VICTORIA - British Columbia is aiming to protect the province's fossil sites, but Agriculture and Lands Minister Steve Thomson downplayed calls from scientists for an all-encompassing law that prevents plundering of dinosaur finds and mining of fossil beds for cat litter.

Thomson's ministry released a fossil management summary report Wednesday that discusses protecting fossils and fossil sites, but it does not shoot for a single heritage protection law similar to one that Alberta uses to protect dinosaur fossils.

Thomson said it is premature to comment on new legislation, but suggested the government is leaning towards tweaking several laws to offer more protection for fossils and fossil sites.

"What's fair to say is we recognize there were some gaps and that's why we've undertaken the (fossil) management framework," he said. "But we do have tools under the Land Act, the Mineral Tenure Act, the Park Act, under the Ecological Reserve Act, Environment and Land Use Act. All can be and have been used to provide that protection."

The ministry sought consultation earlier this year from stakeholders and the public on managing the province's fossil resources. Among the areas open for input were protection of significant fossil sites and protection of significant fossils.

"A general protection of all fossils and fossil sites in the province is not proposed," the report said. "Rather, the intent is to protect key fossil sites that have been deemed valuable at the provincial, national or international level."

Simon Fraser University paleontologist Bruce Archibald said the fossil framework process represented an opportunity for B.C. to bring the stewardship of its world-renowned fossil heritage into the modern era, but the report is a flop.

"British Columbia could finally catch up with what almost all other jurisdictions in the developed world -- and in fact some Third-World countries -- have done to protect their paleontological resources," Archibald said. "Apart from issuing this collection of public comments, I see no new work announced here, no progress."

Harvard-trained Archibald, an expert in the 50-million-year-old Eocene period, said one of his prime exploration sites -- the McAbee fossil beds near Cache Creek, B.C., -- allows commercial fossil hunting, roadbuilding and mining for cat litter.

He said a government memorandum of understanding to protect valuable fossils at the McAbee site, while also allowing industry onto the site, is a glaring example of why B.C. needs a single heritage protection law.

"The outcome of the memorandum has been (that) the ministry has not provided the oversight that they agreed to, the rate of destruction has increased to unprecedented levels, fewer significant fossils have been made available to science than ever before, and access to the site and to specimens has been further restricted to science," Archibald said.

"This memorandum has been a complete failure."

Tumbler Ridge paleontologist Richard McCrea said B.C.'s fossil-rich heritage needs one law devoted to protection because the current patchwork of laws do not devote complete attention to a valuable scientific and economic resource.

"You just can't grab specific bits and pieces of legislation and cover all those aspects," he said. "Something's going to slip through. What they should look at is taking existing legislation from other provinces that have similar resources and just tailor (their laws) to British Columbia. You don't have to build Rome twice."

McCrea recently discovered what he believes could be a major find of dinosaur fossils in northeast B.C., near Tumbler Ridge.

He said he found more than 100 kilograms of fossilized dinosaur bones in the area on the surface, leading him to speculate the remote forested area was at one time home to meat-eating and plant-eating dinosaurs.

McCrea, who operates on a shoe-string budget provided by the municipal council in Tumbler Ridge, is heading back to the area this weekend for a more in-depth look.

He said he regularly tells hikers he encounters on his expeditions that he's a geologist looking for coal seams to protect the dinosaur sites.

"If the Tumbler Ridge dinosaur site is plundered without protection before these skeletons can be removed, the province will have to bear responsibility."