Karst Caves Threatened by Logging

0:00It's March 25th. You're listening to Canada News today, AI-powered local news. Five years ago, environmental campaigner Mark Worthing led a small team into a carst-caved system deep under Vancouver Island. Their goal was to survey a route 350 kilometers north of Victoria and prove it ran beneath a key logging road. That evidence could have blocked heavy machinery and saved an old-growth forest and its watershed. They pushed through tight squeezes for over two hours, but stopped just three meters short. Carst features like kays, sinkholes, and underground streams form fragile ecosystems packed with bats, rare invertebrates, and clean water sources. For nearby communities, clear-cutting and road building above them erodes soil and disrupt these hidden habitats. While British Columbia has guidelines from the early 2000s to protect them, experts say the rules rely too much on logging companies to follow. Through, Mark Worthing, now with the Al Winacola Foundation, has surveyed many sites for

1:03indigenous groups and locals, but his warnings often go ignored. Research at Genika Aing Cornish from Vancouver Island University recently told the regional district of Nanaimo that the area needs better mapping and oversight, as most cars remains unknown and vulnerable. A 2014 probe by the BC Forest Practices Board checked forestry practices and found no clear damage to protected features. Still, it highlighted that best management steps were usually skipped, with assessments varying wildly depending on who did them. Forest companies must flag significant cars, but standards fall short. Cauls grow for a unified provincial law to make protections binding, not optional. With wildfires and logging already scarring northern island landscapes, safeguarding these underground worlds could prevent irreversible loss for. Echo systems and water supplies.