B.C. wildlife society opposes clearcut proposal that includes caribou habitat – Okanagan [Video]

A remote and rugged river valley located on the north end of Shuswap Lake in B.C.’s Southern Interior is home to an incredible wetland ecosystem.

Known as the Upper Seymour, it’s around 100 km from Salmon Arm. It’s pristine and is also home to an at-risk mountain caribou herd.

“The Seymour, as a whole, has some of the most spectacular and rare inland temperate rainforest that I’ve ever encountered,” said Eddie Petryshen of Wildsight, a registered charity that tries to protect biodiversity in the Columbia and Rocky Mountain ranges.

However, Petryshen says a newly proposed clear-cut is threatening to destroy more than majestic western red cedars in the area.

In fact, he claims there’s a proposal to clearcut 608 hectares of core caribou habitat.

And those proposed cutblocks, he says, are critical to one herd called Columbia North.

“There’s 209 caribou in there, and they are kind of our …