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2700 People Rallied for Ancient Forests and BC Jobs in Victoria, BC
by WCWC Media •
Monday October 27, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Today, 2700 people including environmentalists, forestry workers, First Nations, students, seniors, and children showed up at a rally at the British Columbia Legislative Buildings in Victoria calling on the BC government to protect Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainlands remaining old-growth forests and BC forestry jobs...
Media Release - Oct.25, 2008
Today 2700 People Rallied for Ancient Forests and BC Jobs in Victoria, BC
Tied for the largest environmental rally in BCs history!
Today, 2700 people including environmentalists, forestry workers, First Nations, students, seniors, and children showed up at a rally at the British Columbia Legislative Buildings in Victoria calling on the BC government to protect Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainlands remaining old-growth forests and BC forestry jobs. BC largest environmental protest was a rally in Vancouver in 1993 for Clayoquot Sounds old-growth forests, which was reported as having about 3000 participants.
"Earlier in the week Forest Minister Pat Bell doubted that enough people cared about old-growth forests to show up in such large numbers. Well, today we proved him wrong. We just organized a rally that essentially is tied for the largest environmental protest in BCs history. The main point is that we have the largest active grassroots movement in the province with us, calling on the BC Liberal government to protect the ancient forests of BCs south coast and to ban raw log exports. Its to the BC Liberal governments own detriment if they continue business as usual in the forests of Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland," states Ken Wu, Wilderness Committee campaign director in Victoria.
Speakers included:
- Bob Simpson, BC NDP forestry critic
- Dr. Judith Sayers, Chief Councillor, Hupacasath First Nations Band (Port Alberni)
- Eli Enns, Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Park project leader
- Scott Fraser, Alberni-Qualicum MLA
- Dr. Jane Sterk, BC Green Party leader
- Valerie Langer, Friends of Clayoquot Sound board member and ForestEthics campaign director
- Arnie Bercov, Pulp, Paper, and Woodworkers of Canada union, forestry officer
- Jens Weiting, Sierra Club of BC, campaign director
- Annette Tanner, WCWC Mid-Island chairperson
- Ken Wu, WCWC Victoria campaign director
The ralliers were calling on Premier Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberal government to:
-Enact legislated timelines to quickly end old-growth logging on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland (ie. the south coast) where old-growth forests are now scarce.
-Ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests which now constitute 75% of the productive forests on BCs south coast.
-Ban the export of raw, unprocessed logs to foreign countries in order ensure a steady supply of logs for BC’s saw mills and pulp mills.
-Assist in the retooling and development of second-growth mills and value-added wood processing facilities.
Recent satellite photos show that about 75% of Vancouver Island’s original, productive old-growth forests have already been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow and 99% of the old-growth coastal Douglas fir forests on eastern Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast. While 13% of Vancouver Island’s land base is protected in parks, this only includes 6% of its original, productive old-growth forests. This is because much of the land in parks include treeless alpine terrain, stunted bog forests along the west coast of the Island, and high altitude snow forests with scrubby trees (ie. marginal or low-productivity old-growth forests with small trees that generally can’t be profitably logged). For maps, photos, articles, and stats visit www.viforest.org and http://www.wcwcvictoria.org/
Old-growth forests are important for many reasons: they provide habitat for many species at risk like spotted owls and marbled murrelets that need older forests; they sequester two to three times more atmospheric carbon per hectare than second-growth forests do; they are important parts of many First Nations cultures; and they are fundamental pillars of BC’s multi-billion dollar coastal tourism industry, as millions of tourists visit old-growth forests each year in such places as Cathedral Grove, Clayoquot Sound by Tofino, the West Coast Trail, the Carmanah and Walbran Valleys, Goldstream, Cape Scott, Juan de Fuca Trail, Chilliwack Lake, and the Nootka Trail.
"At this point, if you ask the majority of Canadians if they would like to see the last of our old-growth forests on the south coast protected and the second-growth forests sustainably logged instead, most people would heartily agree," stated Ken Wu. "Who still holds the radical stance that we need to finish off the last of the unprotected old-growth forests here? Just about the only ones left with that backwards stance are the logging companies and the BC Liberal government. Let’s hope Premier Gordon Campbell sees the light soon, before the May 2009 election."
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