Logging plan in home of at-risk species (bull trout) draws fire

Bow River Shuttles writes: This story provides just one more reason for every fly fisher in Southern Alberta to provide input to the South Saskatchewan Regional Plan before the Dec 21 deadline. 

The province last month approved a logging plan near Hidden Creek in the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies, which is home to 75 per cent of the Oldman watershed’s bull trout population. The bull trout, which is Alberta’s provincial fish, was declared threatened by a federal committee on Monday.

Photograph by: Calgary Herald/Files

Logging plan in home of at-risk species draws fire 

By Colette Derworiz, Calgary Herald December 4, 2012 

CALGARY - A decision to allow logging near Hidden Creek, a tributary stream to the Oldman River that’s home to the threatened bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout, is coming under fire from conservationists. 

The plan, approved by the province last month, allows Spray Lakes Sawmills to cut trees on 57 hectares of forest this winter near the stream in the Eastern Slopes of the Rockies. 

Hidden Creek is home to 75 per cent of the Oldman watershed’s bull trout population, which was declared threatened Monday by a federal committee, as well as the imperilled westslope cutthroat trout.

“The legacy of 60 years of logging and the erosion and sediment from those industrial footprints has meant that populations of both bull trout and westslope cutthroat trout has declined in those systems,” said Lorne Fitch, a retired biologist who lives in southern Alberta. “So we’re at a point where it’s not necessarily the best of the best left, it’s the last of the best left. 

“That’s what Hidden Creek represents,” he added.  

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