Recent Items – 1999
March 11, 1999, By Daily News Staff
B.C. Environment Minister Cathy McGregor is expected today to unveil the Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) for Dawson Creek at the George Dawson Inn. Submitted plan calls for creation of 153,000 hectares of new park land. A Ministry of Environment press release stated that McGregor will announce a major land use decision at 2 p.m. for part of the northeast and LRMP table chair Jim Forbes said it’s likely to be the final plan.
Forbes said he does not expect that the government will have made any significant changes to the 140-page plan that was submitted to Victoria in September 1998.
The proposal calls for the creation of 153,000 hectares of park land in the area covered by the Dawson Creek Forest District, bringing the total to 203,000 hectares or 6.9 per cent.
The table was given the mandate to bring the percentage of park land in the forest district up to about 6.5 per cent. It also calls for the creation of 380,000 hectares of special resource management lands in wildlife/recreation areas, major river corridors and cultural/heritage land, amounting to 12.9 per cent.
Of the remaining 80.2 per cent, 13.1 per cent is private land and not covered by the LRMP, 3.3 per cent is common grazing land such as Bear Mountain, Groundbirch, Sunset Prairie and Pine River.
The rest is divided into areas where resource management is fully permitted, though depending on the area, special consideration will be given for the existing wildlife, such as grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountain foothills and caribou in the Alberta Plateau, south of Dawson Creek.