The largest private landowner in British Columbia, Mosaic Forest Management, is moving to defer 40,000 hectares (400 square kilometers) of old-growth and older second-growth stands from logging on their private lands for the next 25 years, via a carbon credit program. The lands are mainly located on southeastern Vancouver Island, with a few scattered […]
Old-growth logging on private lands on the mountainside above Cathedral Grove has put Canada’s most famous old-growth forest at risk and illustrated the urgent need for provincial funding to purchase and protect endangered ecosystems on private lands.
Check out our media release in response to today's BC Budget announcement, regarding the lack of funding for a provincial land acquisition fund to purchase and protect endangered old-growth forests and ecosystems on private lands. Despite repeated requests from conservation groups and thousands of concerned citizens, the NDP government has yet to prioritize the urgent need for a dedicated fund to purchase private lands of high conservation and recreational value and add them to the province's protected area system.
For Immediate Release The Ancient Forest Alliance looks forward to working with Premier Horgan and Ministers Scott Fraser, George Heyman, and Doug Donaldson to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and ensure a sustainable, value-added, second-growth forest industry. The Ancient Forest Alliance welcomes and congratulates the new British Columbia NDP government and its new cabinet after yesterday’s swearing-in ceremony at the Legislature. The Ancient Forest Alliance is working with diverse partners to protect the province’s old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable, value-added forest industry, and is encouraged by Premier John Horgan’s picks for several ministerial positions. See our media release at: https://ancientforestalliance.org/news-item.php?ID=1126
Here's a new article by the Ancient Forest Alliance's Ken Wu about how Port Alberni, the forestry capital of Vancouver Island and once considered unfriendly to the environmental movement, has today become a major hub of environmental awareness over logging in their drinking watershed, the loss of their last old-growth stands at McLaughlin Ridge and other sites, and over the massive export of raw logs to the USA and China from their region. Thanks to Jane Morden and her team with the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance for moving these issues into the forefront over years of hard work!
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.
Victoria, BC – Conservationists are calling on the BC government to establish a Natural Lands Acquisition Fund. In a new report (https://www.elc.uvic.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/FindingMoneyForParks-2015-02-08-web.pdf) prepared for the Ancient Forest Alliance, the UVic Environmental Law Centre (ELC) is calling on the Province to establish an annual $40 million Natural Lands Acquisition Fund to purchase and protect endangered ecosystems on private lands.
Back in 2013, a group of 23 organizations, foresters, scientists and local MLA Scott Fraser signed a letter expressing concern that 60 per cent of old growth – some designated by provincial scientists as critical winter range for deer and elk under the tree farm licence from which they were removed in 2004 — had been logged in the upper watershed. Old growth there also serves as a filtration system for the town’s high quality water. “Logging on these steep old-growth slopes has a high potential to alter the quality and rate of water flow and the streams’ courses,” Fraser warned in a letter last October to the Managed Forest Council which oversees logging practice on private lands. Watershed cutblocks above China Creek “should never have been logged,” he said.
Conservationists call on BC Government to help purchase endangered old-growth forests on Island Timberlands’ deregulated lands, including McLaughlin Ridge in Port Alberni’s drinking watershed, following BC Teachers Federation motion, Port Alberni city council resolution, and now Island Timberlands’ potential interest in selling McLaughlin Ridge.
The Port Alberni Watershed Forest Alliance has been relentless in their campaign to save the old-growth forests around Port Alberni, at McLaughlin Ridge, the Cameron Valley Ancient Forest, Horne Mountain (above Cathedral Grove) and Katlum Creek. Led by Jane Morden and a great local team, they are real forest heroes in this province!
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