NDP government refuses to add Upper Carmanah Valley to Park
Campsite in clearcutnearby trailhead to Upper Carmanah research facilities.
View looking down from 20 stories up in main the research tree - detail showing two people below.
At a meeting with Environment Minister John Cashore in January 1993, Joe Foy, head of WCWC's national campaigns, asked the B.C. government to designate the 3,300 hectare Upper Carmanah Valley as a "Park Study Area" so that WCWC's research area would be considered for full protection. Noting that it was the former government that made the ecologically unsound decision to save only the lower half of the watershed as park, Foy figured that the new government could easily begin to right this wrong.
Despite evidence that any logging in the upper watershed, where the highest intensity rainfall storms on the Canadian coast occur, would degrade the flood plain in the middle valley and threaten the park, the answer given by the minister four months later was "no".
MacMillan Bloedel is currently developing logging plans for Upper Carmanah's steep ancient-forested slopes which stabilize soils and protect Lower Carmanah Valley from flash floods. Logging would put the WCWC ancient forest canopy research station out of business as well as put at risk the park in the lower half of the valley.
