Central Interior Ecoregional Assessment
Ecoregional assessments provide a scientific approach to identifying areas of high biodiversity value for conservation across broad landscapes, based on documentation and inclusion of sites supporting viable occurrences of endemic, rare and at-risk species populations and habitats, and the best occurrences of all representative terrestrial and aquatic ecosystem types. Ecoregional assessments are valuable sources of information for land use decision-makers in provincial, federal, state and First Nations governments, industry, and other sectors. Additionally, ecoregional assessments have proven to be a powerful new approach in assisting stakeholders to achieve consensus around land use planning issues by allowing for the examination of different land-use scenarios. Ecoregional assessments provide the blueprint from which stakeholders can determine exploration, development, restoration, and mitigation options with optimal conservation outcomes for proposed resource development projects. Study Area Description British Columbia’s Central Interior ecoregion covers approximately 24.6 million hectares (~61 million acres) and encompasses the Sub-Boreal Interior and Central Interior ecoprovinces. The ecoregion has a unique combination of topography and climate, and supports a wide range of birds, fish, mammals and insects. It encompasses the flat-to-rolling Chilcotin, Cariboo, Nechako and McGregor plateaus; the Chilcotin, Bulkley, Thatsa and Hart ranges; and the Omineca and Skeena mountains. This immense landscape overlaps the administrative boundaries of a number of regional districts including the Cariboo, Bulkley-Nechako, Peace River, Stikine, Kitimat-Stikine, Fraser-Fort George, Central Coast, Squamish-Lillooet, Mount Waddington, and Thompson-Nicola. The main economic driver is forestry, but cattle ranching, mining, agriculture and tourism also play important roles in the economy.
Approximately 10 per cent, or 2.5 million ha of the ecoregion is currently protected. The major provincial protected areas are Ts’yl-os (approximately 233,000 ha), Itcha Ilgachuz (112,000 ha), Entiako (122,529 ha), Big Creek (65,982 ha), and Tweedsmuir (981,000 ha). |
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| Mueller Horses, Tatlayoko Valley © Pierre Iachetti |
One of the main purposes of this project will be to identify landscapes with conservation values within the Mountain Pine Beetle impacted regions to make the best land use planning decision in light of the epidemic.
The main objective for the regional atlas will be to map the conservation values in the Mountain Pine Beetle infected areas of BC in order to prioritize landscapes for protection. As a secondary objective the information provided by the atlas will be used to engage local communities is such a way that the regional context provided by the atlas will be of assistance in local resource use decisions. Project outcomes will include information at scale, technical reports on specific conservation targets, a variety of mapping functions, a data analysis tool for decision making and similar products that will enable the community of users to make the best conservation decisions for their specific needs. The intended results for the atlas will allow communities in this region to access a wide variety of information, from a single source, that will assist them in creating community sustainability plans. Further, the atlas will enable NCC to prioritize and continuously monitor conservation need through a series of environmental indicators.
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| Interior Douglas Fir Winter Range Habitat, Tatlayoko © Tim Ennis |
Ecoregion Decision Support Tools
This dynamic decision support tool will allow for more sophisticated and on going analyses to be conducted using the same data collected for the Central Interior ecoregional assessment and Fraser Basin pilot. Such a tool ensures that the conservation impacts of decisions can be fully explored and recognized by:
- Providing a framework for developing direct links between regional and landscape level objectives;
- Providing strategic information to ongoing government planning processes, for example, pre-tenure planning for oil and gas development or harvest of beetle-killed timber; and
- Providing a dynamic modeling element that can examine potential changes to the landscape over time, whether through natural or human development.
The system will be available as a set of Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure compliant Web services. Users will be able to use a common dataset to explore sustainable development scenarios that will have various impacts to local and regional biodiversity. Results will consist both of reports and graphic (map) based outputs.
Species At Risk Analyses Assessment Project
This will address Species At Risk using methods that include a pilot of the BC government's Species At Risk Framework.