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VICTORIA: Hadwin’s Judgement – Film Screening Fundraiser for the Ancient Forest Alliance! Sept. 29

Sep 22 2016/in Announcements

WHEN: Thursday September 29th, showings at 7pm and 9:15pm

WHERE:UVic Cinecenta (UVic Student Union Building, 3800 Finnerty Rd. – see MAP)

TICKETS: $15 (or $9 for students) ***ADVANCE TICKET SALES NOW CLOSED*** Limited supply still left for 7pm showing at the door. Greater number of tickets left for 9:15pm showing (box office opens 40 min before each showtime)

Q&A to follow with:

John Vaillant, award-winning author of The Golden Spruce
Elizabeth Yake, producer of Hadwin’s Judgement
Ken Wu and TJ Watt, founders of the Ancient Forest Alliance

ABOUT THE FILM – HADWIN’S JUDGEMENT

2015 Canada/UK 87 minutes

Directed by Sasha Snow

Produced by Elizabeth Yake, Dave Allen, David Christensen & Yves J. Ma

Featuring Doug Chapman, Herb Hammond, John Vaillant

Winner of VIMFF Best Canadian Film * Nominated for Canadian Screen Award for Best Feature Length Documentary & Best Cinematography

Website: www.hadwinsjudgement.com/thefilm#titlepage

Hadwin’s Judgement is a spellbinding and visually stunning account of environmentalism, obsession, and myth set in the Pacific Northwest. It chronicles one man’s resolute struggle to reconcile what he regarded as an intolerable and conspiratorial affront – not just to the land, but to humanity as well. Based on John Vaillant’s award-winning book The Golden Spruce, the film covers the events that led up to the infamous destruction of an extraordinary 300-year-old tree held sacred by the indigenous Haida nation of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia.

Grant Hadwin, a logging engineer and formidable survivalist, lived and worked happily for many years in BC’s remote and ancient forests. But witnessing the devastation wrought by clear-cutting finally drove him to commit what some would say was an extraordinary and perverse act, one that ran contrary to all he had come to value.

A compelling hybrid of drama and documentary, Hadwin’s Judgement interweaves speculation, myth and reality to explore the possible motives for Hadwin’s unprecedented crime and the consequences of his actions. He film charts his emotional crusade against the destruction of the world’s last great temperate rainforest, a crusade that ends tragically with a mystery – and a prophetic warning – that seal Hadwin’s fate as both madman an visionary.

Proceeds of this film screening go to the Ancient Forest Alliance in their work to protect British Columbia’s endangered old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable, second-growth forest industry. www.AncientForestAlliance.org

Editorial: Victoria must intervene in renewed ‘war in the woods’

Sep 22 2016/in News Coverage

This is a big deal: The Vancouver Sun editorial board is calling on the BC Liberal government to show some actual leadership and chart a new course of policies regarding the fate of our old-growth forests as conflicts escalate in places like the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island! While we don't agree with all of the sentiments they've expressed, the main fact that BC's largest newspaper recognizes that the status quo of old-growth liquidation is ramping up conflict and uncertainty in the forest industry and requires government leadership in the lead-up to a provincial election next May puts big pressure on the BC Liberal government to change course.
They write:
“There is a legitimate discussion to be had about the value of old-growth forests, about whether what remains on the South Coast and Vancouver Island is sufficiently protected, about the extent to which the remaining inventory should be protected, and about resource jobs and the rights of companies to do legal business. Surely, however, there is also a clear role for the provincial government, which has duties of both environmental stewardship and resource management, to serve as an intermediary in such conflicts by providing clear, science-based, arm’s-length evidence as the foundation for an even-handed conversation and to help the two groups whose interests it represents to find common ground. More leadership and less lethargy from Victoria, please.”

*******

The Conference Board of Canada warns that global economic growth is weakening, exacerbated by the uncertainties of the United Kingdom’s decision to quit the European Union and the coming presidential election in the United States and what its outcome might mean for trade agreements — softwood lumber, for example — both of which have the potential to undermine Canada’s own relatively fragile economic recovery.

B.C.’s economy may be the strongest in the country right now, but the last thing it needs is to revisit the rancorous “War in the Woods” that convulsed the political landscape in the 1990s. Environmental activists spiked trees, damaged equipment, blockaded roads, sparked international boycotts, and were carted off to mass civil disobedience trials in numbers never before seen in Canada. Their opponents heaved rocks, waved nooses, adorned themselves with venomous T-shirts advocating that young female environmental protesters would benefit from being sexually assaulted, and on one occasion put on masks and rampaged through a camp at night menacing young people.

So, recent events on the Sunshine Coast where protesters erected a flaming barricade to block access to a site above Roberts Creek at which a forest company is cutting old-growth timber adjacent to Mount Elphinstone Provincial Park are disturbing.

Environmentalists argue that the park isn’t big enough and fragments the old-growth forest — some stands are 500 to 600 years old — into three ecological islands which total only about 140 hectares. They want the contested site blue-listed as a vulnerable ecosystem and they propose a 1,500-hectare expansion to create a contiguous park.

The forestry company, frustrated with protesters, has obtained a temporary injunction to prevent interference with legal logging activity after winning a B.C. Timber Sales auction giving it access to 18 hectares in the disputed area. It will leave the oldest Douglas firs standing. But protesters object that the injunction, obtained before a judge in Vernon, was a sneaky, underhanded tactic intended to deny them an opportunity to make a submission.

Some protesters vow to defy the injunction. Clearly, the forest company plans to defy the protests.

Can we all take a deep breath, please, step back from this escalating conflict and try to work out an agreement? Lighting fires in the midst of an old-growth forest seems an odd way to go about arguing for its protection. Using the courts and police as a proxy for governance by elected officials is an old and controversial tactic that perhaps should be re-thought.

There is a legitimate discussion to be had about the value of old-growth forests, about whether what remains on the South Coast and Vancouver Island is sufficiently protected, about the extent to which the remaining inventory should be protected, and about resource jobs and the rights of companies to do legal business. Surely, however, there is also a clear role for the provincial government, which has duties of both environmental stewardship and resource management, to serve as an intermediary in such conflicts by providing clear, science-based, arm’s-length evidence as the foundation for an even-handed conversation and to help the two groups whose interests it represents to find common ground. More leadership and less lethargy from Victoria, please.

Metchosin Councillor Andy Mackinnon (left) with AFA's TJ Watt and Ken Wu at Big Lonely Doug.

Action Alert: Speak up for Ancient Forests to the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM)!

Sep 19 2016/in Take Action

Speak up for Ancient Forests to the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM)!

Ask the UBCM to support the protection of Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests at their upcoming AGM from Sept.26 to 30!

Last April, the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC), representing 53 local governments (city, town, and regional district councils), passed a resolution calling on the provincial government to protect Vancouver Island’s remaining old-growth forests.

Next week, from September 26 to 30, the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM) representing local governments across the whole province will be meeting and passing resolutions at its AGM.

Unfortunately, the Resolutions Committee of the UBCM is so far refusing to introduce the old-growth resolution for its members to vote on at their AGM. They’ve cited a lot of misleading stats from the BC government to downplay the importance of protecting old-growth forests on Vancouver Island (see below).

Please SPEAK UP!

Please send a quick email to let the UBCM and your own local mayor, city or town councilors that you believe:

The UBCM should introduce the resolution calling on the province to protect Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests, which has already been passed by the Association of Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities (AVICC).

Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests are not just a regional issue, but are of provincial significance. They are globally renowned for their beauty and grandeur, and generate vast amounts of revenues into the provincial economy as tourists from around the world come to visit them. After the US redwoods they are the grandest forests on Earth!

Old-growth forests are important for supporting endangered species, tourism, recreation, climate stability, clean water, wild salmon, and many First Nations cultures. They are a non-renewable resource under BC’s system of forestry, where second-growth stands are slated for logging every 50 to 80 years, never to become old-growth again.

The old 1994 Vancouver Island Land Use Plan needs to be updated, as it only protected about 6% of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forests in parks, it did not factor in climate change, and unlike the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, it did not include any significant ecological science nor First Nations input. Existing protection levels are inadequate to sustain species at risk and many other values.

Of 2 million hectares of productive old-growth forests originally on Vancouver Island, only about 500,000 hectares remain. The BC government’s old-growth statistics are highly misleading, intended to make it seem like a large fraction of old-growth forests still remain and are protected. They include vast tracts of low productivity bog and subalpine forests with stunted trees of little commercial value in their old-growth stats, while they exclude 800,000 hectares of largely-logged private forest lands from the original extent of old-growth forests. Muc of these private lands were managed by the BC government with the same regulations as Crown lands, until they were deregulated in recent years.

Please send an email and/or make a phone call to:

– Your local mayor, city council and regional directors.

– The Union of BC Municipalities ubcm@ubcm.ca

– Be sure to “cc.” Metchosin Councillor Andy Mackinnon andy@metchosin.ca who is the sponsor of the old-growth resolution.

Also, be sure to include your full name and mailing address so they know you are a real person and are one of their constituents.

MORE INFO – Debunking the BC Government’s Spin:

The resolutions and policy committee of the UBCM has repeated a whole lot of misleading BC government statistics in trying to prevent the resolution from hitting the floor.

The government’s stats that they’ve cited, and our rebuttals, are as follows:

BC Government’s “fact”: There are more than 25 million hectares of old growth forests in BC of which 4.5 million hectares are fully protected, representing an area larger than Vancouver Island;

Our Response: The old-growth forests are very different across the province’s very diverse geographies and climates – from wet to dry, north to south, low to high elevation landscapes over a vast region of Earth! Protecting old-growth forests in different regions and ecosystems the province with different biodiversity, totaling 4 million hectares, does not somehow nullify the need to protect Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests which have their own distinctive ecosystems and biodiversity. In addition, a major part of the government’s figures include low productivity old-growth forests of stunted trees growing in bogs, at high elevations, and on rocky steep slopes…areas often of low to no commercial value and also lacking many of the old-growth dependent species found in the commercially valuable forests under contention with the large trees.

BC Government’s “fact”: Land use planning processes in the 1990s engaged the public, First Nations, environmental groups, and communities to identify protected areas on Vancouver Island and the South Coast, with the resulting percentage of protected areas in both regions exceeding the United Nations recommended target of 12 per cent;

Our Response: The 1994 Vancouver Island Land Use Plan only protected 6% of its productive forests in parks, not 12% (which science has shown is still inadequate for sustaining the ecological integrity of these ecosystems), as there are vast areas of non-forested alpine and low productivity bogs, rocky slopes, and subalpine old-growth forests of marginal timber value in our parks. The 1990’s land use plans had almost no First Nations input and had minimal ecological science compared to the recent land use plans in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii. These land use plans are greatly outdated and inadequate in regards to sustaining wildlife (eg. species associated with older forests like the Northern Goshawk and Marbled Murrelet are increasingly at risk despite the limited conservation areas established), First Nations land rights, tourism, clean water, wild salmon, and the climate.

BC Government’s “fact”: Of the 1.9 million hectares of Crown forest on Vancouver Island, 840,125 hectares are considered old growth – but only 313,000 hectares are available for timber harvesting.

Our Response: The BC government has inflated the amount of old-growth forests by including about 300,000 hectares of low productivity stands – in bogs / rocky/ high elevation sites with smaller stunted trees of generally marginal commercial value – in their figure of 840,125 hectares of remaining old-growth forests. It’s sort of like including your Monopoly money with your real money to make it seem like you’re richer than you are, so why curtail spending?

In addition, they’ve excluded an additional 800,000 hectares of private forest lands from the analysis of the original old-growth forests, in order to make it seem like a larger fraction of the old-growth forests remains. Most of these private lands were once productive old-growth forests but have been overwhelmingly logged now, and most were managed by the provincial government under the exact same regulations as Crown lands until they were deregulated in recent times.

In reality, about 500,000 hectares of productive (ie. moderate to high productivity) old-growth forests remain out of 2 million hectares of the original, productive old-growth forests, and over 300,000 hectares of the remaining productive old-growth forests are open for logging.

That is, the BC government in presenting their statistics have reduced the size of the original pie, so that what remains seems like a larger fraction of what once existed. Then they’ve vastly increased the size of what remains of the pie by adding in non-pie (ie. the marginal low productivity old-growth forests).

Note that the UBCM Resolutions Committee also states that “the protection of old-growth forest on provincial Crown land on Vancouver Island is a regional issue, therefore advocacy on the issue would best be pursued by the area association.”

In response to this, we point out that Vancouver Island is one of the largest tourism draws in the entire province, generating vast amounts of revenues for the province from visitors around the world – many of whom come to visit its old-growth forests. As such, it is a provincially significant issue that the UBCM should vote on.

An aerial shot of a clearcut in the Caycuse Watershed in Ditidaht Territory.

Victoria Buzz: Environmental advocates concerned over results of BC election

Oct 26 2026

Two prominent environmental advocacy groups have revealed concerns over the incoming Conservative Party of BC government and their mandate.

Announcements

NEW Video: BC Election 2026: Nature & Old-Growth Protection

Oct 22 2026

Watch EEA's Ken Wu provide an updated, comprehensive overview of the positions of the BC NDP, the BC Conservative Party, and the BC Greens on old growth and nature protection.

Announcements

BC Election 2026: Where do Parties Stand on Nature & Old-Growth?

Oct 16 2026

As we approach the BC election on Saturday, October 24th, 2026, here’s where BC’s major political parties stand on nature and old-growth forest protection.

Announcements