The Valhalla Wilderness Society has requested an emergency order to save BC’s mountain caribou.
The petition goes to federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna under the Species at Risk Act.
The society along with the University of Victoria environmental law program and biologist Dr. Lee Harding fear the caribou are close to extinction.
Society spokesperson Anne Sherrod says immediate action needs to be taken.
She says the BC Mountain Caribou Recovery Plan hasn’t been effective.
The plan was implemented in 2007 to restrict forestry and high elevation snowmobiling within the caribou habitat but Sherod says it hasn’t been enforced.
Four of the ten species of caribou found in southern BC are already extinct.
Sherod says if nothing is done more could be extinct within a few years.