Ancient Forest Alliance

Rally Against Logging Old-Growth Forests

A rally Tuesday at Cathedral Grove will bring together conservation groups from around Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast, including the Wilderness Committee Mid-Island Chapter, Port Alberni Watershed Forest Alliance, Save the Day based in Roberts Creek and the Ancient Forest Alliance. They are planning to speak out en masse against old-growth logging by Island Timberlands.

Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance says the deregulation of large areas of old growth forest by the government in 2004 has enabled the company to start logging areas that animals like elk and deer, and endangered species like the Queen Charlotte Goshawk, rely upon for survival.

“The important message here is that Island Timberlands needs to back off from their hotspots. It’s not saying that they need to stop logging everywhere, but they’ve got to back off from the areas that were previously designated for protection. These areas are the ecological gems; the high conservation-value forests and extremely rare old growth forests where deer and elk spend the winter. Those areas were all off-limits to logging until the government removed those environmental laws just a few years ago. So it’s not like it’s just a company that wants the freedom to log its own private lands. The original logging rights on the public lands were given in exchange for regulation of these private lands, so if you’re thinking about justice for the public good, the companies can’t be allowed to log these areas that were previously protected.”

Wu says Island Timberlands is eyeing up Mount Horne, along with areas in Port Alberni, Powell River and Roberts Creek.

“The company has also flagged Mount Horne. It’s the mountainside above Cathedral Grove. That was also another area of old growth that was supposed to be set aside for deer. It was, until the government deregulated those lands a few years ago. So even the mountainside 300 metres away from the boundary of MacMillan Provincial Park could potentially get logged.”

He says they’ll call on Island Timberlands to back away from rare old growth forests during the rally Tuesday from 12:30-1:30 at Cathedral Grove.

[917 Coast FM article no longer available]

Ancient Forest Alliance

Are big-five forest firms about to get a windfall?

Shortly before the May election, the provincial government withdrew legislation that could have handed de facto control of publicly owned forestlands to a handful of forest companies.

The contentious sections of the bill were dropped amid a swelling chorus of questions about why such a gift would be bestowed without any debate about what it meant for our shared lands and resources.

It took little time, however, for the government to reverse direction again. During a campaign stop in Burns Lake, Premier Christy Clark said that if re-elected, her government would reintroduce the bill because that is what “the people” wanted.

Given that only weeks earlier the government had pulled the bill from the order papers in response to objections from First Nation leaders, environmental organizations, social-justice advocates and forest professionals, among others, the premier’s choice of words was, to say the least, odd.

What “people” did she refer to? Well, we may soon find out. Following her party’s re-election, the premier instructed Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations Steve Thomson to make the campaign pledge a reality.

A good bet is that the answer lies in understanding who would benefit most from such a change. In that regard, the shareholders of the five largest forest companies operating in the province fit the bill nicely.

Between them, Canadian Forest Products, West Fraser Timber, International Forest Products, Tolko Industries and Western Forest Products control the bulk of what is logged each year in British Columbia. They would control even more under the proposed legislative changes.

To understand what is at stake, it helps to know that outside of parks, virtually every standing tree in B.C. is spoken for, because the province has allocated the rights to log them under numerous licences issued to forest companies, logging contractors, woodlot owners, First Nations and communities.

The most important and valuable of those licences are Tree Farm Licences. Holders of TFLs have exclusive rights to log trees over defined areas of land. Currently, TFL holders log about 11.3 million cubic metres of trees per year (a cubic metre equals one telephone pole). Of that, the top five companies control 9.1 million cubic metres or 80 per cent. TFLs are as close as one gets to private control of public forestlands in B.C.

The next most important licences are forest licences. Forest licence holders have rights to log set numbers of trees over vast landmasses known as Timber Supply Areas or TSAs. But because many different companies may hold forest licences within the same TSA, forest licences have less value than TFLs, which give one company exclusive control over a specific area.

One other essential detail: the most valuable forest licences are “replaceable” or renewable. Far less valuable are non-replaceable forest licences, which are usually issued on a one-off basis to deal with perceived crises such as mountain pine beetle attacks or forest fires. Significantly, the overwhelming number of licences held by First Nations — who are typically on the outside looking in when it comes to benefiting from natural resources in our province — are non-replaceable.

As with TFLs, the top five forest companies hold a virtual monopoly on replaceable forest licences. Two out of every three trees allocated under such licences are theirs.

What the government now proposes in the name of “the people” is to allow the holders of replaceable forest licences to roll such holdings into far more secure TFLs. This could lead to near total control of public forestlands by an exclusive five-member club.

In 2012 and in the lead-up to the 2013 provincial election, that club made $556,020 in political contributions to the Liberal Party and $115,200 to the NDP — big dollars for some, but no more than modest investments for a powerful handful of companies who have a very clear vision of what lies ahead.

Entire TSAs — where trees are in increasingly short supply and where what little timber remains is oversubscribed — are on the cusp of being rolled into TFLs. And the Gang of Five is well positioned to divvy up the spoils.

Left on the sidelines would be First Nations, rural communities, small independent and value-added mill owners — people made poorer to give “the people” what they want.

Whether the government’s second attempt at this legislation will move forward remains to be seen. It has promised a public consultation process of sorts. The voices of opposition were heard loud and clear in the lead-up to the provincial election. This time out, which people will the government listen to?

Read more: [Original article no longer available]

Ancient Forest Alliance

Anti-logging blockade aims to protect Chilcotin moose

Members of the Tsilhqot’in First Nation have set up a blockade to stop logging southwest of Williams Lake, saying they’re worried about declining moose populations in the Chilcotin.

Chief Joe Alphonse, chair of the Tsilhqot’in government, says an area known as the “Big Meadow” was once an ideal moose habitat covered with lush forests of pine.

Now, the land has grown bare and the habitat has become fragmented due to the effects of mountain pine beetle infestation, and also due to logging.

“You fly over that area and there are not much trees left… there’s just little pockets here and there where moose can hide,” Alphonse said. “And you can potentially have ten hunting camps around every pile of bush left out in the Chilcotin, and that’s no way of preserving animals.”

Recent estimates by the province puts the moose population decline at 20 to 60 per cent throughout the Cariboo-Chilcotin region.

The B.C. government says it’s working with the Tsilhqot’in on implementing a number of conservation initiatives including updating hunting policies, revising the design of logging cutblocks and deactivating unused forestry roads.

View the original article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/anti-logging-blockade-aims-to-protect-chilcotin-moose-1.1871745

The Local - Cover Shot

Ancient trees, historic sites at risk in Roberts Creek Headwaters Forest

Local environmental groups are calling on the BC government to establish an ecological reserve on approximately 15 hectares of endangered old-growth forest located on public (Crown) land at the headwaters of Roberts Creek. BC Timber Sales (BCTS) has applied to log DK045, the mid elevation old-growth yellow-cedar forest, located about seven kilometres northeast of Roberts Creek village. The group contends the forest’s proximity to Highway 101 makes it a high potential eco-tourism destination. With the sale of the block delayed until March, 2014 as BCTS awaits the results of an ecological and cultural survey by Ministry of Forest researchers.

“The proposed cutblocks, located between two designated Wildlife Habitat Areas (WHAs) created to protect threatened Marbled Murrelets, would split this habitat in half,” stated Ross Muirhead of Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF), a Sunshine Coast forest protection group. “BCTS Planners must acknowledge that connectivity of existing WHAs is an important land-use objective and protect it either as a WHA extension or better still as an ecological reserve.”

The cutblock, located on Squamish First Nation traditional territory, falls within the area known as the Roberts Creek Headwaters Ancient Forest. The cutblock was first put up for sale in 2010. In July, 2012 after receiving photos from ELF members of what appeared to be culturally modified trees (CMT) within the block, the Archaeological Branch of BC requested the sale be halted. Professional archaeologists Jim Stafford and John Maxwell, contracted by ELF, visited the site in 2013 and confirmed the existence of 17 CMTs within the block. After the Archaeological Branch mapped out seven protected Archaeological Sites within the proposed cutblock, BCTS then applied for, and was granted, a ‘site alteration permit’ to cut down the CMTs.

Subsequently, ELF identified an exceptional stand of over 350 old-growth dependent Pacific Yew trees growing near the bases of yellow cedars. Gary Fletcher, of the Friends of Ecological Reserves, visited the site and nominated the Roberts Creek Headwaters Ancient Forest to the government as an Ecological Reserve to highlight this outstanding example of the old-growth dependent Pacific Yew.

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer T.J. Watt states “This forest is regionally important to the Sunshine Coast. The BC government must set aside this forest and stop all logging of rare, endangered old-growth forests across the Province.”

Old-growth forests are vital for supporting endangered species, unique biodiversity, tourism, recreation, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and First Nations cultures.

View the original article: www.thelocalweekly.ca/ancient-trees-historic-sites-at-risk-in-roberts-creek-headwaters-forest/

A giant ancient yellow-cedar tree (left) and logging road location ribbon (right)

Ancient Yellow-Cedar Forest at Risk in the Roberts Creek Headwaters Ancient Forest, Sunshine Coast, BC

Roberts Creek, BC – Local environmental groups are calling on the BC government to establish an Ecological Reserve on approximately 15 hectares of endangered old-growth forest located on public (Crown) land at the headwaters of Roberts Creek on BC’s Lower Sunshine Coast. The mid elevation forest, located about 7 kilometres northeast of the community Roberts Creek, is proposed to be logged by BC Timber Sales (BCTS).

The forest is the closest old-growth yellow-cedar forest to Sunshine Coast Highway 101, between Gibsons and Sechelt (a 40 minute ferry ride from Vancouver) making it also a high potential eco-tourism destination.

See a spectacular photo gallery of the forest here: Roberts Creek Headwaters
(*Note: media are free to reprint photos. Credit to TJ Watt when possible. Please contact us if you need higher-res images)

“The proposed cutblocks are located between two designated Wildlife Habitat Areas that were created to protect threatened marbled murrelets – logging would split this habitat in half,” stated Ross Muirhead of Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF), a Sunshine Coast forest protection group. “BCTS Planners must acknowledge that connectivity of existing WHAs is an important land-use objective and to that end do the right thing and protect it either as a WHA extension or better still as an Ecological Reserve.”

The forest, named the “Roberts Creek Headwaters Ancient Forest” is on Squamish First Nation’s traditional territory and is threatened by BCTS’ proposed cutblock DK045. The cutblock was first put up for sale in 2010 but was halted at the last minute by the request of the Archaeological Branch of BC in July, 2012 after receiving photos from ELF members of what appeared to be culturally modified trees (CMT) within the block. Professional archaeologists, Jim Stafford and John Maxwell, contracted by ELF, visited the site in 2013 and confirmed the existence of 17 CMTs located within the block. Subsequently, the Archaeological Branch in Victoria mapped out 7 protected Archaeological Sites. BCTS then applied for a ‘site alteration permit’ to cut down the CMTs, which was granted by the Branch.

Another unique characteristic of this forest is an exceptional stand of Pacific Yew trees growing near the bases of yellow-cedars. Over 350 Yews were counted by ELF within the block. Gary Fletcher, of the Friends of Ecological Reserves, visited the site and nominated the “Roberts Creek Headwaters Ancient Forest” to the government as an Ecological Reserve to highlight this outstanding example of the old-growth dependent Pacific Yew.

Currently, the sale of the block has been delayed yet again to March, 2014 as BCTS awaits the results of an ecological and cultural survey by Ministry of Forest researchers.

“With the case that ELF has built, BCTS should withdraw its logging proposal for Block DK045 and grant it protected status once and for all,” states Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer TJ Watt, who recently documented the area. “This forest is regionally-important to the Sunshine Coast. There is little of this productive forest left at this elevation. The BC government must set aside both this forest and stop all logging of rare, endangered old-growth forests across the Province.”

Old-growth forests are vital for supporting endangered species, unique biodiversity, tourism, recreation, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and First Nations cultures.

To see new before and after maps of BC’s old-growth forests click here: www.ancientforestalliance.org/old-growth-maps.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

War in the Woods mass arrests 20 years ago prompted lasting change

It is the quiet amid the chaos just as the logging trucks and police rolled in that Tzeporah Berman remembers acutely about the War in the Woods, the fight by environmentalists 20 years ago over Clayoquot Sound that the now-seasoned campaigner says set the stage for today's battles over pipelines and other resource development issues.

“All of the laughing and the talking and the drumming and whatever was happening would just end,” said Berman.

“There'd be complete silence as all of these people of different ages and different backgrounds stood in front of those trucks, and one by one were taken away.”

Every day for almost three months during the summer of 1993, Berman and hundreds of other protesters stared down the logging trucks destined for some of Canada's most pristine old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, B.C.

She and Valerie Langer helped organize one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history in the almost 350,000 hectare wilderness area.

Despite more than 800 arrests, including the iconic mass arrests of more than 300 people on Aug. 9, 1993, the protesters prevented the rainforest from being clear-cut, and sparked a new kind of environmental campaigning.

“For the first time in 20 years, I see the kind of energy that I felt back then,” said Langer in an interview. “I think it's really time for provincial and federal governments to wake up and see that that kind of tension within the population is rising again.”

Environmentalists celebrated the anniversary this weekend, but the mayor of one of the communities hardest hit by the eventual decision to reverse clear-cut logging in the sound and preserve it as a UNESCO biosphere, says his community has little to cheer.

“It had several layers of impact, bearing in mind there's been forestry companies in Ucluelet since the turn of the century,” said Ucluelet Mayor Bill Irving.

“Those folks were sort of lifetime residents and employees in the forest industry, and they did it because they enjoyed it.”

He said the events of the so-called War in the Woods were “quite a significant rebuff to them both as individuals and as members of the economy.”

“You carry sort of a jaded sense of fair play of that experience on into your future years,” said Irving, who worked for 20 years in forestry himself and said the suggested riches of transitioning from an economy based on forestry and fishery to one based on tourism have never really panned out.

The protests began after the provincial NDP government decided to allow forest products company MacMillan Bloedel — then a scion of B.C. business but no longer in existence — to clear cut in the old-growth forest about 200 kilometres northwest of Victoria.

Environmentalists said the trees were some of the oldest and largest in Canada.

Starting in July 1993, the protest crowds grew and grew and so did the coverage, reaching around the globe as environmentalists demonstrated outside Canadian embassies and high commissions in England, Australia, Germany, Austria, the United States and Japan.

Australian rock group Midnight Oil played a concert at the protesters' camp, with lead singer Peter Garrett declaring: “This is no way to look after the land.”

Environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy Jr. upped the star power when he criticized MacMillan Bloedel for destroying the wilderness and suggested aboriginal people should be given control of forest resources.

The protests reached a peak Aug. 9, 1993, when hundreds of men, women and children clogged a logging road bridge leading to the site.

Despite being read a court injunction intended to ensure MacBlo, as it was known, could continue its work, the protesters refused to move.

Police reinforcements were called in. Still the protesters refused to move.

Police had to physically carry away the limp demonstrators, straining backs along with resources. A school bus was used to transport the arrested to an athletic centre into Ucluelet, where the single holding cell was in no way appropriate for all those arrested.

The process took all day, said Langer.

“It was an act of courage. Every day, for three months, ordinary people came and said 'I do not want the forest of this area or any other area destroyed.”'

By the time the protest camp was dismantled that October, more than 800 people had been arrested. They included then-NDP MP Svend Robinson, who was given a 14-day sentence for criminal contempt of court. Greenpeace appealed the fines and house arrest sentences to the Supreme Court of Canada, but in 1996, the high court rejected its efforts.

Berman herself faced six years in prison, charged with 857 counts of criminally aiding and abetting the protesters. All the charges were dismissed on constitutional grounds years later.

Langer, who trained as a linguist, said for years prior to 1993, environmentalists had been trying to affect change in the way B.C.'s forests were harvested, with little impact. But the tactic of trying to hit forestry companies through their customers, of seeking out and winning international attention and the War in the Woods' successful use of civil disobedience became a model for environmentalists around the world.

Berman, who now has a national profile campaigning on conservation issues, said Clayoquot's reverberations are being felt acutely now. She noted a protest last October in which thousands turned up on the legislature lawn in Victoria to protest against the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the expansion of Kinder Morgan's TransMountain pipeline.

“What was fascinating is I kept meeting so many of the same people,” she said. “So many people came up and said 'I was there in '93 and I'm here now. I won't let this pipeline go through.”'

The Clayoquot protesters went home before winter in 1993, but the wrangle over protecting the sound continued.

In 1996, the provincial government covered the extra costs for MacMillan Bloedel to log the territory in an ecologically sound way in a three-year a $9.3 million deal.

In 2000, the area was designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve, meaning it is recognized as an area that balances conservation and economic development. Iisaak Forest Resources Ltd., a joint venture between the Nuu-Chah-nulth First Nations and Weyerhaeuser, which bought MacMillan Bloedel, was formed to conduct small-scale logging in the area. It had the support of several environmental groups, including Greenpeace.

But Mayor Irving said while the resolution to the Clayoquot controversy held promise, that wasn't met for his community.

“Rather than being a world-class example of forestry, eco-system management and building up a significant knowledge base of the interaction of the economy and the environment, there has been almost nothing,” he said.

After the protests, Irving said representatives from the environment, forest industry, First Nations and all three levels of government came together to discuss how to manage the area in a ground-breaking way.

But Irving said there's now nothing left of that process.

“No opportunity was taken of the great expense that was put into the planning of this area.”

As Canada's economy becomes more firmly linked to its resources, George Hoberg, a professor at the University of British Columbia who specializes in forestry and sustainable energy policy, said the impact of Clayoquot Sound protests can't be ignored.

“They were a watershed moment in environmental politics in British Columbia, and they had a enduring impact on the forest industry, but also broader impacts on other resource industries,” he said.

“The conflicts over pipelines now have in some way been inspired by Clayoquot Sound, and if there's ever a time when one of the two big pipeline proposals in BC … get approved, I think you'll see a civil disobedience campaign that will dwarf the one that occurred in Clayoquot Sound.”

Read more: https://bc.ctvnews.ca/war-in-the-woods-mass-arrests-20-years-ago-prompted-lasting-change-1.1406602

Twenty years after clash at Clayoquot Sound, activists see new wave of unrest on the horizon

Twenty years after a protest led to massive arrests on logging roads in Clayoquot Sound the organizers say a lot has changed – but a lot hasn’t, and they predict a new generation of activists may soon be on the barricades again.

The issue next time could be pipeline development or, once again, logging.

Where or when remains unpredictable, as was the Clayoquot rally. That summer thousands of people flocked to camp out in the Black Hole, just outside Tofino on Vancouver Island, and to stand in ranks across logging roads despite threats of arrest by the RCMP.

Hundreds were dragged away. But the Australian band Midnight Oil rocked through the night and the next day people got up and defied the law again.

The event threw the NDP government into shock – and led to a negotiated compromise. Clear-cut logging, then a practice favoured by industry and government, would be ended and a scientific panel would guide logging in the area.

It was a dramatic victory – but it didn’t end the environmental problems in B.C. Clayoquot Sound is still being logged and a mine is proposed in the area. B.C.’s Interior forests are currently being logged at a rate many say is unsustainable. Old-growth trees, some more than 1,000 years old, are routinely cut down. The Port of Metro Vancouver is pushing for increased coal shipments – and two separate oil pipeline projects are being proposed in B.C., despite widespread public concern.

“People have asked me many times, is there going to be another Clayoquot? Is this the next Clayoquot? Is that the next Clayoquot?” said Valerie Langer, a key organizer of the 1993 protest who was then with Friends of Clayoquot Sound.

“But I don’t think you manufacture things like Clayoquot ’93,” she said. “That was a factor of a broad provincewide tension about forestry, a good place to focus that [concern] – and a group that was ready to fly with it.”

However, all those factors could easily come together again in B.C., said Ms. Langer, who is now with the environmental group, ForestEthics Solutions.

“I do feel that kind of happening with the tar sands/pipeline campaign,” she said, referring to the movement to stop Enbridge Inc. from building its proposed project across B.C.

Ms. Langer said the Clayoquot protest seemed to come out of nowhere, but the mood that drove it had actually been building for years, as the government allowed industry to clear cut the forests of B.C., despite growing public objections.

She senses that same “kind of desperate feeling” simmering in the public now over the prospect of a pipeline snaking across the province to feed a parade of oil tankers plying the waters of the Great Bear Rainforest.

“I don’t think the federal and provincial governments have really cottoned on to that [public unrest] yet,” said Ms. Langer. “But this is something that builds and then there is a moment – and you never know exactly where and exactly when that will be – when it explodes.”

Vicky Husband, who was head of the Sierra Club in B.C. in 1993, said one of the reasons the Clayoquot protest got so big so fast was because people could easily drive to the area to see for themselves what environmentalists were complaining about.

The highway from Port Alberni to Tofino cut right through an active logging area, including the Black Hole, where the old-growth forest had been stripped, and then the landscape burned.

“Clayoquot Sound and Tofino were at the end of the only paved road to the open Pacific. And that’s critical. People could get there. They could see the horror show of what was going on with the logging,” she said.

Ms. Husband said she’s alarmed at the level of logging now taking place in B.C., and at government plans to privatize public forest lands. She’s horrified by the prospect of oil pipelines crossing B.C.

Do you think, she was asked, that we need another big environmental protest in B.C?

“Yes, I do,” she said, “because I don’t think we have a government that understands.”

Read more: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/mass-arrests-during-war-in-the-woods-20-years-ago-prompted-lasting-change/article13703844/

Then Burnaby NDP MP Svend Robinson (second from right) joins in anti-logging protest on the Kennedy Lake bridge in Clayoquot Sound in 1993.

Clayoquot protest 20 years ago transformed face of environmentalism

It’s hard to believe, for me at any rate, that Friday marked the 20th anniversary of the mass arrests at Clayoquot Sound, an event that transformed the face of environmentalism and forced governments and corporations to start taking such concerns seriously.

The protests at Clayoquot Sound, which lies just off Tofino on Vancouver Island’s outer coast of pristine beaches, rugged coastlines, islets, inlets and tranquil sheltered coves, represented the coalescing of public objections to clearcut logging plans by corporations who were following government policy in majestic old-growth forests.

There had been sporadic protests from Haida Gwaii to Meares Island involving First Nations activists and environmentalists, but they were considered a radical fringe by government and routinely dismissed by media as nutty extremists, “tree huggers” and flakes.

However, at Clayoquot Sound, the protest went big and it went mainstream. People came from all over the country and beyond. Teachers, artists, musicians, university students and their professors, working folk, soccer moms, dentists, doctors and First Nations elders descended on the West Coast to put a stop to clearcutting by blockading a road.

What followed was the largest mass arrest for civil disobedience in the province’s history.

Twenty years on, perhaps it’s worth remembering what launched the protests — and what the protests launched.

For one thing, they represented a new approach to public protest over environmental issues.

Five months earlier, a couple of Tofino-based activists, Garth Lenz and Valerie Langer, took the principle of thinking globally while acting locally to heart. They got on a plane and flew to Europe to persuade international organizations in Britain, Germany, Austria and other countries that protecting at least a remnant of B.C.’s ancient rainforest was important.

And they next took their campaign into the marketplace itself, urging organizations to pressure major buyers to cancel contracts with B.C. suppliers of paper and paper products on moral grounds.

As history shows, it was a stroke of strategic genius. Major environmental organizations like Greenpeace International came on board. The Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council and its high profile spokesman Bobby Kennedy Jr. took up the cause. The Australian rock band Midnight Oil flew in to put on a concert for the protesters.

Langer and other campaigners adroitly got the campaign branded the “War in the Woods,” polarizing debate into those who favoured mowing down the forests for industry and those who wanted to save an ecosystem from corporate greed.

Whether one agrees with this perception or not — and many in resource communities didn’t — it proved a defining wedge issue that made it easy for people to choose sides.

Eventually, the NDP government struck a special science panel to address the environmental concerns in Clayoquot Sound and, in 1995, all of its unanimous recommendations for resource and ecosystem management were adopted by the province.

Five years later, the entire Clayoquot Sound was designated as a global biosphere reserve by UNESCO.

But the tremors from the Clayoquot protests and the campaigns that emerged from them continue to shape our political landscape.

Fallout from the Clayoquot campaign continues to conflict the provincial NDP, which in 1993 had to choose between its blue-collar labour union roots and a new generation of young people concerned about green issues. The resulting rupture and subsequent migration of the disaffected to the Green party continues to plague it today.

Many of those who went to Clayoquot Sound as teenagers or students are now at the forefront of campaigns that seek to shape environmental policy on Alberta’ oilsands, pipelines across B.C., Canada and the U.S., tanker traffic, fish farms, mining ventures and protection for the boreal forest.

The market campaign strategies formulated to pressure government and business with respect to old-growth forests in Clayoquot Sound led to the campaign to protect the so-called “Great Bear Rainforest” on B.C.’s mid-coast, another example of shrewd branding.

The commercial salmon farming industry was forced to treat environmental concerns seriously when market campaigns were launched in the U.S. differentiating wild from farmed product.

And today there’s a pantheon of environmental organizations that are household names — Greenpeace, Rainforest Action Network, Dogwood Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Living Oceans Society, Friends of Clayoquot Sound — which employ similar market-based campaigns from Brazil to the United Kingdom over everything from biofuels to logging of tropical hardwoods.

Among the individuals who emerged from the Clayoquot protests to take leading roles in helping shape and influence environmental policy at the international, national and provincial level:

• Tzeporah Berman, one of those arrested and jailed in 1993, went on to an international role with Greenpeace. She helped found ForestEthics and, in 2009, was appointed by B.C.’s premier to the Green Energy Task Force and granted an honorary doctorate from UBC this spring.

• Ken Wu, leads the Ancient Forest Alliance in seeking protection for B.C.’s biggest, oldest and most significant forests, an end to raw log exports in order to guarantee supply for B.C. mills and a re-tooling of those mills to shift their resource base from old growth to second growth.

• Chris Genovali is executive-director of Raincoast Conservation Foundation, which enables scientific research that supports conservation and protection of waters, wildlife and lands in coastal B.C. Its campaigns include ending the trophy hunting of grizzly bears, mapping marine bird distribution and abundance and protecting resident killer whales.

• And, of course, Langer, who’s now with the Canadian arm of ForestEthics, ForestEthics Solutions and still campaigns tirelessly to protect the boreal forest and the mid-coast rainforest and Lenz, who’s had a distinguished career as a wildlife and conservation photographer with an international reputation.

Agree with them or not, the graduates of Clayoquot Sound care about the world they live in. They were prepared to fight for it then — and they are still fighting now — and that has made Canada a better place.

Avatar Grove: the Extraordinary and the Ordinary

A scant 10 minute walk off a logging road near the BC’s West Coast town of Port Renfrew is Avatar Grove, a stand of old cedars so majestic, powerful and gnarled that T. F. Watt said he and his colleagues from the Ancient Forest Alliance “were running around like kids in a candy story” when they found it in 2009. (Globe & Mail, July 23/11).

Watt, along with the co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance, Ken Wu, had been searching for just such an iconic stand of trees, one that would dramatize and catalyze enough awareness of old-growth forests to prevent further logging of the tiny remnant that still exists on southern Vancouver Island. Avatar Grove, as this stand was named, just might accomplish such an ambitious feat. Indeed, the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, the BC Ministry of Forests and the company that had the right to log Avatar Grove, Teal Cedar Products Ltd, all concurred that the stand was so sensational that it should be protected.

But it nearly wasn’t. Watt and Wu found a cluster of 20 huge stumps nearby that had been logged the year before. These 900 yearold cedars may have been even more spectacular than the standing trees that were saved. “This would have surpassed Avatar Grove in grandeur – had we found it in time,” said Wu. And shortly after Watt found Avatar Grove, timber cruisers surveyed it for logging, hanging the ominous ribbons of plastic tape that marked a cutting boundary. After 1,000 years of growing, Avatar Grove came within a hair’s breadth of the chainsaw’s bite.

Given the awesome character of Avatar Grove, who cut down the neighbouring trees? What were the fallers thinking as the teeth of their chainsaws bit into millennium-old wood? What thoughts were passing through the minds of the timber cruisers who flagged Avatar Grove for a similar fate? Are “pieces of silver” so numbing of perception and so corrupting of judgment that people simply do not notice or recognize the miraculous when it is manifest? In another time under different circumstances the only appropriate answer to these questions would have been, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Because the trees in Avatar Grove awaken in us the sense of sacred that we do not usually possess, the work of environmentalists such as T.J. Watt and Ken Wu should qualify them as modern-day saints – a status they would probably reject. With their seeing and their conviction, with their dedication and passion, they open the eyes of the blind, bringing illuminating light into a place of dull darkness. They reveal the evident, proclaim the unmistakable, connect us to a wondrous obvious of which we were previously ignorant. What else explains why some trees are felled and others are saved? Whether or not a crucifixion occurs merely depends on the difference between recognizing or not recognizing, between awareness and unawareness.

Show people and they will see. The tourists who now flock to gaze at the massive trees of Avatar Grove are not so much tourists as pilgrims coming to enter the awe of something bigger and older than themselves, something that communes with the slow passage of eon and transcends the limits of self. These pilgrims are doing the same when they flock to such revered places as Banff, Jasper, the wild trails of Strathcona, or to any seashore, lake, mountain, river, valley or forest. Something primal and timeless lures them out of themselves and connects them to a mystery that is greater than anything they can possess, control or understand.

Saints awaken us to such awareness. They make pilgrims of us all. They show us the extraordinary so we will find it in the ordinary. If we are perceptive enough, we can learn to find the miraculous in any tree, any fish, any frog or any blade of grass. The ordinary is no less amazing than the extraordinary. If we are attentive enough, if we are open and receptive enough, every part of nature becomes a wonder that will reduce the greatest of our explanations to an awestruck silence.

No one can understand the utter magic pervading any of the living things that surround us. They are profound because they give context, companionship and meaning to our very existence – the outside of us that enters the inside of us through the miracle of awareness. Then a special stand of trees may infuse us with a moment by-moment sense of magic.

But a pilgrimage does not have to be a physical journey to Avatar Grove. Every time we watch a nature documentary we are paying vicarious homage to the life forces that permeate our planet. Such programs amaze us with the living vigour of reefs, tundra, grasslands, plains, jungles, and all the plants and creatures than enliven them with incredible and diverse vitality – a living planet that we are despoiling and diminishing with an astonishingly blind enthusiasm.

As the Canadian media guru, Marshall McLuhan, so wisely noted, we move through the present looking through a rear-view mirror at what is behind us – we don’t see what is, we only see what is past, where we have been and what we are losing. This principle applies with profound irony when we consider our current fascination with all the myriad wonders of nature that we revere through documentaries and pilgrimages. Just as we are celebrating and learning of nature’s incredible complexity and intricacy, our industrial exploitation is destroying them with alarming zeal.

This is why Avatar Grove is so important, why Watt and Wu were so invigorated by hope. This small stand of glorious trees is a signal, an icon, a symbol, a sign of what remains that we must not lose. It is a warning announcing that innumerable treasures are slipping into an irretrievable past. But Avatar Grove is also a promise and an awakening, if we can understand its deeper meaning. By honouring the extraordinary, perhaps we can learn to protect the ordinary.

Re-printed in the Island Courier:  https://www.courierislander.com/news/avatar-grove-the-extraordinary-and-the-ordinary-1.133466

Master stylist

Salon cuts hair in support of endangered forests

Time for a haircut?

If you can stave it off until Sunday (Aug. 4), you can get a cut from noted Vancouver master stylist Champ Waterhouse at the Spirit of the Sea Festival – and help protect endangered old-growth forests in B.C. in the bargain.

‘Haircuts – Not Clearcuts’ will be the theme of a special booth on White Rock’s East Beach; the latest event organized by Crescent Beach’s arts, environment and community-friendly Seventh Heaven Bio Salon.

Owner Chloe Scarf said it’s a chance to make an environmental statement and be introduced to the the latest member of her team, the cowboy-hat-wearing, six-shooter blow-dryer-wielding Waterhouse.

Half the proceeds of the regularly-priced cuts will be donated to the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), an environmental non-profit working not only to protect old-growth forests but to ensure sustainable forestry in the province.

Scarf said it will the salon’s second consecutive year participating in the festival’s celebratory atmosphere, while also helping people learn something about protecting old-growth forests. The AFA’s Hannah Carpendale will also be on site to hand out information and answer questions, she added.

Extra entertainment value will be added by Waterhouse’s sense of style and fun, she said.

“Champ’s a really, really skilled haircutter,” she commented, noting that he joined forces with Seventh Heaven about a month ago, a serendipitous alignment that coincided with Waterhouse’s desire for a change of pace following years of working at high-end Vancouver salons.

“We worked together for years on Commercial Drive,” she said. “It’s very hard to find his calibre of stylist.”

Scarf said the pseudo-cowboy outfit was Waterhouse’s own idea, shortly after he came on board at Seventh Heaven.

“Don’t ask me where he got the 1800s pistol blow dryer from,” she said, laughing. “He’s a true creative and a technician – and he’s really a character.”

“I’m totally excited about Haircuts Not Clearcuts,” Waterhouse said. “I’ve done lots of things like this in the past for different causes.”

He said he has been enjoying getting to know the White Rock and South Surrey clientele over the last month.

“It’s totally different from working in Vancouver – much more laid back,” he said.

Although ‘Haircuts Not Clearcuts’ makes an eye-catching hook, Carpendale said the organization is about more than fighting clearcuts in endangered old-growth forests, such as those on Vancouver Island, in the southwest mainland and in the southern interior.

“There is so little old-growth left at this point in some areas that any commercial practice of logging endangered old-growth (whether clearcut or other) will have a huge ecological impact…protecting (the forests) could also include restrictions on other logging practices than just clearcuts,” she said.

The organization is also working to ensure that second-growth forests are logged at a sustainable rate, she said.

Read more: https://www.peacearchnews.com/community/salon-cuts-hair-in-support-of-endangered-forests/