practices regulated by the Code. It does not address activities such as hunting or poaching.

Under the Wildlife Act, native terrestrial vertebrates designated as ‘wildlife’ are protected from killing, capture and harassment except by permit or regulation. The strategy also does not address agriculture or urban development.

A role of the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks is to develop conservation strategies and recovery plans for species at risk. These strategies and plans address all habitats in the province and all requirements for a species’ conservation including research and inventory needs, habitat conservation and regulatory changes. Examples of these strategies include the Provincial Grizzly Bear Conservation Strategy and the Marbled Murrelet National Recovery Plan. For information on conservation strategies, recovery plans and how other activities are being addressed contact the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, Wildlife Branch.

Identified Wildlife are managed through the establishment of wildlife habitat areas (WHAs) and implementation of general wildlife measures (GWMs), or through other management practices specified in higher level plans.

Wildlife habitat areas are mapped areas that have been approved by the chief forester and deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks as requiring special management attention.

The purpose of WHAs is to conserve those habitats considered most limiting to a given species. For example, feeding lakes for American white pelican are considered limiting because they must occur near the breeding site, contain the appropriate prey species, and be relatively free of human disturbance. Breeding sites for ancient murrelet are considered limiting because this species returns to the same area each year, breeds in undisturbed old forest habitat, and requires freedom from most mammalian predators.

Although research is not always adequate to indicate which habitats or habitat attributes are most limiting, the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy adheres to the precautionary principle—where there are threats of serious or irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for failing to implement appropriate, cost-effective environmental measures.

General wildlife measures describe the management practices that must be implemented within an approved WHA. A GWM may limit activities partially (e.g., seasonally) or entirely. General wildlife measures prescribe a level of management appropriate to the conservation status of Identified Wildlife. Management objectives are consistent with the goals and commitments of the Canadian Biodiversity Strategy and provincial goals for the management of wildlife (i.e., as outlined in the Provincial Wildlife Strategy). However, it should be recognized that these measures may prove to be insufficient to conserve viable populations of a species throughout its range in British Columbia and may have to be amended accordingly. Amendments will generally follow an assessment, prepared by the Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks (MELP), of the conservation needs of the species. When an assessment indicates that additional measures are required to conserve the species and the recommendations have an impact on other resources beyond the limits approved for Identified Wildlife, it may be necessary to consider the species within a public planning process (i.e., higher level plan).

It is believed that this strategy marks a significant step toward responsible stewardship of Identified Wildlife. The management practices presented here are designed to reduce the impacts of forest and range management on Identified Wildlife within targeted social and economic constraints. They represent an attempt to balance both socio-economic considerations and conservation of species at risk in managed forests and rangelands.

For the most part, Identified Wildlife provisions are stand level measures that can not address the issues of habitat supply, habitat connectivity and population viability. Such considerations should be taken into account during landscape level or regional planning.

Provincial Statutes

Species at risk under the Forest Practices Code

Under the Forest Practices Code, species at risk includes provincially red- and blue-listed vertebrates and invertebrates, red-listed plants and plant communities as well as selected yellow-listed species (i.e., regionally important). Regionally important species are considered at risk under the Code when it has been determined that these species are not adequately addressed by coarse filter guidelines and therefore require special management attention.

Provincial status (e.g., red, blue and yellow) is determined and reviewed on a biannual basis by the Conservation Data Centre (CDC) and Wildlife Branch using the internationally accepted criteria developed by the Nature Conservancy. These criteria are provincial abundance, estimated occurrences, range, trends, protected occurrences and threats.

Species and plant communities are ranked from 1–5 where 1 is critically imperiled and 5 is secure. Generally, red-listed species are ranked 1 or 2, and blue-listed species are ranked 3 or 3/4. Regionally important wildlife are species that are ranked 4 or 4/5 indicating a potential conservation concern and are “at risk” in adjacent jurisdictions. The species at risk list is approved by the deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks.

Identified Wildlife

Identified Wildlife are selected from the provincially red- or blue-listed vertebrates and invertebrates; regionally important vertebrates; and red-listed plants or plant communities. An inter-agency committee (Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks and Ministry of Forests) consults with species experts to determine which of these species and plant communities should be recommended for designation as Identified Wildlife.

Species and plant communities are evaluated to determine what habitats are considered limiting for their survival. Both species experts and literature are consulted during this evaluation. For red-listed plant communities the remaining occurrences of the community are considered limiting. Plant communities and species whose known limiting habitats are not affected by forest or range management are not considered for designation as Identified Wildlife. Species and plant communities whose habitat needs are adequately addressed by the Biodiversity Guidebook and the Riparian Management Area Guidebook are also not considered.

Only species and plant communities that were not adequately addressed at the coarse filter level and were considered to need protection of limiting habitats were put forward to the chief forester and deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks for designation as Identified Wildlife.

Identified Wildlife may be de-designated by agreement of the chief forester and deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks. This is necessary when a change in species or community status occurs.

Volume 1 Species

The first volume of the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy contains 36 species and subspecies and four plant communities. This is only a portion of the species and plant communities that are at risk and affected by forest and range practices. The list of species and communities reflects the efforts of the interagency committee to represent a diversity of species in a diversity of habitats, and includes species from all the forest regions. Additional species and communities will be included in the forthcoming volume 2.

Management of Identified Wildlife

Coarse filter guidelines

Application of Forest Practices Code documents such as the Biodiversity Guidebook and the Riparian Management Area Guidebook will contribute to the maintenance of most of the biodiversity in British Columbia, including some of the habitat needs of Identified Wildlife. The Biodiversity Guidebook addresses the maintenance of biodiversity at both the stand level and landscape level. Stand level biodiversity provisions involve maintaining stand structure through the retention of wildlife trees, coarse woody debris, tree species diversity, and understorey vegetation diversity. Stand level biodiversity is addressed during operational planning (e.g., silviculture prescriptions) whereas landscape level biodiversity is addressed through landscape unit planning. During landscape unit planning, objectives for some or all of the following landscape characteristics are set: seral stage distribution, temporal and spatial distribution of cutblocks, old seral retention and representation, landscape connectivity, stand structure and species composition.

Landscape unit planning is directed by the Landscape Unit Planning Guide.

If the requirements of certain Identified Wildlife (e.g., Marbled Murrelet and Northern Goshawk) and placement of WHAs are considered during landscape unit planning, it may be possible to effectively plan for a greater number of species and accommodate their connectivity requirements while reducing the incremental forest impacts. For instance, by identifying the seral stage mosaic required by some Identified Wildlife early in the planning process, species requirements may be partially or completely accommodated by applying intermediate or higher biodiversity emphasis options to landscape units.

The selection of intermediate and higher biodiversity emphasis options must still be carried out within the chief forester’s policy direction including the apportionment of 45% of the timber harvesting landbase in each sub-regional planning unit to lower biodiversity emphasis, 45% to intermediate, and 10% to higher biodiversity emphasis.

Fine filter management

The fine filter component of the Forest Practices Code is the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy. As defined within the Operational Planning Regulations, Identified Wildlife are “those species at risk that the deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks or a person authorized by that deputy minister, and the chief forester, agree will be managed through a higher level plan, wildlife habitat area or general wildlife measure.”

Wildlife habitat areas

Wildlife habitat areas are areas of limiting habitat that have been mapped and approved by the chief forester and deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks. Wildlife habitat areas are designed to minimize disturbance or habitat alteration to a species’ limiting habitat or to a rare plant community. In most cases, the WHA contains a core area that is protected from habitat alteration and a buffer to minimize disturbance (i.e., WHA includes both the core area and the buffer). All species and plant communities in volume 1 have WHA provisions, except fisher, which is addressed through higher level plan recommendations.

General wildlife measures

General wildlife measures direct forest and range practices within a WHA, and have been approved by the chief forester and deputy minister of Environment, Lands and Parks making them legally required under the Code. GWMs can address any forest practice as defined under the Code. This includes road construction, road maintenance, grazing, haying and timber harvesting. Practices have been grouped under the following headings: access, range, recreation, restoration and enhancement, and silviculture. A GWM may limit activities partially or entirely.

Because GWMs are legally required, variances are provided for some measures that enable district managers and regional fish and wildlife managers to vary measures.

Higher level plans (resource management zone objectives)

Wildlife habitat areas maintain limiting habitats and cannot always address all aspects of a species’ habitat requirements. Some species have large home ranges, occur at low densities, have widely and sparsely distributed limiting habitats, or are sensitive to forest level disturbances. The requirements of such species must be addressed over large areas, such as regions or subregions, in order to effectively manage their populations. For these reasons, some species habitat requirements are not appropriately managed as WHAs and cannot be adequately addressed by coarse filter provisions. Therefore management of these species is best addressed through higher level plans.

For the purposes of this document, a higher level plan is a resource management zone (RMZ) objective approved by the three ministers responsible for the Code (MELP, MOF, MEM). The definition of higher level plans has been restricted because setting RMZ objectives involves significant socio-economic considerations. During RMZ objective setting, the regional or landscape level requirements of these species will be considered in context with other species’ habitat needs, measures to conserve biodiversity, other resource values, and social and economic issues. These recommendations may be considered by ongoing strategic land use planning tables who have not yet passed the scenario development stage in situations where it would not cause backtracking of the progress accomplished to date.

This document provides higher level plan recommendations for planning tables to consider for three species: fisher, bull trout and grizzly bear. Government is not recommending any other volume 1 species be considered within higher level plans at this time. Should conservation assessments indicate that one or more other volume 1 species cannot be adequately managed through the current provisions of the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy or other Code mechanisms, government may amend the strategy to include higher level plan recommendations for the additional species.

For any species to be considered in a higher level plan, government planning teams should develop a range of management options for the species before tabling this information with nongovernment planning team members. The government planning team should also evaluate the environmental, social and economic impacts associated with the range of options and present this information to the non-government planning team members.

Conservation assessments

The effectiveness of the fine filter management approach is dependent on the adequacy of the coarse filter mechanisms as well as the development of species-specific conservation assessments that will provide guidance on where and how much is required to maintain a species or plant community.

A conservation assessment, prepared by government, will examine the spatial arrangement of existing land use designations (e.g., protected areas, riparian reserves, ungulate winter ranges) and how these contribute to the conservation needs of a species or plant community. Conservation assessments will indicate where placement of WHAs would be most effective and will assist the regional rare and endangered species specialist (RES) in evaluating WHA proposals. They will also provide objectives for the management of the species or plant community within the context of government policy regarding the impacts of WHAs on the forest, range, mining and petroleum industries.

Inventory and monitoring

An important part of the Identified Wildlife Management Strategy is a program for inventory and monitoring of Identified Wildlife populations. Monitoring takes three forms:

• compliance monitoring,
• effectiveness monitoring and
• population monitoring.

Compliance monitoring confirms whether the recommendations are being followed in the field. Compliance monitoring is carried out by the Ministry of Forests and Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks.

Effectiveness monitoring evaluates the response of the habitat to the management practices within and adjacent to a WHA. Population monitoring evaluates the effectiveness of maintaining populations of Identified Wildlife. Without adequate baseline inventory information, it will be difficult to carry out population monitoring or to know when to modify the WHA design, placement, frequency or measures.