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ELAHO VALLEY SAVED
by WCWC Media •
Thursday July 26, 2007 at 03:59 PM
North Vancouver, BC – The British Columbia government and the Squamish Nation today jointly announced a land use plan for the Squamish-Whistler Region of southwest BC. The new land use plan designates new protected areas in one of BC’s most famous “War in the Woods” battlegrounds. “All of us here at the Wilderness Committee are literally jumping for joy!” said an exuberant Joe Foy, National Campaign Director for the Wilderness Committee ...
For immediate release – Thursday, July 26, 2007
ELAHO VALLEY SAVED
Todays BC Government & Squamish Nation announcement meets with wild approval from Wilderness Committee
North Vancouver, BC – The British Columbia government and the Squamish Nation today jointly announced a land use plan agreement for a large portion of the Sea to Sky Land and Resource Management Plan (LRMP) of the Squamish-Whistler Region of southwest BC. The new agreement designates new protected areas in one of BCs most famous “War in the Woods” battlegrounds.
“All of us here at the Wilderness Committee are literally jumping for joy!” said an exuberant Joe Foy, National Campaign Director for the Wilderness Committee. “Weve been working to see the upper Elaho and Sims Valleys protected since 1995, and now, thanks to the announcement today from the Squamish Nation and the BC government, these areas are largely protected. What a great day!” said Foy.
Conflicts between logging companies and environmentalists in the upper Elaho and Sims Valleys started in 1995 when the BC government’s Regional Protected Areas Committee failed to protect these key wild valleys. Located just west to the resort community of Whistler, these are the largest remaining unprotected old-growth forested valleys in the region and are home to most southerly portion of coastal grizzly bears and moose as well as the oldest known living Douglas-fir trees in Canada.
Since 1995, the Wilderness Committee has produced and distributed over a million copies of seven different educational reports on the area; created five separate videos; held almost 100 rallies and marches around the province; held the longest ever campout on the lawn of the Legislature in Victoria; and built a 28 km trail in the region that attracted thousands of hikers and which allowed the Wilderness Committee to bring local, regional, provincial, national and international politicians and media into the area.
Thousands more visited the area through the efforts of the late BC mountaineer and conservationist, John Clarke, Nancy Bleck and Squamish Hereditary Chief Bill Williams, who together ran the Utsam Witness Program.
Confrontations in the area reached their peak in the late 1990s when blockades – and counter-blockades by loggers – were erected and dozens of local environmentalists were arrested and jailed for peaceful protest. Two of them, Barney Kern and Betty Krawczyk were given the harshest sentences seen to date for peaceful environmental protests, one year in jail. These sentences were reduced to 4 months in appeal. In 1999, several environmentalists were also beaten in the Elaho Valley by an angry mob of loggers.
In 2000 International Forest Products (Interfor) the company who then owned the surrounding Tree Farm License (TFL 38) agreed to abide by a request from the Squamish Nation to cease logging in the contentious wilderness areas, while the Squamish Nation prepared a land use plan for their territory.
The resulting Squamish Nation Land Use Plan – called Xay Temixw or Sacred Land in the Coast Salish language – designated the upper Elaho Valley, Sims Valley and several other areas in Squamish Nation territory as “Wild Spirit Places” to be off-limits to industrial development such as commercial logging. Since 2000 all has been quiet in the upper Elaho and Sims Valleys, with no logging or protesting.
In December of 2005 the Squamish Nation bought TFL 38 from Interfor and began negotiations with the BC government aimed at getting legislation that grants official recognition of the Squamish Nations land use plan. The announcement today is a result of those negotiations.
“Of course not everything that we had hoped for was protected in the announcement today,” said Foy. “In the coming days and years we will work for improvements – but today is for celebrating great progress made on protecting some amazing and much loved wilderness areas, thanks to the Squamish Nation and the BC government.”
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For more information, historical photos or video footage of the area please contact:
Joe Foy, National Campaign Director 604-880-2580 (cell)
Andrea Reimer, Executive Director 604-683-8220 (office); 604-719-3920 (cell)
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