While representatives for countries around the world have gathered in Montreal to discuss how to protect ecosystems and life on land and at sea, a local wilderness advocacy group says the focus on the survival of caribou in the West Kootenays and other parts of B.C seems to have been lost on the Canadian government.

Craig Pettitt, Director of Valhalla Wilderness Society, VWS, told KCR News that the group is now on 10 years of waiting to hear back on its proposal to make three interior B.C areas known as caribou habitats, as provincial parks, and that the Cop15-meeting in Quebec appears to not have put any focus on the threat of extinction facing the species.

According to the province, the number of caribou in British Columbia has dropped from about 40,000 animals to about 17,000, with the steepest declines occurring over the past 40 years. Some herds being tracked in the area are decimated to below 30, Pettitt said.

"Roughly 50 percent of our parks proposal is already ungulate winter range," Pettitt said. "So it would not be removing a large amount of land from the timber industry."

The group has been looking at linking habitats from the Quesnel Lake-area, where there is a large caribou herd 4-500 in the vicinity, with Glacier Park and around Selkirk Mountain, as well as a known habitat west of Revelstoke called Rainbow Jordan.

"Roughly 50 percent of our proposal is already ungulate winter range," Pettitt said. "So it would not be removing a large amount of land from the timber industry."

The Ministry of Forests, which received the plans from the society, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

'I am extremely frustrated' - Valhalla Wilderness Society Director Craig Pettitt talks to KCR News about the caribou situation in the province