OTTAWA—Satellite imagery proves a much lauded agreement between Canada’s logging industry and environmental groups to protect boreal caribou habitat was a failure, says a U.S. environment group.

The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement was signed in 2010 between 19 forestry companies and six environmental groups, including Greenpeace and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society.

The environmental groups agreed to stop boycotting the forestry companies in exchange for the companies agreeing not to do any logging on about 70 million acres of boreal forest between British Columbia and Newfoundland.

The moratorium was to last for three years, during which time negotiations for permanent protection for caribou habitat were to be completed.

However, Anthony Swift, director of the Canada program of the Natural Resources Defense Council based in Chicago, said satellite images analyzed over the last six months show logging did not stop in at least two areas of Quebec which were supposed to be part of the moratorium.

The images indicate significant logging took place both during the three years of the moratorium and in the four years since it ended, which Swift said proves the agreement failed in its stated goal to protect habitat of the endangered woodland caribou.

“The moratorium was created as part of an agreement during a time when there was a recognition by all parties that the woodland caribou and the intact boreal forest areas they relied on was under severe threat,” Swift told The Canadian Press on Wednesday. “That’s what led to the agreement. So the fact that we have seen such a further erosion of woodland caribou habitat since then is a cause for alarm.”

A spokesperson for the Forest Products Association of Canada says any logging that occurred in the region was not done by any company that signed the document.

The agreement’s goal of a permanent protection plan did not materialize because some parties such as Greenpeace walked away from the table, said Kate Lindsay.

She said the Quebec government has stepped in since, including setting a boundary known as the northern limit, beyond which logging is banned.

Seventy-five per cent of caribou habitat in Quebec falls north of that boundary, said Lindsay.

The forest products association asked Environment Minister Catherine McKenna last week to delay an October deadline for provinces to produce protection plans for each of the 51 woodland caribou ranges in the country.

Lindsay said the science linking habitat disturbance from human activities, such as logging or oil and gas development, to caribou loss is incomplete. FPAC believes, for example, the impact of climate change on caribou isn’t known well enough yet and that restricting logging as a way to save the caribou is premature.

FPAC also notes for every tree cut down, three are planted and says it is committed to a sustainable future for forests and caribou.

The organization represented 18 of the 19 companies which signed the Boreal Forest Agreement.

Several environment groups said Wednesday the agreement’s failure is a signal provincial and federal governments must act.

Swift said the federal government’s own estimates are that 30 per cent of Canada’s caribou could disappear within the next 15 years, so there is no time for delay.

Even if climate change is part of the cause for harm to the caribou, logging operations should still be restricted to protect the habitat as well, he said.

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