Some of these toe-slope benches were cleared in the 1960s to develop the Yellowhead Highway, with the added result that most of the remainder became easily accessible to industrial logging and recreation, and more recently to research and interpretation.
With the establishment of the new University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) in Prince George the 1990s, further research continued to highlight the significance of the ICH zone east of the city.
This was reduced by the province's chief forester in the early 2000s as the appreciation of non-timber values of the zone began to be realized and as the Mountain Pine Beetle catastrophe spread across the Interior Plateau to the west and large-scale salvage logging moved in that direction.
Some of this came to a head in 2006 with the development of an old growth forest trail by the nearby small community of Dome Creek in the richest site yet found, a place that was also scheduled to be logged.
The Rocky Mountain Trench east of Prince George therefore offers the last best chance to preserve some of the rare 'Tier-1' ICH sites.