Recreational users of all types have come to rely on B.C.'s resource roads to access the backcountry, writes Larry Pynn.CHAD HIPOLITO/The Globe and Mail
Larry Pynn is a veteran environmental journalist who lives in Maple Bay on Vancouver Island. He publishes sixmountains.ca.
It is stupefying to think that the number of resource roads in British Columbia – 600,000 kilometres worth, at last count – could stretch to the moon and halfway back again.
While these gravel and dirt roads were created for industry – mostly forestry, but also mining, hydro and oil-and-gas – recreational users of all types have come to rely on them to access the backcountry.
You’d think there’d be more than enough roads to keep everyone happy, but that’s not the way it works.
When resource activities cease, these roads tend to be deactivated. Over time the roads get rougher and more pot-holed, and the forest reclaims the land one sapling at a time.
Roads can also be closed owing to factors such as landslides, culvert failures and floods, including bridge washouts that can take years to replace – if ever.
All of this is problematic for recreational users seeking continued access to their favourite lakes, trails, rivers and campsites.
The Outdoor Recreation Council of BC this month launched a year-long survey aimed at creating a provincial inventory of resource roads that are most important for recreation, including those now closed or difficult to access by vehicle.
The number of resource roads is growing by an estimated 10,000 kilometres a year, the B.C. Forest Practices Board said in a 2015 report. Problems include siltation of streams, habitat loss, landslides, road kill from vehicles and increased hunting pressure.
“There is a wide understanding that not every road should be opened,” says Louise Pedersen, the council’s executive director. “Each kilometre is certainly not equally important.”
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The province provides logging companies reduced stumpage rates to compensate for the costs of road building and maintenance.
But when the timber is removed, there is no obligation for companies to continue maintaining those roads, and no requirement for government to maintain recreational access.
Often roads are closed with little or no input from recreational users.
There’s hope for change. The province’s Outdoor Recreation Strategy, released in May, includes support for a “modernized framework for high-value recreation access and resource roads.”
There’s more than a walk in the park at stake.
Outdoor recreation directly contributed $4.8-billion to the B.C. economy and generated $17-billion in revenue in 2023.
“It’s not a fringe activity,” says Ms. Pedersen, noting it can offer a financial boost for hard-hit rural resource communities.
Under the current system, there can be a disconnect between a decision to deactivate a road and its importance to local tourism.
“It has to be part of our tourism strategy,” says Conservative MLA Donegal Wilson, a former executive director of the BC Snowmobile Federation. “You can’t send Fernie out to market tourism and then have visitors show up and the trails are closed.”
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One nagging concern is whether the interests of nature will be left behind in the push for greater access to the backcountry.
After all, the closing of resource roads provides wildlife with a measure of relief from the ubiquity of human disturbance.
“There might be really good reasons why a resource road should be closed such as wildlife or cultural concerns,” Ms. Pedersen says.
It’s also important to realize that anyone who ventures into the wild has some negative impact, something researchers have been documenting for years.
A 2024 study published in Current Biology involved remote cameras and the broadcasting of recreation noises on wildlife trails in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming.
The results showed that wildlife were more likely to flee and were vigilant longer after hearing recreation noise. Wildlife abundance dipped the week following the broadcast of recreation noise.
“These findings indicate recreation noise, even at low levels, may cause avoidance of habitats, which may limit access to resources and result in indirect habitat loss for species,” the study concluded.
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And then there are the domesticated threats.
“Dogs are terrible,” says Peter Larose, an instructor at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops and a Mountain Biking BC director.
“They run up ahead, they scare animals, they jump into wetlands … and their poop smells the same as wolves and coyotes so that tends to displace ungulates.”
In my own experience, motorized recreation inevitably results in abuse of public lands – illegal campfires, gunplay, timber theft, strewn garbage, target shooting, etc.
As a measure of the problem, the Four Wheel Drive Association of BC has collected almost 114 tonnes of debris since November, 2025, on forestry roads in just three areas of Vancouver Island, everything from household trash to torched recreational vehicles.
As the debate on natural resource roads across B.C. heats up, Ms. Pedersen suggests one solution to bad behaviour by a “small minority” is public vigilance in the backcountry. “It’s helpful to have people out there to keep an eye on what’s going on.”
Whether there’ll be functional natural resource roads allowing people to get there remains an open question.