Birders and biologists are banding together to urge the B.C. government to protect ancient forests on southwestern Vancouver Island in a bid to save threatened marbled murrelet nesting sites.
Around a dozen citizen scientists are documenting the rare robin-sized seabird, which raises its young in old-growth forest found in tree farm licence 46, which includes the Fairy Creek region near Port Renfrew, said team leader and avid birder Royann Petrell.
The proposal submitted in December suggests adding 828 hectares to an existing 603-hectare murrelet habitat area in Fairy Creek to protect nearly all the watershed as well as contiguous forests. The plan also proposes a new 168-hectare WHA in the Gordon and Camper watersheds. Petrell said she noticed the province's digital mapping system didn't include data on murrelets in Fairy Creek, so she decided she had better register her findings.Forestry companies, such as Teal Cedar, which controls TFL 46, are supposed to determine what threatened species are present in their region when developing logging plans, Petrell said.“That disturbed me,” Petrell said.
Murrelets are secretive and very hard to spot, given they tend to fly in and out of forests in the hours before dawn; they are largely detected by sound or radar surveys, Petrell said. The murrelets' most recent protection plan, created in 2021, now outlines the need to also protect critical marine and terrestrial habitats.
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