Ecosystem Protection

Proportion of Ecologically Intact Terrestrial and Marine Habitat in Protected Areas on the B.C. Coast

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Protected areas in north and central B.C. are set in more ecologically intact landscapes than protected areas in southern B.C.

The quality of the environment around a protected area is a measure of the effectiveness of protection. Areas surrounded by roads and human activities are isolated and organisms are less able to move naturally within the landscape.

In the following analysis of ecological integrity (‘intactness’), a land area was considered intact if it was more than five kilometres from any road and at least 2000 hectares in size.

Marine areas were defined as ecologically intact if they were not subject to specific activities, such as fishing, aquaculture, boat anchorages, industrial sites and cruise ship routes.

As of January 2006:

• Photo credit: Steve Pridgeon, BC Parks

  46% of the land on the northern and central B.C. coast (the Coast and Mountains ecoprovince) was ecologically intact. About 7% of the area was both intact and inside protected areas. The analysis show that these protected areas are embedded in an intact landscape with good connectivity between intact areas.

• On the south coast (the Georgia Depression ecoprovince), only 2.8% of the land was ecologically intact and most of that (2.7%) was already within protected areas. Almost all of the land surrounding protected areas has roads, isolating them from other intact areas.

• Less than 25% of the continental shelf (Georgia Basin, Inner Pacific Shelf, and ecoregions on the Outer Pacific Shelf), was ecologically intact. Of the very small proportion of B.C.’s marine area that is protected, only one-third would be considered ecologically intact.

Maintaining high-quality habitat in the spaces between protected areas will be challenging in the Georgia Depression and along the continental shelf, where human activity is the greatest.

For detailed information, including graph data, see In-Depth report [pdf].

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