Resource roads offer easy access to B.C.’s backcountry — but at what cost to wildlife? As the province seeks public input on their future by April 27, we explore the ecological toll of roads and recreation, and how smarter management could help protect species like grizzlies, elk and caribou.
My face burns as I slow from running to a fast walk; hands on knees, gasping as I enter the final, steep kilometres to the summit. The dirt road I’ve been following for the last 9km has slowly petered out, and I’m on the finishing stretch.
As I collapse onto the summit plateau, a grin comes across my face — 1,200m below me, a river shimmers in the sun. Across the valley, the neat rectangles of cut blocks create a patchwork effect on the lower slopes. It somewhat spoils the view, but the reality is that I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for forestry in this valley, putting in roads like the one I’ve just emerged from.
British Columbia’s Crown lands are a lattice of resource roads, ranging from heavily-used FSRs, to spur roads, mining exploration and lesser-used wilderness roads. The vast majority of them were constructed by the forestry industry to allow access to timber. Once forestry companies move on, their roads usually remain, providing recreationalists with far easier access to backcountry terrain.
While that access is a boon for everyone from trail runners to mushroom pickers, dirt bikers, hunters and snowmobilers, it can come at a heavy cost to our local wildlife and their habitats. Roads, and the recreationalists who use them, can fragment wildlife habitats, disrupt sensitive species and even increase wildlife mortalities. The science is clear on this: the more roads there are in an area, the worse it is for wildlife.
An oft-touted fact is that there are more than 100,000km of resource roads in the Kootenays alone. Without a clear plan as to how those roads are managed and when to deactivate or revegetate roads, that number will continue to grow. But the BC government is now seeking public feedback to support a long-term plan for resource roads on Crown land.
Kootenay residents have until April 27 to fill out this online survey, which takes about 10 minutes to complete. But before you do so, here’s a summary of what the science tells us about the impacts of roads on wildlife, and possible paths forward.
To support recovering grizzly bear populations, we must limit road densities
Grizzly bear populations have rebounded significantly over the last few decades, but more still needs to be done to help the species recover. Limiting road densities and restricting vehicle access to high-quality grizzly habitat is one of the most effective conservation tools at our disposal.
When the density of roads in grizzly habitat increases, it both reduces bears’ use of that area, and increases the number of human-caused grizzly bear deaths. A 2018 study 1 on the threatened Kettle-Granby grizzly population in B.C.’s Kootenay-Boundary region found that areas with more than 600m of road per square kilometre (km/km2) had fewer grizzly bears, while areas with high-quality habitat and few or no roads had more bears.
This road density threshold first began to be accepted in the 90s, and was again confirmed in a 2019 study as a scientific concensus 2. It is now often used as a key recommendation to support grizzly conservation efforts across North America, and is referenced in various grizzly bear recovery plans and strategies.
Significantly, the same study also found that restricting motorized vehicle access boosted bear numbers by 27% in the closure areas. This led its authors to suggest a compromise: prioritize road closures in the highest-quality grizzly habitat, and reduce human access to other areas by limiting road densities to 0.6km/km2.
Elk are particularly sensitive to motorized recreation
Unsurprisingly, the impacts of recreation on wildlife are species-specific and influenced by both the local environment and seasons. But almost all research agrees that motorized recreation, such as ATVs and dirt bikes, have a particularly big impact on elk.
The species has been found to strongly avoid recreational trails, especially during ATV use. This avoidance behaviour can reduce habitat use by 50-70%3, more than halving the amount of space available to elk for foraging and resting. During hunting season, the effect can be even more pronounced: elk have been shown to not only avoid areas close to roads, but to also select habitats that provide cover from predators4.
Aside from the aforementioned impacts of ATVs on elk, motorized recreation in wild areas can introduce a broad range of threats, from noise pollution, to illegal hunting and habitat degradation.
Human-powered sports can have a significant impact on wildlife too
Motorized recreation gets a bad rap when it comes to wildlife health but non-motorized sports like trail running, hiking and mountain biking aren’t without their impacts either.
For many species, increased noise from recreation can lead to increased stress levels and altered habitat usage. Studies have found that wolves 5 may adjust what time of day they use different areas based on human activity levels, while mountain goats are more likely to situate themselves close to escape terrain in high human-use areas6. Others have identified that faster-moving sports, like mountain biking, are more likely to trigger avoidance behaviours, particularly in elk and deer. And both ground-nesting birds and large mammals may avoid areas with high hiker presence.
These effects may be felt more strongly at different times of year, too, like during spring, when both humans and grizzly bears are very active in low-elevation valley bottoms.
Recreation aside, roads have an impact on their own
Conversations about resource road management tend to focus on the impacts of recreation, but even when people aren’t present, roads still influence the environment and creatures around them.
Predators like wolves can use roads to gain easier access to their prey, including endangered deep-snow caribou. Naturally, caribou dwell in old-growth forests where thick understoreys make it harder for wolves to access them. But resource roads fast-track the movement of wolves into caribou habitat, which in turn has been shown to increase wolf-caused mortalities.
A 2022 study found that revegetating resource roads slowed wolves down by 23% and caribou by 40%. The study’s authors proposed that this would likely reduce encounter rates between the two species, therefore also reducing predation.
Then there’s the impact of roads on aquatic ecosystems. Sediment runoff from roads is known to impact water quality. In addition, where resource roads cross streams, they often redirect the flow through culverts. When those culverts become blocked with debris, they restrict the passage of fish species, like cutthroat trout and bull trout.
Must we stop using resource roads altogether then?
It’s clear that there are a lot of complex issues surrounding resource roads — and we haven’t even begun to touch on liability or the taxpayer dollars required to maintain them. But resource roads bring a lot of good into our world too: they allow more people to experience and connect with the wild, they provide access to trailheads, and the activities they facilitate bring us joy, not to mention improving our physical and mental health. So the question is not whether or not we must stop using them but rather: how can we manage them to better look after wildlife, while also still allowing for some recreational use?
To answer that question, we must take a nuanced approach and look at all the different tools in our toolkit. To begin with, there are many different types of resource roads: FSRs, spur roads, wilderness roads, non-status roads, permit roads…the list goes on. Some of these are essential for industry, some provide access to high-value recreation sites or even rural communities, and some are lesser-used. Different types of roads require a different management approach — and there are plenty to choose from. We could look to seasonal and species-specific closures (like Ungulate Winter Ranges) in some areas, or restricting access to only certain forms of recreation in others. Often, the best option to maintain habitat availability for wildlife is to deactivate roads entirely.
Road closures without effective deactivation leads to the issue of compliance — closures only work if the public adheres to them, and it’s often oh-so-easy to manoeuvre around closure signs. This is proving to be a major issue in places like Phillips Pass in the southern Rockies, a critical migration corridor for elk and other species, where monitoring in 2023/2024 found motorized vehicle use peaked during periods in which the pass was legally closed.
That brings us to the final issue at play here. It’s all well and good to talk about the importance of wildlife health from the couch, but when push comes to shove, are we willing to make sacrifices for the cause? For us, the cost will be small — we might need to work a little harder to access the wild places we love, or perhaps we’ll need to find another spectacular mountain to climb. Lucky for us that we live in a region where there are literally thousands to choose from. For wild animals, the cost of us not making those sacrifices may be far, far greater.
