Environmental protection should be the first consideration if the military decides to sell surplus land around Greater Victoria, conservation groups say.
Some of Canada’s most endangered ecosystems are found on Department of National Defence land in the capital region, the groups say.
DND, which controls more than 4,000 hectares of land around Greater Victoria, is looking at selling surplus land. The Ancient Forest Alliance has called on the federal government to create protected areas or turn parcels over to agencies which can protect ecosystems.
“It might be surprising to most Canadians, but, in many cases, ecosystems in the best condition in Canada are on DND lands,” said Ken Wu of the AFA.
“The occasional bullets and bombs still often have lower impacts than the large-scale industrial resource extraction, clearcutting, strip-mining, oil drilling, agriculture and suburban sprawl that impact other lands.”
Old-growth coastal Douglas fir forests and Garry oak meadows are among ecosystems represented in DND-owned areas such as Rocky Point and Mary Hill in Metchosin, the area next to Fort Rodd National Historic Park and Royal Roads University, which leases land from DND.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DND_Giant_Arbutus.jpg600400TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-28 00:00:002023-04-06 19:09:33Conservationists fearful of DND land sale
Ancient Forest Alliance worries about potential sell-off of unused DND lands for real estate development and calls for federal government to let Canadian Wildlife Service, Parks Canada, the provinces, regional districts, and First Nations protect unused DND lands.
The potential sell-off of Department of National Defence (DND) lands reported by the Ottawa Citizen and the Canadian media recently is causing concern for conservationists who fear some of Canada’s most endangered ecosystems could be jeopardized by real estate development.
Instead the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the federal government to protect the endangered ecosystems and exceptional natural areas on unused DND lands through:
– the Canadian Wildlife Service as new National Wildlife Areas
– Parks Canada as new National Parks
– transferring unused DND lands to the provinces for new Provincial Parks, Provincial Conservancies (in BC), or Ecological Reserves
– to Regional Districts in BC as new Regional Parks
– to First Nations as treaty settlement lands under agreement to become new First Nations protected areas where subsistence, cultural, and spiritual uses will continue
The Department of National Defence controls 800 parcels of federal public lands totalling 2.25 million hectares (about two-thirds the size of Vancouver Island) in Canada for military use, although vast areas are unused and remain in excellent ecological condition. From endangered coastal old-growth forests to prairie grasslands to Carolinian deciduous forests in southern Ontario to large intact boreal forests, Canada’s least disturbed ecosystems are often in the unused portions of the DND’s lands.
“It might be surprising to most Canadians, but in many cases the ecosystems in the best ecological condition in Canada are on DND lands. Much DND land is unused, and in other areas the occasional bullets and bombs still often have lower impacts than the large-scale industrial resource extraction, clearcutting, strip-mining, oil drilling, agriculture, and suburban sprawl that impact other lands in Canada,” stated Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “We’re demanding that the federal government show environmental leadership by protecting the endangered ecosystems and key natural areas on DND lands through new National and Provincial Parks, National Wildlife Areas, and Ecological Reserves rather than selling them off for suburban sprawl.”
In the Capital Regional District around Victoria, the DND controls over 4000 hectares of public lands, which include the very finest old-growth Coastal Douglas Fir forests and Garry oak ecosystems left in Canada in places like Rocky Point and Mary Hill in Metchosin, and DND lands behind the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre, adjacent to Fort Rodd National Historic Park, and at Royal Roads University (which leases their lands from the DND) in Colwood.
“40% of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem is now underneath the pavement of Victoria, Nanaimo, and Duncan, or converted to agriculture, and 99% of its old-growth forests are already logged. The finest remnants of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem are here on the DND lands,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer. “It’s the Department of National Defence’s duty to protect our Country when it’s under threat and here is the perfect opportunity to protect one of the most threatened places in Canada on their very own lands.”
On the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, just 15 minutes north of the historic logging town of Port Renfrew, an ancient old-growth forest named Avatar Grove gives visitors a glimpse of how the island’s trees may have looked 1,000 years ago.
Discovered in 2009 by photographer TJ Watt, cofounder of the Victoria-based environmental group the Ancient Forest Alliance, this 40-hectare old-growth forest is home to western red cedars and Douglas fir trees that stretch up to four metres in width.
Vancouver Island has lost 73 percent of its productive old-growth forest to logging, so Watt immediately recognized the significance of stumbling upon the pristine parcel of land.
The AFA has taken thousands of visitors on educational hikes through Avatar Grove to raise awareness about the importance of protecting the islands’ remaining ancient forests.
“To work to save an area, wherever you are in the world, if you experience a place yourself it gives you a greater resolve to protect it,” says Watt. “If you can experience that in real life you have a much greater and deeper appreciation.”
The AFA’s campaigning efforts and partnership with the local Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce has generated significant media attention and sparked a public conversation about whether the provincial government is doing enough to protect B.C.‘s old-growth forests.
The value of old trees
British Columbia is home to one of the largest coastal temperate rainforests left the world.
Saturated by an average annual precipitation of 3,671 mm — that’s three times more rain than Vancouver gets in a year — trees in Port Renfrew absorb enough water to resist pests and forest fires, enabling them to live and grow for as long as 1,000 years.
Their slow growth produces tighter growth rings and a high quality of wood less susceptible to bending and twisting with age. This makes them attractive targets of the logging industry: Ancient logs can be worth thousands of dollars.
The business of cutting down trees in B.C. has developed a symbiotic venture with tree planting. Since 1987, reforestation laws in B.C. require companies to replant areas that they harvest.
Forty million seedlings have been planted in B.C. since 2005, according to Pat Bell, former Minister of Forests and Range.
But a recent study by Anthony Britneff, who worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 39 years, found that harvested areas are not always replanted adequately, meaning seedlings do not grow productively.
Britneff states that “not satisfactorily restocked,” or NSR, forests are estimated to be larger than they were 25 years ago and cover an area nearly three times the size of Vancouver Island. These NSR statistics help determine the annual allowable cut and can potentially limit the amount of land that can be harvested for lumber.
A 90 percent funding cut to B.C.’s reforestation program in 2002 has made ensuring the accuracy of NSR statistics difficult, leading Britneff to argue that B.C. has an “unprecedented reforestation challenge” on its hands.
The value of old forests
Author Charlotte Gill, who spent 20 years working as a tree planter in Canada, experienced firsthand the challenges of trying to turn a clearcut into a forest.
In her new book, Eating Dirt, she questions whether the intricate relationships between species that have developed over centuries in old-growth forests can be replaced through the efforts of an army of shovels.
“Human hands can replace the trees but not necessarily the forest,” she writes.
Regrowing a forest can take up to 400 years, according to Gill’s research. Yet achieving the soil makeup necessary to sustain such a forest is a “millenial and geologic” process.
“You can’t build a forest floor in a nursery or manufacture topsoil in a mill.”
A “third-hand” forest, she writes, would be more brittle than the one it replaced. The next one would be leaner still. In the logging industry, this is known as falldown.
Gill describes our need for maintaining undisturbed forests as they store precious fresh water, absorb tonnes of carbon and guard against the otherwise inevitability of soil erosion. Keeping old forests intact also does more to mitigate climate change than planting new trees, as more carbon can be stored in the soil of an undisturbed ancient forest.
Provincial protection
Mark Haddock, an attorney with the Environmental Law Centre at the University of Victoria, says B.C. has historically viewed old-growth forests as a resource for lumber extraction, often overlooking the connection between the ecosystems that depend on them.
Species such as Roosevelt elk and northern spotted owls rely on the mix of new, old and decaying trees found in old-growth forests for food and shelter. The logging of B.C.’s pristine forests endangers these species as clear cutting continues.
“I think the conservation biology is pretty sound,” Haddock said. “I think it makes a pretty persuasive case to me as a British Columbian that there’s real merit in protecting old-growth forests. Now that we are aware of these ecological values, how do we act?”
Current provincial protection for old-growth forests is a matter of discretion by the government, Haddock said.
“There are rules that can and do protect old-growth,” Haddock said. “It’s just that the amount of old-growth that is protected is not stated in any mandatory way. It’s a discretionary decision by the government.”
Environmentalists like Watt question how long the logging of old-growth forests can continue as the AFA pushes the provincial government to grant Avatar Grove provincial park status.
“If they don’t have a plan and it’s not considered, what are they going to do in a couple decades when they finish it?” he said.
http://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.png00TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-26 00:00:002024-02-29 16:01:50Ancient forests in B.C. – Canadian Geographic Blog
Ancient Forest Alliance worries about potential sell-off of unused DND lands for real estate development and calls for federal government to let Canadian Wildlife Service, Parks Canada, the provinces, regional districts, and First Nations protect unused DND lands.
The potential sell-off of Department of National Defence (DND) lands reported by the Ottawa Citizen and the Canadian media recently is causing concern for conservationists who fear some of Canada’s most endangered ecosystems could be jeopardized by real estate development.
Instead the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the federal government to protect the endangered ecosystems and exceptional natural areas on unused DND lands through:
– the Canadian Wildlife Service as new National Wildlife Areas
– Parks Canada as new National Parks
– transferring unused DND lands to the provinces for new Provincial Parks, Provincial Conservancies (in BC), or Ecological Reserves
– to Regional Districts in BC as new Regional Parks
– to First Nations as treaty settlement lands under agreement to become new First Nations protected areas where subsistence, cultural, and spiritual uses will continue
The Department of National Defence controls 800 parcels of federal public lands totalling 2.25 million hectares (about two-thirds the size of Vancouver Island) in Canada for military use, although vast areas are unused and remain in excellent ecological condition. From endangered coastal old-growth forests to prairie grasslands to Carolinian deciduous forests in southern Ontario to large intact boreal forests, Canada’s least disturbed ecosystems are often in the unused portions of the DND’s lands.
“It might be surprising to most Canadians, but in many cases the ecosystems in the best ecological condition in Canada are on DND lands. Much DND land is unused, and in other areas the occasional bullets and bombs still often have lower impacts than the large-scale industrial resource extraction, clearcutting, strip-mining, oil drilling, agriculture, and suburban sprawl that impact other lands in Canada,” stated Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “We’re demanding that the federal government show environmental leadership by protecting the endangered ecosystems and key natural areas on DND lands through new National and Provincial Parks, National Wildlife Areas, and Ecological Reserves rather than selling them off for suburban sprawl.”
In the Capital Regional District around Victoria, the DND controls over 4000 hectares of public lands, which include the very finest old-growth Coastal Douglas Fir forests and Garry oak ecosystems left in Canada in places like Rocky Point and Mary Hill in Metchosin, and DND lands behind the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre, adjacent to Fort Rodd National Historic Park, and at Royal Roads University (which leases their lands from the DND) in Colwood.
“40% of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem is now underneath the pavement of Victoria, Nanaimo, and Duncan, or converted to agriculture, and 99% of its old-growth forests are already logged. The finest remnants of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem are here on the DND lands,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer. “It’s a first rate national conservation priority to get them protected. It’s time for everyone to speak up!”
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Royal_Roads_Biggest_Fir.jpg768512TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-26 00:00:002023-04-06 19:09:33Conservationists call for the Protection of Endangered Ecosystems on Department of National Defence (DND) Lands
Ancient Forest Alliance worries about potential sell-off of unused DND lands for real estate development and calls for federal government to let Canadian Wildlife Service, Parks Canada, the provinces, regional districts, and First Nations protect unused DND lands.
The potential sell-off of Department of National Defence (DND) lands reported by the Ottawa Citizen and the Canadian media recently is causing concern for conservationists who fear some of Canada’s most endangered ecosystems could be jeopardized by real estate development.
Instead the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the federal government to protect the endangered ecosystems and exceptional natural areas on unused DND lands through:
– the Canadian Wildlife Service as new National Wildlife Areas
– Parks Canada as new National Parks
– transferring unused DND lands to the provinces for new Provincial Parks, Provincial Conservancies (in BC), or Ecological Reserves
– to Regional Districts in BC as new Regional Parks
– to First Nations as treaty settlement lands under agreement to become new First Nations protected areas where subsistence, cultural, and spiritual uses will continue
The Department of National Defence controls 800 parcels of federal public lands totalling 2.25 million hectares (about two-thirds the size of Vancouver Island) in Canada for military use, although vast areas are unused and remain in excellent ecological condition. From endangered coastal old-growth forests to prairie grasslands to Carolinian deciduous forests in southern Ontario to large intact boreal forests, Canada’s least disturbed ecosystems are often in the unused portions of the DND’s lands.
“It might be surprising to most Canadians, but in many cases the ecosystems in the best ecological condition in Canada are on DND lands. Much DND land is unused, and in other areas the occasional bullets and bombs still often have lower impacts than the large-scale industrial resource extraction, clearcutting, strip-mining, oil drilling, agriculture, and suburban sprawl that impact other lands in Canada,” stated Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “We’re demanding that the federal government show environmental leadership by protecting the endangered ecosystems and key natural areas on DND lands through new National and Provincial Parks, National Wildlife Areas, and Ecological Reserves rather than selling them off for suburban sprawl.”
In the Capital Regional District around Victoria, the DND controls over 4000 hectares of public lands, which include the very finest old-growth Coastal Douglas Fir forests and Garry oak ecosystems left in Canada in places like at the Rocky Point and Mary Hill DND lands in Metchosin, and at DND lands behind the Juan de Fuca Recreation Centre, adjacent to Fort Rodd National Historic Park, and at Royal Roads University (which leases their lands from the DND) in Colwood.
“40% of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem is now underneath the pavement of Victoria, Nanaimo, and Duncan, or converted to agriculture, and 99% of its old-growth forests are already logged. The finest remnants of the Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem are here on the DND lands,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer. “It’s a first rate national conservation priority to get them protected. It’s time for everyone to speak up!”
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DND_Douglas-fir.jpg600400TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-26 00:00:002023-04-06 19:09:33Conservationists Call for the Protection of Endangered Ecosystems on Department of National Defence Lands
Public statement
26 October 2011
On Friday, October 28, the Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) will hold its first ever hearings into the violation of Indigenous land rights in Canada.
The case before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concerns the 1884 expropriation of over 237,000 hectares of resource-rich land from the traditional territories of the Hul’qumi’num peoples on Vancouver Island. The Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group alleges that Canada has violated international human rights norms by refusing to negotiate for any form of redress for the expropriated lands, which are now mostly in the hands of large forestry companies, and by failing to protect Hul’qumi’num interests while the dispute remains unresolved .
More than a dozen Indigenous peoples’ organizations and human rights groups have filed legal briefs in support of the Hul’qumi’num case.
Craig Benjamin, Campaigner for the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples with Amnesty International Canada, said, “The case now before the Inter-American Commission highlights crucial issues of justice that affect not only the Hul’qumi’num people, but Indigenous peoples across Canada. The very fact that a respected international human rights body like the IACHR is investigating these issues should be a wake up call to the federal and provincial governments and to all Canadians.”
In agreeing to hear the complaint, the Inter-American Commission ruled that the available mechanisms to resolve this dispute in Canada, whether through negotiation or the BC treaty process, are too onerous and too constrained in their protection of human rights to live up to the standards of international justice.
Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come, Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee) said, “Fair and timely resolution of land and resource disputes is essential for reconciliation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada and for closing the unacceptable gap in standard of living facing so many Indigenous communities. We hope that the intervention of the international human rights body can be a catalyst for rethinking government policies and approaches that have so blatantly failed Indigenous peoples and the cause of justice.”
“Canada cannot credibly demand that other states live up to international standards for the protection of human rights — including the fundamental right to equality and non-discrimination — while dismissing those same standards at home,” said Heather Neun of Lawyers Rights Watch Canada. “Our organizations will be closely monitoring this hearing and are prepared to campaign to make sure governments in Canada act on the Commission’s findings.”
The hearing will be held at the Commission’s headquarters in Washington D.C. on October 28, 2011, at 9 am EST. The hearing will be webcast on the Commission’s website.
This public statement was endorsed by:
Amnesty International Canada
Ancient Forest Alliance
Canadian Friends Service Committee (Quakers)
Ecotrust Canada
First Nations Summit
Grand Council of the Crees (Eeyou Istchee)
KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives
Lawyer’s Rights Watch Canada
Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
http://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.png00TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-26 00:00:002024-06-12 16:50:47Human rights groups and Indigenous peoples’ organizations will closely monitor landmark international hearing into Canadian land rights case
PORT RENFREW, B.C. – Pink ribbons knotted to tree branches at the side of a gravel logging road mark the entry to an amazing earthly experience, something so different from anything most people have experienced it might be on another world.
The air is cool, damp and even smells green. Look up and there is no blue sky, just scraggy branches and the tops of 60-metre-high trees, that allow sunlight to hit the mossy ground only in broken beams of light.
This is Avatar Grove, a 50-hectare piece of untouched old-growth forest, about 110 kilometres northwest of Victoria.
Through a karma-like convergence, natural-born enemies, environmentalists, business leaders and politicians are joining hands to protect it from logging and create a nature-lover’s paradise.
It’s as if the happy-ending script is writing itself at Avatar Grove — a sequel of sorts to the Hollywood blockbuster, unfolding in the few remaining dark, moody and ancient big-tree forests on southern Vancouver Island.
“When we came across the area, it was at the same time the movie `Avatar’ was released,” said Ken Wu, co-founder of the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance. “`Avatar’ was about saving old-growth forests, albeit on an alien moon.
“We wanted people to make the connection that here on earth we have real spectacular old growth (forests) that are endangered and that need protecting,” he said, standing near a huge cedar marked in spray paint with the number five, signifying that it once faced a chainsaw death.
Wu said choosing the name Avatar Grove, courting the business community in nearby struggling Port Renfrew and getting the ear of the B.C. government has sparked a groundswell to declare the rugged coastal area the Big Trees Capital of Canada.
The Ancient Forest Alliance spent the summer taking busloads of tourists into Avatar Grove to see the mysterious forest, especially the alien-shaped western red cedar, nicknamed Canada’s gnarliest tree for is Volkswagen-sized burl that makes it look like something out of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy novels.
“Port Renfrew really is the biggest trees capital of Canada,” said Wu. “The fact is the largest Douglas fir tree on earth is near town. The biggest spruce tree in Canada is also near town. The biggest tree in Canada, the Cheewaht cedar, is also north of town.
“And we’ve got the gnarliest tree at the Avatar Grove,” he said. “It’s an exceptional place for big-tree tourism and I think this is the year people are starting to recognize that and are coming to see them.”
Rosie Betsworth, Port Renfrew’s Chamber of Commerce president, agrees with Wu and the Ancient Forest Alliance that the big trees are something to see. It’s also offering a tourism boost to the community that, until recently, considered logging and fishing its lifeblood.
“The majority (here) can see the value of tourism dollars,” she said. “And now that there’s probably a handful of loggers left in this community, it is no longer a logging town.
Betsworth said environmentalists like Wu and photographer T.J. Watt, who discovered Avatar Grove in 2009 while scouting the area’s few remaining old-growth stands, convinced locals that there is money in saving trees as opposed to cutting them down. Grants for college students
“For a small group of very broke guys, my God, they’ve made so much movement,” she said.
Steve Thomson, B.C.’s minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources, said the government halted planned logging of Avatar Grove and is awaiting the results of a public consultation process on the area’s future.
But he suggested it already appears logging is no longer a viable option.
“The province has published its intent to adjust the old-growth management area to protect that grove,” he said.
Watt said Avatar Grove and the other huge trees in the Port Renfrew area, where many hillsides are scarred from clear-cut logging, are living examples of Mother Nature’s majesty that are located steps from easily accessible roads.
“Right away we knew we had something special because I couldn’t think of anywhere else where you could see trees of this size and get there in something like a Honda Civic.”
———
If you go . . .
Currently, there are no official scheduled tours into Avatar Grove, but visit the Ancient Forest Alliance website: www.ancientforestalliance.org for a map of the area’s big tree sites. The alliance also will take visitors into Avatar Grove or can provide travellers with a detailed and easy to follow map that they can use to guide themselves.
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/MSN_Travel_Avatar.jpg433650TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-24 00:00:002023-04-06 19:09:33Big trees boost tourism in West Coast town
On Thursday, Oct. 20th, the Ancient Forest Alliance held our “Rally and Info Night for BC’s Ancient Forests and Forestry Jobs” and what an incredible night with a great turnout of nearly 400 people! See the photo gallery here.
The Ancient Forest Alliance would like to extend a HUGE THANKS to;
– The HUNDREDS of dedicated supporters who attended and stood up for the protection of BC’s ancient forests and forestry jobs.
Gisele Martin – Tlaoquiaht cultural educator and tourism operator
Robert Morales – Hul’qumi’num Chief Treaty Negotiator
Judith Sayers – Hupacasath member and UVic adjunct professor
Jens Wieting – Sierra Club of BC campaigner
Arnold Bercov – Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada president (local 8)
Norm Macdonald – MLA for Columbia River-Revelstoke and Opposition Critic for Forestry
Ken Wu & TJ Watt– Ancient Forest Alliance co-founders
– Kim Old from Kold Design for creating the awesome event poster!
– James at PosterLoop Media for displaying our rally poster around town.
– Metropol Print Shop for donating their time to get our hardcopy posters up on all the poster poles in Victoria.
– And all of the volunteers who phoned and invited our supporters, put posters up all over town, and helped setup the night of the event!
THANK YOU ALL!!!
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Rally_Oct_2011.jpg533800TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-22 00:00:002023-04-24 16:50:56THANK YOU to all those involved with the ancient forest rally!
YOUR participation will send an undeniable message to Christy Clark’s BC Liberal government that they MUST act during the next 18 months before a BC election to protect British Columbia’s ancient forests and ensure sustainable forestry jobs!
Date: Thursday, October 20, 2011 Time: 7:00-8:30 pm Location: Alix Goolden Hall, 907 Pandora St., Victoria
Join a diverse range of speakers on the need to protect British Columbia’s ancient forests and ensure sustainable forestry jobs.
Speakers include:
Ken Wu & TJ Watt– Ancient Forest Alliance co-founders
Robert Morales – Hul’qumi’num Chief Treaty Negotiator
Gisele Martin – Tlaoquiaht cultural educator and tourism operator
Judith Sayers – Hupacasath member and UVic adjunct professor
Jens Wieting – Sierra Club of BC campaigner
Arnold Bercov – Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada president (local 8)
The decline in coastal forestry employment has been fundamentally driven in recent decades by the depletion of the biggest, best old-growth stands in the valley bottoms and lower elevations, resulting in diminishing returns as trees get smaller and more expensive to reach.
Meanwhile the BC government has done nothing to ensure that forest companies retool coastal sawmills to handle smaller second-growth logs, let alone invest in value-added manufacturing facilities. Instead, while mills close, the BC government has been allowing a mass exodus of raw logs to leave for foreign mills – including over 1.1 million cubic meters of raw logs to China last year despite earlier assurances that “lumber, not logs” would be exported.
The unsustainable depletion of old-growth forests has not only resulted in the loss of forestry jobs, but also increasing numbers of endangered species, collapsing wild salmon stocks, the massive release of carbon into the atmosphere, and the steady erosion of many First Nations cultures which evolved in and are supported by old-growth forests.
Support the call for protection of old-growth forests, sustainable second-growth forestry, an end to raw log exports, and the implementation of First Nations land use plans.
YOUR participation is VITAL!
Please forward far and wide!
Also please confirm how many people you’re bringing to help us get a sense of our numbers by emailing us at info@16.52.162.165
*** NOTE: If you haven’t recently, PLEASE WRITE a LETTER to the BC government and your local BC Liberal or NDP Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) calling on the BC government to devise a plan to:
– Immediately protect BC’s most endangered forests, such as valley bottom ancient rainforests like the Avatar Grove, our Coastal Douglas fir forests, and Inland Old-Growth Rainforests.
-Undertake a comprehensive Provincial Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory and ban and quickly phase-out logging of endangered old-growth forests through the province.
– Ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests.
– Ban the export of raw logs to foreign mills.
– Implement new land use plans to expand protected areas based on First Nations land use plans, conservation biology-based scientific assessments, and climate change mitigation strategies.
Write to:
Premier Christy Clark (premier@gov.bc.ca)
Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (for.minister@gov.bc.ca)
Find your local MLA’s address at [Original article no longer available]
http://15.157.244.121/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Rally.jpg471800TJ Watthttp://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/cropped-AFA-Logo-1000px-300x300.pngTJ Watt2011-10-15 00:00:002024-08-30 11:53:56RALLY for ANCIENT FORESTS and BC FORESTRY JOBS! Thursday, Oct. 20th
Room 7000, SFU Harbour Centre (515 W Hastings, Vancouver)
Join Ken Wu, TJ Watt, and Hannah Carpendale of the Ancient Forest Alliance for a slideshow tour through Vancouver Island’s spectacular ancient rainforests, featuring several of the newest images by photographer TJ Watt. Learn about the ecology and politics of BC’s endangered ancient forests, and find out how to get involved in the campaign to save them as the organization embarks on a fall mobilization for ancient forests and to end raw log exports.
