Wildlife Guidelines for Backcountry Tourism/Commercial Recreation

Changes from Interim Guidelines

The following is a list of substantive differences between the current draft guidelines and the Interim wildlife guidelines for commercial backcountry recreation in British Columbia, published by the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection in 2002:

• Guidelines are presented as a series of hyperlinked web pages to allow users to navigate quickly to relevant information.
• Guideline development was framed by a strategy that:
  • Addressed concerns of stakeholders raised after the release of the Interim Guidelines.
  • Provided a context for the guidelines in relation to other legal and policy tools.
  • Stressed a results-based approach based on precautionary defaults and the development of operational strategies.
• Guidelines were developed with extensive input from commercial and public recreationists.
• Guidelines have been expanded to include both wildlife and their habitats.
• Rather than a species-by-species approach, guidelines are stratified by categories of recreational activity and secondarily by broad habitat types. Cross-references to individual species have been included, along with background information and references from the Interim Guidelines.
• Guidelines for different recreational activities are presented in a consistent format and are stratified into 5 issues categories:
  • Degradation of soil, air and water quality
  • Integrity of vegetation communities
  • Direct disturbance of wildlife
  • Integrity of fisheries resources
  • Special management (addition guidelines for specific values of concern)
• References to facilities development in the Interim Guidelines were removed.
• “Management objectives”, “impact mitigation guidelines” and success indicators” have been replaced with “results”, “desired behaviours”, “indicators” and “limits”.
• Guidelines not directly related to recreation activities or to the responsibilities of commercial recreation operators and public recreationists have been removed.
• Default approach distances have been standardized to:
  • 500 m line-of-sight for aircraft and all wildlife (except 1500 m for Mountain Goats, based on recent scientific work from Alaska).
  • 500 m line-of-sight for motorized ground-based activities in open areas in relation to large mammals.
  • 100 m line-of-sight for non-motorized ground-based activities in open areas in relation to large mammals.
  • 100 m on water (consistent with bear-viewing guidelines).
  • In all cases the desired behaviour is stay at distances sufficient to prevent changes in the behaviour of animals.