Global TV News – Protesters Want Government to Protect Old-Growth Forests

About 500 people protested in front of the BC Legislature on Saturday afternoon to bring awareness to the loss of B.C. endangered old-growth forests. Organized by the Ancient Forest Alliance, the group wants the BC Liberal government and the NDP to commit to an plan that will protect B.C.'s old-growth forests, and ensure sustainable, second-growth forestry jobs.

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The fight to protect what’s left of old-growth forests

British Columbia is the last place in Canada where you can still find ancient, monumental trees standing outside parks. We are not talking here just about big, old trees, but about trees 250 to 1,000 years old, that tower 70 metres in height. If one grew on the steps of Parliament, its tip would block out the clock face on the Peace Tower. And set down in Vancouver, they would be as tall as many office towers.

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Ancient Forest Alliance

Today’s CHEK TV news clip on the battle to stop Island Timberlands from logging the mountainside above Cathedral Grove!

  https://bcove.me/la6w1bkg - link to CHEK TV news clip on the battle to stop Island Timberlands from logging the mountainside above Cathedral Grove!
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B.C. backs off plan that would give private companies more power over Crown forests

The BC Liberals wanted to give a ‘parting gift’ to the major logging companies before they leave office, but in this politically sensitive pre-election period that’s not going to happen now — thanks to thousands of people who spoke up and the great work of Bob Simpson.

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Ancient Forest Alliance

B.C. backs off on changes to licensing forest lands

The provincial government has backed away from a plan that critics claim would have radically reduced public control of forest land. Conservationists, who were girding for a full-fledged fight over proposed changes to the Forest Act, reacted with delight Tuesday after Forests Minister Steve Thomson said he was withdrawing plans to allow a rollover of volume-based forest licences to area-based tree farm licences.The backdown appears to be sparked by a massive public uproar

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Logs to be processed are pictured at Interfor's Acorn Division mill in Delta

Tourism in the Discovery Islands feels the force of logging

"It’s heart-wrenching,' Ralph Keller, a spokesman for the Discovery Islands Marine Tourism Group, said Tuesday. 'The Discovery Islands are probably the most geographically spectacular islands in the world … [but] in some places we have gone from beautifully forested shorelines to industrial logging … these channels have just been nuked."

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Environmentalists approve Liberal move on forest tenure

"It would have made it harder to establish new protected areas, to protect scenery, and tourism opportunities. It would have made it more lengthy and difficult and complex to settle First Nations treaties, and it would have also taken away a lot of lands that communities would have wanted for community forestry."

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Jane Morden

Old growth near Cathedral Grove set for imminent logging: activists

"They are totally wrong to do this,' he said. 'Habitat means it is the animals’ home. If someone takes your house away and you have to live on the streets, you won’t die right away, but your life will be short and your reproductive chances are going to be slim."

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Ancient Forest Alliance

CHEK News – Cathedral Grove Threatened by Logging

CHEK News coverage of proposed logging by Island Timberlands in old-growth forest only a few hundred metres from the world famous Cathedral Grove in MacMillan Provincial Park on Vancouver Island.

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Ancient Forest Alliance

Tree licence rollover has no public benefit

"At first glance Bill 8 — the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act — looks like housekeeping legislation. Read a little closer and one discovers one of the most pernicious pieces of forest legislation to be tabled in the legislature since a forests minister lost his job over the same issue in 1989. Bill 8 includes an addition to the Forest Act that would allow the forests minister to invite corporations to roll over their forest licences into Tree Farm Licences (TFL), effectively transferring private ownership rights to the corporation without any reciprocal benefit in the public interest..."

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