Youth from Cortes Island, BC are hosting an educational rally on the legislative grounds in Victoria this coming Saturday, October 13 from 11 am – 4 pm. Forest lands on Cortes Island threatened by industrial logging prompted the youth to research out what protection, if any, was afforded the numerous species at risk making these forest lands their home.
But now an environmental group, the Ancient Forest Alliance, and a landowner who has property adjacent to the roosting trees are working together to publicize the area, in the hopes of saving it from logging.
Conservationists with the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) have launched a new campaign to fully protect one the last endangered lowland old-growth forests left in the Lower Mainland at Echo Lake east of Mission, as part of the organization’s larger campaign to lobby the BC government for a new Provincial Old-Growth Strategy to save endangered old-growth forests across the province.
David Hancock says he has personally counted more than 7,000 bald eagles in one day on the Harrison and Chehalis rivers – a world record and almost twice the best tally of Brack-endale Eagles Provincial Park near Squamish.Today, as the eagles arrive again to feast on the area's annual salmon runs, Hancock is counting on the B.C. government to do the right thing and increase protection for one of the planet's great avian spectacles.
“This is really an extremely rare gem of lowland ancient rainforest in a sea of second-growth forests, clearcuts and high altitude old-growth patches,” said Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “To still have an unprotected lowland ancient forest like this left near Vancouver is like finding a Sasquatch."
The BC Liberal Government announced yesterday a new forestry action plan for BC’s Central Interior that would open the “back door” for logging in currently protected forests. By the spring of 2013 the BC government plans to create frameworks for a “science-based review” and “community-engagement” process to potentially open up forest reserves that currently protect old-growth forests, scenery for tourism, species at risk, and wildlife in the Central Interior.
The British Columbia government says it is acting on a series of recommendations to help the province's forest industry in the wake of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Critics say it's a weak response to the issue that shows the government hasn't learned from the collapse of other natural resource industries.
The B.C. government will examine the contentious possibility of opening old-growth forests to logging in parts of the province hardest hit by plummeting timber supplies. It's an idea that both proponents and opponents say would require chopping protective measures that took years to create.
The B.C. government announced plans on Tuesday to meet timber supply shortages in the B.C. Interior by reviewing current prohibitions on logging in environmentally sensitive areas and giving forest companies more power to manage the land base.
The government is now constructing ground rules so that by early 2013 it can begin revisiting the designation of some sensitive areas, mainly in the north-central triangle between Burns Lake, Prince George and Quesnel.
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