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Climbing Big Lonely Doug (TJ Watt/The Ancient Forest Alliance).
Have you ever seen a tree so big it would take 10 people to wrap their arms around its trunk – and that still wouldn’t be enough? A tree as tall as a downtown office building?
These trees exist and, in British Columbia’s coastal rainforests, are measured and even tracked by the people fighting to protect them.
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Endangered Ecosystems Alliance executive director Ken Wu is hopeful the B.C. government's new forestry plan will lead to protection for ancient forests around Port Renfrew and elsewhere in the province. (TJ Watt / Ancient Forest Alliance)
A “war in the woods” has simmered for decades in B.C., sometimes erupting into high-profile protests and arrests over plans to log ancient trees in places like Clayoquot Sound and Fairy Creek.
This week, the provincial government unveiled a suite of new measures that aim to accelerate old-growth protection and broker a truce. Measures include new initiatives to finance old-growth forest protection, more Indigenous participation in land-use decisions and an end to prioritizing timber extraction over all other values, including biodiversity and carbon storage.
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B.C. Premier David Eby speaks during a news conference in Vancouver, on Feb. 5. The NDP government made a commitment in the 2020 election campaign to protect old growth – officially recognizing that the value of old-growth trees left standing can be far greater than the value of those trees as timber products. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)
The B.C. government is seeking to harness the financial clout of non-profit conservation groups to protect endangered ecosystems, with a commitment to create a new trust fund to leverage charitable donations for nature with its own dollars.
Premier David Eby announced on Wednesday his plans to fast-track his government’s progress on protecting old growth, including $25-million to help First Nations participate in land-use decisions on old-growth forests, and $90-million added to the B.C. Manufacturing Jobs Fund to help forestry companies retool their mills to adapt to second-growth timber.
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An aerial photograph of the Nahmint Valley outside Port Alberni, B.C., shows protected old growth groves along the water and replanted hillsides that were previously logged. (Chris Corday/CBC)
In mandate letters to his land stewardship and forestry ministers, B.C. Premier David Eby says he wants to double the amount of protected land in the province, support new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, and move faster on recommendations around the logging of old growth trees.
They're conservation goals advocates have been calling on for years to protect B.C.'s unique biodiversity, which has thousands of species at risk due to development and climate change.
"This is potentially a major leap toward protecting endangered ecosystems and the most at-risk, productive stands of old-growth forests left in B.C.," said Ken Wu in a release from the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance.
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BC Premier David Eby has committed to protecting 30 per cent of B.C. by 2030, doubling current protections. Photo: Province of British Columbia, Flickr
For years, our main campaign in BC has been that the province must commit to the federal protected areas targets (to protect 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 of Canada's land and marine areas) at a minimum and to provide conservation financing support for First Nations sustainable economic development linked to protecting the most at-risk, productive (big tree) old-growth forests and the most endangered ecosystems.
Today Premier David Eby committed BC to meeting the federal protected areas target of protecting 30% by 2030 of the land area (currently 15% of BC is in legislated protected areas), joining Quebec now which made the pledge much earlier.
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Businesses are urging the B.C. government to capitalize on Ottawa’s offer to invest hundreds of millions to save threatened ecosystems in the run-up to the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal next month.
A total of 250 businesses are backing a resolution urging B.C.’s new Premier David Eby to stave off the extinction and climate crisis by backing the federal government’s 30x30 promise — to protect 30 per cent of the country’s land and waters by 2030.
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Endangered Ecosystems Alliance Executive Director Ken Wu on a cedar stump in the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island. Photo: TJ Watt
The federal government has budgeted $2.3 billion to expand the protected areas system in Canada - of which BC's share would be between $200 to $400 million - including $55 million specifically allocated to prioritize protecting the most at-risk old-growth stands, contingent on a matching BC commitment.
That is, if BC provided matching funds of between $200 to $400 million, including $55 million of its own to help save the best old-growth stands, it would result in a total funding pot of between $400 to $800 million to expand protected areas in BC, with $110 million focused on protecting the best old-growth forests (still not enough mind you to protect all such stands, but the rest of the funds worth hundreds of millions of dollars can also be used to protect old-growth forests, along with other ecosystems). Additional funds from private sources and environmental groups, like the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation, could top it up by hundreds of millions. The total funding of $600 to $1 billion if targeted correctly would be a game-changer to protect much of the old-growth forests in BC and other vital ecosystems.
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Photo: Garth Asham, Kanaka Lands Department Assistant by an ancient Interior Douglas-fir tree on the newly acquired private property by the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation.
Read an article in the National Observer about our work at the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance in our collaboration with the Kanaka Bar Indian Band, the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation and the Ancient Forest Alliance to help protect the old-growth forests and native ecosystems in Kanaka Bar territory, via the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation.
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Celina Starnes of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance stands under an old-growth Western redcedar near Kanaka Bar Indian Band, home to the T’eqt’’aqtn’mux, in British Columbia this past Sept. 21.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RAFAL GERSZAK/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Here is a new article in the Globe and Mail by Justine Hunter about the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation's (NBSF) purchase last week of potentially the most diverse old-growth forest in BC - with both dry-adapted old-growth Ponderosa pine and wet-adapted western redcedar growing side-by-side - on private lands, to be given back with a conservation covenant to the Kanaka Bar Indian Band south of Lytton. It also features the Kanaka Bar's Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) proposal that we are also supporting on Crown/ unceded Kanaka Bar lands, that would protect about 350 square kilometres of land in their territory, including 125 square kilometers of old-growth forests.
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Read a new article about the amazing 35,000 hectare Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), which will protect 12,500 hectares of some of the rarest and least represented old-growth forests in BC, planned by the Kanaka Bar Band (a Nlaka'pamux First Nation) in the Fraser Canyon near Lytton.
The Nature-Based Solutions Foundation (NBSF), Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA), and Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) have been supporting this initiative as part of our Old-Growth Solutions Initiative to help protect old-growth forests across BC.
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Over 12,500 hectares of some of BC’s most endangered and diverse old-growth forests will be protected in in the territory of the Kanaka Bar Band, a Nlaka'pamux First Nation in the Fraser Canyon near Lytton, when a major new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) is finalized. The Kanaka Bar Band announced their vision today to protect a total of about 35,000 hectares of their unceded lands in British Columbia in this IPCA.
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British Columbia’s largest private landowner, Mosaic Forest Management, is halting logging in nearly 100,000 acres of old-growth forest for the next 25 years.
The forestry company announced the deferral on March 16 and said it’s transitioning to a carbon credit program, which is expected to generate several hundred million dollars in revenue.
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Today a big step towards saving old-growth forests in BC was announced - with a significant way yet to go. An area about the size of Jasper National Park, about 1.05 million hectares of the priority, unprotected, most at-risk old-growth forests (the grandest, oldest and rarest stands), have now been placed under deferral from logging - with First Nations and the province having added 480,000 hectares recently, announced today.
Read moreBritish Columbia's forests minister says the province has worked with First Nations to defer logging across more than a million hectares of at-risk old-growth forests, an area greater than 4,100 Stanley Parks.
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Mosaic Forest Management, which oversees the private lands of logging companies TimberWest and Island Timberlands, announced the deferral last week along with intentions to finance the plan through a carbon credit program that is expected to raise several hundred million dollars by 2047.
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Today (March 21st) is International Day of Forests!
On this day it is worth taking an overview of some progress in forest conservation, driven by millions of concerned citizens who have spoken up - including tens of thousands of Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) supporters! And by recognizing progress when it happens, it fuels everyone to keep going, to ensure more progress - because what we all do makes a difference!
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For those of you concerned about the fate of old-growth forests in BC:
Yesterday, for the first time the BC government dedicated a significant sum in the provincial budget - $185 million over 3 years - to help protect old-growth forests in BC!
A new conservation foundation is working to provide Indigenous and other land-based communities with funds to protect endangered ecosystems and build economic alternatives to the logging of at-risk old-growth forests.
It’s unjust and impractical to expect communities that rely on revenue from activities such as forestry, ranching or resource extraction to bear the financial burden of shifting their local economy on their own to protect areas for the benefit of all, said Ken Wu, chair of the recently established Nature-Based Solutions Foundation (NBSF).
Case in point is the current old-growth deferral process underway in B.C., where the provincial government has asked First Nations to consider putting logging on hold in at-risk old-growth forests but hasn’t offered any compensation to do so, said Wu, also executive director of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance.
Rochelle Baker, The National Observer, Jan 13th, 2022
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The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance team - Left: Ken Wu (Executive Director) by an old-growth Ponderosa pine in the proposed South Okanagan National Park Reserve. Top Right: Celina Starnes (Outreach and Operations Director) by the Alberta badlands along the Red Deer River. Bottom Right: Nick Davis (Administrative Coordinator) in the Carolinian forest of the Rouge Valley Urban National Park.
There’s no doubt that these last couple of years have been particularly tough for most people - not only of course due to the pandemic, but also because of the ever-expanding environmental crisis partly experienced via extreme weather events, and compounded by pervasive anti-science and alternative-facts movement divorced from reality among certain segments of society .
But in this article instead of shoveling more unhappy dung your way for the New Year, I want to focus on some recent good news and progress with nature protection in Canada and some opportunities for further progress in 2022.
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The actor who plays Jughead Jones in the Archie Comics’ spin-off show Riverdale is selling prints of his own nature photography to fundraise for two B.C. environmental organizations.
By Victoria News Staff, originally published Dec 1
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