VIDEO: Old-Growth Policy Update: February 2025

Update on BC’s Old-Growth & Protected Areas Policies 🚨 Please SPEAK UP and help shape their outcome! Send a Message via our NEW take-action page.

The newly re-elected BC NDP government released its mandate letters earlier this month and disappointingly, old-growth forest and nature protection was only mentioned in passing. So, you might be left wondering: What needs to happen now to secure lasting protections for ancient forests and other endangered ecosystems in BC?

To truly safeguard these areas, BC must develop a Provincial Protected Areas Strategy (PAS) — where they proactively work with First Nations to protect priority ecosystems, such as those most endangered and least protected, including the last big-tree old-growth forests in the province.

Additionally, the province must:
🌲 Develop science-based targets to protect all ecosystems, known as “Ecosystem-Based Targets”.
💰 Provide “solutions space” funding for First Nations to defer logging in old-growth forests where they currently generate revenues from timber operations.
🛑 Close logging loopholes in conservation reserves like Old-Growth Management Areas (OGMAs) and Wildlife Habitat Areas (WHAs).
🪵 Implement greater incentives and regulations to ensure a sustainable, value-added, modernized, second-growth forest industry.
🌎 Develop a Conservation-Based Economy Strategy of incentives and other support for new businesses to take advantage of an expanding protected areas system in order to scale up a modernized, sustainable and diversified economy.

Now is the time to speak up and demand action! It only takes one minute to make your voice heard.

📢 Using our NEWLY UPDATED 2025 TAKE-ACTION TOOL, you can send a message to BC’s elected decision-makers today calling for the protection of old-growth forests and endangered ecosystems in BC.

Thank you for standing with us!