Jan 29 2016

Ground zero for Walbran

WildCoast Magazine on the endangered Central Walbran Valley: "What we’re looking at across this wide valley is a messy forest – the indication it is old-growth. In the valley bottom is Castle Grove, one of the finest remaining examples of ancient red cedar stands. It and the surrounding old growth on the lower slopes make up one of the largest intact chunks of endangered, unharvested forest remaining on Vancouver Island. It’s a rare view. On Vancouver Island south of Barkley Sound, about 90 percent of the original forest has been logged, along with about 95 percent of the lowland old growth. 'What we’re really down to is the last remnants of the classic giants and it’s the best of the classic giants because it’s literally in the Carmanah-Walbran-San Juan-Gordon River, these four southern valleys where you get the very best growing conditions in the entire country. If you go north it gets colder, as you go east it gets drier,' says Ken Wu, a campaigner for the Ancient Forest Alliance."

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Jan 29 2016

Islands in the Sky: Chopping Ancient Walbran Valley Forest Spells Extinction for Treetop Species

Check out the new Desmog Article on the endangered Central Walbran Valley: “By taking these trees down or by causing disruption you are committing species to go extinct… . Who would feel good about species going extinct just because we have mismanaged a resource? That’s the bottom line.” The province has granted Surrey-based Teal Jones Group a permit for a 3.2-hectare cutblock east of Carmanah Walbran Park. The cutblock is in the 500-hectare Central Walbran where, unlike the valley further south which is tattered with cutblocks, there is contiguous old-growth. “It’s where our forests reach their most magnificent proportions,” said Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance. "These are the classic giants. The biggest and the best — and some of the largest remaining tracts and finest old growth western red cedars are in areas such as Castle Grove, together with old-growth dependent species such as the Queen Charlotte goshawk and marbled murrelet,” Wu said, emphasizing the importance of these areas for tourism as well as biodiversity.

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Jan 26 2016

Conservation groups plan a provincial fund to buy new parks

Island Tides, a great newspaper serving the Gulf Islands, has printed the full article on the 16 conservation and recreation groups in BC calling on the BC government to establish a $40 million/year land acquisition fund to purchase and protected endangered ecosystems on private lands. Places like McLaughlin Ridge in Port Alberni's drinking watershed, Horne Mountain above Cathedral Grove, the Cameron Valley Firebreak (similar to a 2nd Cathedral Grove but unprotected), the Koksilah, Muir Creek, Stillwater Bluffs, the Day Road Forest...and hundreds of other endangered areas on private lands could benefit from such a fund.

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Jan 25 2016

Push for provincial land-acquisition fund gathers steam

"A plan to establish an annual $40-million provincial fund to purchase private land now has 16 conservation and recreation groups behind it. Wu said that the push to preserve more land takes in a variety of needs, including protecting watersheds that supply drinking water and helping tourism by keeping natural areas intact. He said he expects tourism businesses to start getting behind the fund. The call for a provincial fund has picked up momentum with a report from the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre that included a 'menu' of funding options used by governments across North America. ...one measure that has worked well in other places is using unredeemed deposits from beverage containers.  Dubbed 'pops for parks,' it is estimated that the strategy could generate $10 million to $15 million a year. “If you don’t return [the containers], then that money, in places like New York state and a lot of jurisdictions in the U.S., is used by the government to expand their protected-area system....'”

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Jan 10 2016

Old Growth Walbran – Shaw TV Victoria

Check out the news report by Shaw TV on the endangered Central Walbran Valley! TJ Watt and Ken Wu from the Ancient Forest Alliance talk about their goal of legislation to protect all of BC's endangered old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable second-growth forest industry, and Dan Hager of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce talks about the local business community's interest in seeing the Central Walbran protected for tourism.

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Jan 9 2016

BC Hydro orders protestors off land near Site C dam

Treaty 8 First Nations protest against the Site C dam in northeastern BC: "Local people are trying to protect the land - significant because it contains swaths of old-growth boreal forest - until court proceedings run their full course, Hofmann said."

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Jan 8 2016

B.C. forestry watchdog finds timber companies have too much power

The board’s findings drew immediate support from the environmental community and those individuals who have fought against the province’s inability to stop controversial logging practices. “Logging companies have free rein over everything,” said Dan Gerak, owner of Pitt River Lodge, who is fighting to stop the Teal Jones Group from logging his tourist viewscapes and the rainforest habitat of some of the last few grizzlies in southwest B.C. “Somebody has to get control of these logging companies. They have way too much power.”

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Jan 8 2016

Walbran Valley logging buffer-zone injunction extended

Unfortunately the court injunction has been extended in the Walbran Valley - see this article from the Vancouver Sun.

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Jan 4 2016

In terms of emissions, logging the Walbran makes no sense

Here's a new article by the AFA's Ken Wu in Focus Magazine about the impacts of old-growth logging on climate change. In particular, it debunks the false notion that logging old-growth forests and replacing them with younger second-growth tree plantations benefits the climate. Scientific research shows that BC's coastal old-growth forests store two times more carbon per hectare than the ensuing second-growth tree plantations that they're being replaced with - and that the second-growth plantations are simply trying to re-sequester or re-absorb the carbon that is lost into the atmosphere after logging the original old-growth forests. However, it'll take 200 years to resequester the released old-growth carbon, which will never happen under the 30 to 80 year rotation ages in coastal BC when our second-growth stands are slated to be relogged. Thus, there is a major net release of carbon - about 50% - when converting old-growth forests into second-growth stands. You can read the article online at: https://focusonline.ca/?q=node/979

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Dec 20 2015

Wild Coast: Ground Zero for Walbran, East Creek, Nootka Island

There are 3 articles on the endangered old-growth forests of Vancouver Island - the Central Walbran, Nootka Trail, and the East Creek Rainforest - as well as photos from the AFA's TJ Watt, in this latest issue of Wild Coast Magazine, an outdoor adventure and exploration magazine for the Pacific Coast.

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