UBC forestry professor Fred Bunnell is convinced efforts to save the wetlands in some of the more arid regions of the province, like the south Okanagan and parts of the Cariboo Chilcotin, are a lost cause.
Evidence is mounting that climate change is too far gone to reverse that drying trend.
Bunnell believes it's time for groups like Ducks Unlimited Canada, the Canadian Wildlife Service, and the Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection to shift their wetland conservation efforts to other parts of the province where they can make a difference.
He thinks those agencies would be better off spending their time and resources trying to find effective ways to protect wetlands in the province's snow-dominated higher elevations, where stream flows are released gradually with each spring melt, and the Prince George area is prime territory for just such a study.
"We need to quit buggering around with the wetlands that are toast," said Bunnell, who will deliver the annual Doug Little Memorial Lecture at UNBC's Canfor Theatre on Nov. 8.
"Now it's clear, and they have some choices to make. The problem is, about 75 per cent of British Columbia's wetlands are small, and almost all the small ones are shallow and they are drying up and it's not an insignificant loss."
Wetlands act as environmental kidneys, filtering out sediment and pollutants and absorbing excess nutrients that can prove harmful to fish and other animals that live in those water habitats. They also act as natural dams, collecting flood water and restoring groundwater sources while holding back stream flows that can cause erosion.
"All the water is connected, but we don't see the connections because so much of it is underground," Bunnell said. "A pretty high proportion of communities in British Columbia depend on aquifers and some of them are in deep trouble. Near where I live, in Langley, the depth of the aquifer has gone down eight metres in 40 years, and it's happening all over the province. We're going to have to do something about it."
In his research, Bunnell has spent considerable time digging into databases which document years of studies tracking subtle changes in nature and that scientific evidence tells an irrefutable tale of what he sees as an unstoppable trend to a warmer climate in Canada.
"B.C. is going to fare better and already is, other than our ocean, because it's such an incredibly rich place in terms of species -- it's the richest north temperate region on the planet and that gives it a lot of resilience," said Bunnell. "The way the jet stream works, we'll stay a lot mellower than some places. It's still going to be extreme, and some of it won't be pleasant, but it won't be like the drought in Texas. The Okanagan has a problem for water, because the hotter it is, the more water evaporates. In Prince George, a lot is going to depend on what the hell happens with the forests up there, and it's pretty unpredictable right now. Our ability to predict how species will respond is pretty minimal, a lot less than we thought."
One of Bunnell's own studies on the consequences of climate change on wetlands went viral when it was posted on the Canadian Wildlife Service after it was published in 2011. A few months later, his $60,000 federal grant for wetlands studies was clawed back by the Harper government.
In the wake of the pine beetle epidemic that's killed 80 per cent of pine trees in the central and southern Interior, he said the provincial Liberals have not done their part either over the past decade, having dramatically scaled back forestry studies to access the health of the forests.
"We don't do the surveys anymore, and we don't know what is out there, and nobody knows unless you walk up and down the bloody hills to find what is left," Bunnell said. "It's so complicated when you shift the competitive balance between Species A, B and C. We're going where we've never been, so we don't have data to tell us what happens when it gets this hot and that dry."
Bunnell is a founding member of Healthy Forests-Healthy Communities, a nonpartisan, volunteer group that acts on the recommendations of experts and community members to enable informed decision-making for forest lands management in B.C. He pointed to the examples of people-led conservation initiatives in B.C., like the blockades to protest forestry practices at Clayoquot Sound, Haida Gwai and the Great Bear Rainforest, and predicts those movements will continue.
"It's going to be an interesting future for our kids," said Bunnell. "There are things we can do, but I'm pessimistic about governments leading it. It's going to have to come from small communities, the people actually affected. There are some serious tradeoffs that have to be made and some of that is going on now."
The Doug Little lecture series started in 1996 as an initiative of UNBC's natural resources and environmental studies faculty. The event commemorates Little, a former senior vice-president of forest timber operations at Northwood Pulp and Timber Ltd., who died in 1993.
Bunnell's presentation is open to the public.
