Road Construction details

In November 2001, McBride Forest Industries constructed one kilometre of logging road  into the upper Goat watershed past the confluence of the Goat and Milk Rivers.  If this road is allowed to proceed further upstream, plans call for the road to be built in the channel of the Goat River itself, which will destroy salmon habitat and cause serious water quality concerns downstream.  This construction is in flagrant disregard of the BC Forest Practices Code, which requires a 50 metre riparian reserve to be observed along channels like the Goat River.

In addition, the federal Fisheries Act states unequivocally: "No person shall carry on any work or undertaking that results in the harmful alteration,  disruption or destruction of fish habitat" (Section 35).  However, despite the apparent absurdity of building a road in a salmon-bearing stream, personnel from Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the BC Ministries of Forests and Sustainable Resource Management are expected to approve the road development in the interest of allowing logging access to this controversial watershed.

How can they get away with this?  First, the Forest Practices Code allows the local District Manager for the Ministry of Forests to make exceptions to the Code’s provisions whenever he or she feels it is appropriate.  Second, Fisheries and Oceans Canada has long had a policy known as "No Net Habitat Loss," meaning that industry can destroy natural salmon spawning habitat as long as they make up for it by ‘creating’ habitat elsewhere.  But not only is it nearly impossible to replace naturally occurring habitat, any attempt at creating habitat elsewhere will simply destroy habitat required by other species.