News Coverage

As deadline looms for Island Timberlands to begin logging on Cortes Island, advocates are hoping for a re-enactment of an earlier success story to protect the area's pristine forests.

Forest conservation experts say documenting old growth trees in BC island forests could help secure provincial support, in order to buy endangered land from logging company Island Timberlands.

Protecting the environment and retaining forestry jobs seemed to be something that could never happen.

The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) came up with a new goal which is to retain forestry jobs through sustainable logging practices while saving old-growth forests for future generations.

Island Timberlands will start logging on Cortes Island this January, according to Wayne French, Operations Planner for IT.  Cortes Islanders are seeking signatories to a petition to prevent the logging.

While the strength of environmental campaigns vary each year, 2012 should be major. Here are five predictions: 1. The Climate Change Movement will Heat Up 2. Slick Oil Industry PR will Spread to Pipelines 3. Ancient Forest Campaign will Target both B.C. Lib's and NDP 4. The Fight against Fish Farms will go Viral 5. Raw Logs on a Slow Boat to China will be Protested.

"At the time, I hadn't paid much attention to what the lichen actually looked like, so I bought it sight unseen," his widow Anne Hansen laughed Wednesday. "Then people said to me, 'Oh my God, that lichen looks like Henry's beard.'" 

It began with a story written by Sun reporter Larry Pynn. In the June 17 edition, Pynn told the story of how Trevor Goward, curator of lichens at UBC, discovered two new species of lichen: one in the Hazel-ton area and one in the Clear-water Valley near Wells Gray Provincial Park.

Last week, Hansen found a fitting way to memorialize her late husband. For $4,000, she bought  the scientific naming rights to a newly-discovered lichen. The horsehair lichen – which Hansen says resembles Kock's beard – will be known as Bryoria kockiana.