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The
mission of
the Institute is to increase humankind's understanding, appreciation,
and protection of our natural environment; particularly wildlife
populations and wild landscapes. Our goal is to enable human
beings to live in harmony with other species. |
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Muskwa-Kechika
Management Area
The Muskwa-Kechika Management Area (MKMA)
in northeastern British Columbia is an area endowed with a globally
significant abundance and diversity of wildlife and wilderness
characteristics. The management intent for the MKMA reflects
this endowment, seeking to maintain in perpetuity the wilderness
quality, and the diversity and abundance of wildlife and the
ecosystems on which it depends, while allowing resource development
and use in parts of the MKMA designated for those purposes. Needed
for the MKMA is a framework to link the landscape level objectives
and zoning with the ongoing government planning processes.
A Conservation Areas Design (CAD) can provide the framework for
the linkage between landscape level objectives and zoning and
local level decision-making. In addition, a CAD can be the link
to inform the ongoing government planning processes. The primary
goal is to provide interested conservation organizations, the
MK Advisory Board, and other ministries' staff with a CAD for
the MKMA and to demonstrate how it informs and integrates with
the legislated planning processes.
The Craighead Environmental Research Institute, Nature Conservancy Canada, and Round River Conservation Studies began the
process to enter a contractual agreement with the Muskwa-Kechika Advisory
Board to produce a Conservation Areas Design for the Muskwa-Kechika
Management Area and to facilitate informing and integrating the
CAD with the MKMA legislated planning processes. The Muskwa-Kechika
Conservation Areas Design (MKCAD) was to be completed within an
18-month period, and this group was given a verbal go-ahead after a
lengthy round of proposals during which the Round River group was
chosen over several other applicants, including some from British
Columbia. Before the contract was signed however, objections raised
by a consultant in Nelson, B.C. caused the contract process to be
suspended, and initiated another round of proposal submission and
review. This has delayed the completion of the project,
regardless of who it is finally awarded to. Funding for the production of the MK CAD
was to be a combination of government and private foundation monies.
Round River is the lead organization for the CAD discussed here. If
the contract is awarded to Round River, CERI will be
involved in providing biological direction, habitat modeling,
and connectivity analysis as well as on-site validation of model
results. CERI will also be deeply involved in the decision-making
process by helping to provide timely analyses to the ongoing
processes described below.
Background
To date, federal and provincial protection efforts for British
Columbia have concentrated in areas of low commercial and biological
value, resulting in a network of fragmented isolated parks mostly
made up (65% percent) of "rock and ice". While numerous,
published studies have explored and defined general goals and
principles for landscape level conservation planning and the
design of natural reserves, relatively few areas have actually
been assessed using rigorous science-based reserve design methods.
Compounding the problem, many of the areas that have been the
subject of science-based reserve design are already ecologically
compromised and do not house the species they were intended to
protect, especially top carnivores such as grizzly bears, wolves
and wolverines. Even fewer have actually moved from theoretical
principles to influencing land use policies and on-the-ground
implementation.
In 1997, following a five year effort by more than 20 conservation
organizations to protect the wildlife populations and the vast
undeveloped, wilderness of British Columbia's Northern Rockies
and Cassiar Mountains, the province of British Columbia created
the Muskwa-Kechika Management Area (MKMA). When formalized in
1998 under the Mushkwa-Kechika Management Area Act, the management
area represented an unprecedented achievement in North America
- a consensus-based, multi-stakeholder agreement to establish
the largest conservation system on the continent.
The wildlife
populations in the MKMA are unparalleled in BC - estimates include
- 4,000 caribou, 15,000 elk, 22,000 moose and 7,000 Stone's sheep.
The area supports the only Plains bison population in the province
and also includes 3,500 black and grizzly bears, as well as coyotes,
wolves, wolverines and cougars. Endangered birds include the
Connecticut warbler, the sharp-tailed sparrow and the upland
sandpiper.
 The
MKMA sets up a network of protected areas, reflecting the principles
of conservation biology, surrounded by legislated special management
(buffer) areas, where environmentally sensitive industrial activities
can occur, and wildland zones, where mining and wilderness tourism
can take place but logging is not permitted. With the addition
of nearly 2 million hectares as part of the recently completed
Mackenzie LRMP, the entire MKMA covers approximately 6.4 million
hectares. Concurrent with the set up of the protected area network
and special management areas, a multi-stakeholder advisory board,
the Muskwa-Kechika Advisory Board, was established to advise
on natural resource management in the MKMA.
The initial MKMA, born out of the Fort St. John and Fort Nelson
LRMP processes, covered 4.4-million hectares, including 1.17
million hectares of parks and protected areas surrounded by a
3.24-million hectares of special management area. The Mackenzie
LRMP added almost 500,000 hectares of protected areas, nearly
1 million hectares of legislated wildlands and over 400,000 hectares
of special management areas to the MKMA.
The Muskwa-Kechika Management Plan will be implemented by all
relevant government agencies through agency-specific management
activities, local strategic plans, resource development permits
and Crown land and natural resource dispositions. Development
plans and permits for commercial recreation, timber harvesting
or oil and gas development will be consistent with the objectives
and strategies of resource management zones and any local strategic
plans, as specified in the Management Plan.
This is the general challenge– how to link the general objectives
and management zones at the landscape level of the Management
Plan with on-the-ground decision-making and activities of local
strategic plans, all in a manner that ensures the MKMA realizes
its goal of being a truly world class example of wildlife and
wilderness conservation. The MKMA Management Plan assumes that
resource development will continue, while recognizing, accommodating
and protecting all significant values including tourism, visual
quality, fish and wildlife habitat, wilderness and backcountry
recreation and major river corridors.
The specific challenge is to make an assessment of the relationships
between the roughly 3.6 million hectares of special management
areas, where and how industrial activities can take place, and
the network of protected areas, which are surrounded by the special
management areas. Land use zoning has been completed under the
three LRMPs (Fort Nelson, Fort St. John and Mackenzie). These
zoning designations have been overlaid upon five ongoing legislated,
and smaller scale, planning processes: Recreation Management
Plans; Wildlife Management Plans; Landscape Unit Objectives;
Parks Planning; and, Pre-tenure Planning.
The Approach
First Steps: In the best of
circumstances, to best inform, the MKCAD would be completed prior
to the other MK planning processes. However -- the MKMA was set
up while the province had a New Democratic Party premier. In
provincial elections this past spring, the Liberal Party came
to power, with an “overwhelming mandate to significantly
change the way resource management is done in the province”,
according to a recent speech by the Minister of Sustainable Resource
Management to the MK Advisory Board. Specifically, this mandate
includes, according to the minister, completing the necessary
planning to expedite economic development of the Muskwa-Kechika,
with a focus on oil and gas pre-tenure plans (“PTP’s”).
There are seven PTP’s still to be completed in the MKMA.
The Besa Prophet PTP, encompassing the area connecting the Rocky
Mountain Park and the Redfern-Keily Park, is the first of the
pre-tenure areas to be considered since the establishment of
the MKMA.
The stakeholder group, forming development recommendations for
the Besa Prophet is very behind schedule and facing a government
imposed February, 2001 deadline for completing the planning process.
The planning group has realized that they cannot prioritize areas
for development across the Besa Prophet in order to finish the
planning by February of 2002. In the interim, Round River has
been asked, to avoid the prospect of contentious major amendments
to the Besa Prophet pre-tenure plan (BPPTP) once the CAD is completed,
to provide and solicit other expert advice, given the available
data and short timeframe, regarding:
• areas within the BPPT plan area where, based on the limited
information available, wildlife values are of greater sensitivity
to development impacts; and,
• possible thresholds for development impacts based on an
assessment of likely risks for the resilience of the ecosystem
within the planning area.
To best facilitate our work, Round River is forming a Muskwa-Kechika
Scientific Committee to both assist with the initial BPPT plan
and the MKCAD. The Muskwa-Kechika Scientific Committee will
first meet in early spring, 2002.
 We will address which habitat
values are the most important ones to maintain (and therefore
develop the most restrictive recommendations about). Hopefully,
this will ‘buy some time’, given the government’s
desire to double the number of wells, until more planning - our
full conservation areas design for the MKMA - can be completed.
We are developing habitat connectivity models for the Besa Prophet
area based upon habitat suitability models already developed,
data on wildlife movements (particularly grizzly bears) collected
by Katherine Parker at the University of Northern BC (UNBC),
and expert opinion from field researchers, first nations, outfitters,
and sportsmen. The initial models will utilize a least-cost-path
approach similar to that used for the Bozeman Pass project, except
at a coarser resolution.
Next Steps - Proposed Activities
This CAD work will have five separate parts: 1) data amalgamation,
2) application of existing CAD methods, 3) development of new
CAD methods, 4) peer-review and 5) integration of the CAD with
M-K management plans.
Data Amalgamation - The first step is to gather, amalgamate and
match the existing data sets for the M-K and the surrounding
areas. Discussions will take place with others within the
Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation community to determine overlap
and
consistency of data. We will develop a matching procedure for
vegetation, terrain, riparian features and other data types,
based on reclassification of existing data using remote sensing
image analysis. Field verification of this procedure will occur
after initial data matching is complete. Following field verification,
data matching procedures will be updated and revised as necessary.
Applying Existing CAD Methods - We will apply existing methods
to determine the scope and extent of proposed core conservation
and landscape connectivity areas. We will consider three primary
components in developing the CAD: representation analysis, special
elements mapping, and focal species analysis. The combined use
of these three components will insure the uniqueness of the CAD.
 Representation Analysis ensures
that all habitats found in the M-K are included within the CAD.
Special Elements Mapping, also referred to as biodiversity analysis,
includes details about a landscape that may have significant
conservation implications. Area-Dependent Focal Species
Analysis can be used to determine how much total protected area
is needed; additionally, area
dependent focal species analysis will evaluate connectivity and
ensure that sufficient ecological corridors are maintained across
the landscape. Our area dependent focal species analysis will
include spatially explicit habitat and population viability analysis
models to determine the major threats to important focal species
and to establish habitat needs for their long-term viability.
Development of additional CAD methods and tests for CAD completeness
While this
CAD should apply previously established methods for selecting
the most important areas for conservation, it is also important
to make contributions through the development and testing of
new methods. The objective here is to make the CAD process more
biologically robust, comprehensive and efficient. Proposed extensions
of CAD methods include three parts:
1) riparian features modeling, 2) connectivity analysis, and
3) additional focal species analysis.
The MKMA is an example of an intact and ecologically functioning
system, and the proposed work will allow us to assess natural
connectivity patterns. Riparian features are potential natural
corridors and are also particularly important areas for wildlife,
often to the extent that they are "hotspots" for biological
diversity. Additionally, riparian areas are often the first areas
impacted by human activities, because of their accessibility
and productivity. Because of the importance of riparian features
for both biodiversity and connectivity, we plan to develop spatial
models for delineating riparian areas, based on terrain, soil,
vegetation and rainfall. To compare riparian connectivity with
other landscape types, we will employ standard methods for assessing
landscape connectivity, including least-cost path and terrain
complexity analysis. The validity of the connectivity patterns
that emerge from this analysis will be tested and refined using
available radio telemetry data and expert opinion. We also plan
to include information for additional focal species and to refine
the species habitat suitability models developed by the provincial
government.
Synthesis and Peer Review - The three components or information
streams (representation analysis, special elements mapping, and
area-dependent focal species analysis), will be combined to determine
a CAD network for the MKMA. The CAD network will be tested for
completeness, and revised if necessary, using additional focal
species information and connectivity analysis. We will then conduct
several peer review processes for our approach, including with
the Y2Y Scientific Committee. Comments, suggestions and additions
from peer review workshops will be incorporated before release
of the final report. We also plan to submit our results for publication
in peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Informing the MKMA legislated planning processes
 Inconsistent Interpretation of
Vision for the MKMA - Each of the local strategic plans being
prepared for the MKMA addresses different aspects of resource
management for the area. However, to ensure appropriate consistency
in approach across these various plans, there needs to be a common
foundation. The MKMA Act and the MKMA Management Plan provide
that foundation, particularly through the Act’s pre-amble
and the statements of management intent within the MK Management
Plan. Notwithstanding the direction provided by these documents,
it appears that the overall management intent for the MKMA has
been interpreted in many different ways by different parties.
In particular, there are varying perspectives on the degree to
which resource development should be constrained in order to
“maintain in perpetuity the wilderness quality, and the
diversity and abundance of wildlife and the ecosystems on which
it depends.” These differing perspectives not only create
significant difficulties within the planning processes, but where
interpretations are inconsistent between plans, may cause hamper
effective implementation and regulatory enforcement. Such inconsistencies
also undermine confidence among First Nations, industrial proponents
and conservation advocates alike.
In addition, although the preamble to the MK Act highlights the
importance of wilderness characteristics and qualities, definitions
and quantification of these characteristics has received relatively
little attention to date within plans. To the extent that maintaining
wilderness characteristics over time is a key element in striking
an appropriate balance between conservation and development in
the MKMA, this issue deserves great attention.
The MK Advisory Board has acknowledged this issue, and has planned
a series of land use workshops, in part to seek clarification
of the appropriate balance between wilderness and wildlife, and
resource development. Round River has been requested to participate
in each of these workshops to provided input on how such clarification
effects a CAD for the MK and their impacts on wildlife and the
wilderness that support them. Round River has also been asked
to provide input on who should participate in these workshops
from the science, foundation and NGO communities. The MK Advisory
Board’s wilderness workshop in January 2002 provides the
first opportunity to develop specific, tangible products to define
and quantify wilderness characteristics.
Round River, CERI, and NCC will work to have the CAD best inform
the MK planning processes through several mechanisms. In the
short run, we have agreed to provide input to the Besa Phrophet
pre-tenure planning area by late February, 2002. This effort,
will be the first opportunity to effect spatial decisions made
by the province as to where to allow bids for oil and gas exploration
in the MKMA. Also in the short to medium run, a draft of the
wildlife management plan for the MKMA is due to be issued for
review by the end of March, 2002. We have already met with the
planning committee that is preparing this draft to discuss how
the CAD will be integrated into that plan. At a minimum, the
MKMA program staff has agreed that the WMP will be consistent
with the CAD – this consistency will be ensured during the
review phase of the WMP during the second half of 2002. However,
the staff is also open to the idea of making the CAD an integral
component of the WMP. This would be a more desirable outcome
and we are actively pursuing this with the MKMA staff.
Most importantly, we are also working with CPAWS and other Y2Y
member groups to provide the CAD results, so that these constituents
of the MKMA can assist the provincial government to abide by
the letter and spirit of the MK legislation.
Implementation of the
Muskwa-Kechika Conservation Area Design
Implement the results of a regional-scale
(1km2 grid) Conservation Area Design of core and movement habitat
for a study area encompassing several river drainages in the
Muskwa-Kechika (M-K) Region of British Columbia (in cooperation
with Round River Conservation Studies and Nature Conservancy
Canada). This area is a key portion of the Yellowstone to Yukon
in the Boreal Forest of northern British Columbia. There are
10 Protected Areas within the M-K and this project will maintain
connectivity between them. The role of the CERI biologist/conservationist
will include:
a. Conducting site-specific ecological evaluations of
the habitat and the movement barriers in areas that have been
pinpointed by GIS-model results.
b. Conducting interviews with local biologists, sportsmen,
outfitters, and landowners to gather additional information on
animal movements and conservation possibilities.
c. Conducting workshops in local communities to disseminate
the information, which is the best available scientific data,
and to elicit additional comments and local participation and
support.
d. Providing data and other information into the planning
processes of the Muskwa-Kechika Management area: these include
Pre-tenure Planning (gas and oil), Recreation planning, Parks
planning, Wildlife Management planning, and Landscape Units Objectives
planning.
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Craighead
Environmental Research Institute