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Province rewards Cathedral Grove protest
by Monday Magazine •
Thursday April 20, 2006 at 03:30 PM
In a sentence tacked onto the end of an announcement about a plan to move forward with traffic calming in MacMillan Provincial Park, environment minister Barry Penner confirmed last week that the government has backed down on plans to pave a couple of hectares of that paradise for a parking lot.
Monday Magazine Province rewards Cathedral Grove protest Apr 12 2006 In a sentence tacked onto the end of an announcement about a plan to move forward with traffic calming in MacMillan Provincial Park, environment minister Barry Penner confirmed last week that the government has backed down on plans to pave a couple of hectares of that paradise for a parking lot. Here's what the announcement didn't say: Protesters, you win. The park, on the road between Parksville and Port Alberni, contains the Cathedral Grove old-growth forest. For five years, protesters have fought the parking lot plan with everything from leaflets to tree sitting. For the past couple of years, some activists stayed in the park, doing things like tying the tops of trees together so it would be impossible to chop them down safely. Public support for protecting the grove was key, says Annette Tanner, the chair of the mid-island chapter of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. "It makes it easier for the minister to make the right decision, which he did in this case." That support was the result of much hard work by many committed volunteers, she says. "You get what you work for." Now, she says, she will work to protect more of Cathedral Grove and hopes to see the park expanded from 500 hectares to 1,300 hectares. It's important to keep a wildlife corridor open between north and south Vancouver Island, she says, and to protect what little is left of the Douglas fir forest on the east side of the island. The fight over the parking lot, she adds, helped raise awareness of those larger issues. And, we might add, it proved that sometimes a committed group of protesters does make a difference.
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