Environmental Trends 2007

Ecosystems

A large proportion of the total area of B.C. is forested (as of the mid-1990s).

Only two per cent of the province’s land area has been converted to human use, mostly at lower elevations and particularly along valley bottoms. This permanent change has had a significant impact on wildlife, as lower elevations encompass ecosystems that provide valuable wildlife habitat.
In the mid-1990s, forests over 140 years old still covered 27 per cent of the provincial land base, while forests 20-140 years old covered 30 per cent.
More information on the current state of B.C. forests is available in the report: State of British Columbia Forests: 2006.

Estuaries are essential ecosystems, as they are home to 80 per cent of coastal wildlife, including salmon and migratory birds.

Conservation tenures cover about three times more area than economic interest tenures in the 440 mapped B.C. estuaries.

Over half the total estuary intertidal area had no tenures of either type. Many of those areas have important environmental values that should be assessed as part of estuary conservation planning.
More estuaries (58 per cent) in the highly populated Georgia Basin had economic tenures than in other parts of the coast.
While Georgia Basin estuaries also had proportionately more conservation tenures than other areas of the coast, this proportion was still less than half, which may be a concern given the highly productive marine ecosystems in the region and the pressure resulting from high population densities in the region.

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