Mid Vancouver Island Chapter Champions Local Park Creation
Popular hiking trail to Mount Arrowsmith logged over by insensitive private land owner TimberWest.
by Annette Tanner
The Mid-island Chapter is run entirely by volunteers. We focus on public education through "Issue Night" presentations and slideshows that we sponsor several times a year. Notable shows in 1998-1999 included Ian and Karen McAllister's Great Bear Rainforest slideshow, Graham Osborne's Rainforest slideshow and David Ellis's presentation Caring for Herring. We've held events in Nanaimo, Qualicum Beach, Courtenay and, this past year, in Port Alberni, so that our public education programs are accessible region-wide!
Two percent is not enough to protect one of Canada's most biologically diverse and endangered ecosystems - the Nanaimo Lowlands on Vancouver Island's East Coast
Ecosystem fragmentation presents a serious threat to maintaining natural biodiversity, wildlife migration and gene pool diversity in the Nanaimo Lowlands, which extends along the east coast of Vancouver Island from Campbell River to Sooke. A recently released report by Environment Canada, Sensitive Ecosystems Inventory Project for East Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, states that less than 8 percent of that study area remains in a relatively natural condition. The rest is substantially degraded by industrial and urban development, habitat fragmentation and introduced species.
Options to protect natural areas and wildlife corridors are hampered by the fact that almost all the lands on southeast Vancouver Island are privately owned. They were originally granted to the Esquimalt and Nanaimo Railway Company by the B.C. government in 1884. Most of these lands were eventually acquired by logging companies such as MacMillan Bloedel and TimberWest.
There are many examples where logging on private lands, which is free of many government restrictions such as the Forest Practices Code, has greatly compromised conservationists' objectives. In one case that WCWC's Mid-Island Chapter has followed, TimberWest acquired a parcel of private land and proceeded with logging a pristine trail corridor. The trail, hiked by thousands of locals and tourists annually, begins at the Alberni Highway beside Cathedral Lake, just a few kilometers from the world-famous hedral Grove (MacMillan Park). Up the trail on the mountain side, the awesome feeling of hiking through a tranquil oldgrowth forest-of 800-or-more-year-old Douglas firs has been replaced by the shock of finding yourself in a sea of 800-year-old stumps. This steep and rugged trail corridor was helicopter-logged by TimberWest in 1998, over the vociferous objections of hikers and conservation groups.
We have learned that the lands that remain in public hands (Crown lands) are very precious. They are our best chance to protect natural remnants of the endangered Nanaimo Lowland ecosystem. Currently only 2 percent of this ecoregion is protected!
Flying in the face of conservation efforts, in 1997 the B.C. NDP Government mandated a Crown Corporation (renamed British Columbia Assets and Land Corporation in 1998) to raise government revenues by selling off Crown Lands, specifically along the east coast of Vancouver Island. A listing of Crown land for sale is available on the following government website: www.elp.gov.bc.ca/clrslwlc/wlclist.htm
Government liquidation of our Crown lands within the Qualicum Municipality alone has raised $900,000. Some of the properties sold by the government were on local trails that were being well used by the public! This is unconscionable, especially given the growth in eco-tourism and the crowded condition of our regional parks! The money already raised must be applied to purchase the rest of the Brown Property, a Stanley Park-like Douglas fir "oldgrowth forested island" in Qualicum Beach. The option to purchase expires May 1, 2000 and if it is not bought now, the price is expected to quadruple.
The short term gain by selling (mostly for clearcutting and development) these few remaining fragments of forested Crown lands in the Nanaimo Lowlands is minuscule compared to what is being lost. These lands would better serve the public as protected parks and green space.
The Wilderness Committee's Mid-Island Chapter is dedicated to long-term protection of the Nanaimo Lowlands ecosystem. We believe that:
Our Wilderness Committee Mid-Island Branch is deeply involved in local land, forest and watershed protection issues. We are concerned about our diminishing salmon, clearcutting of forests, over-crowding of parks and the sustainability of our communities and ecosystem. We are always looking for more volunteers to help with posters, phoning and special events, especially in the Duncan, Ladysmith, Port Alberni and Campbell River areas. The Mid-Island Chapter is a completely voluntary organization and depends on its members and volunteers to get its work done.
WCWC Mid-Island Chapter
PO Box 422 Qualicum Beach, BC V9K 1S9
Tel: (250) 716-9292 or (250) 752-6585
Email: wcwcqb@nanaimo.ark.com
WCWC's Kootenay Chapter launches new campaigns to save the fragile ecosystems of the West Kootenays from industrial and commercial developments
The temperate interior rainforest of the West Kootenays, hard hit by forest fires at the turn of the century, has been fragmented by decades logging and by hydro-electric dam projects that have flooded low elevation forests in many large river systems is the Columbia Basin. Now, there are only a few valleys of oldgrowth forest left, and most of the remaining wilderness is in alpine areas over 4000 feet in elevation.
During 1999, the B.C. government began opening up these high elevation wilderness areas to proposals for backcountry tourism operations, including both summer and winter commercial recreational developments. The proposed operations range in size, but virtually all of them require motorized access.
If approved, they will negatively impact fragile alpine habitats and vulnerable species such as the wolverine and grizzly bear. These wilderness-dependent species have already been impacted by clearcut logging, road building and loss of habitat in the low and mid-elevation areas, and their declining populations are very vulnerable to further disturbances.
Wolverines, which den in remote alpine areas, are an elusive animal that avoids people. Roads into these areas mean easy access for hunters, trappers and people on snowmobiles and ATVs. In an article entitled "Glutton for Punishment" in the April/May 1998 Equinox Magazine, wildlife biologist Jeff Copeland notes, "It is now clear that a denning mother...may abandon an area immediately, taking her young kits with her, at the merest hint of snowmobiles, cross-country skiers, heliskiers or even human footprint. Any intrusion is seen (by wolverine mothers) as a threat."
Biologist John Krebs, head of the Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Wolverine Project in southern BC states, "There's a diminishing refugia for critters like the wolverine. They need wilderness. The national parks aren't big enough."
The wolverine will not survive if the planned motorized intrusions into their alpine habitat go ahead. Grizzly bears, which, like the wolverine, depend on fragile, high elevation habitats in the Kootenays, will also continue to decline if the wilderness they depend on is further fragmented and disturbed. WCWC's West Kootenay Chapter will fight backcountry commercial recreation projects that threaten the survival of these species.
During 1998 and 1999 the Wilderness Committee's West Kootenay Chapter worked closely with other local environment groups to stop the proposed Jumbo Pass alpine development project---a huge 7,000-bed year-old resort proposed on a wilderness pass that links the East and West Kootenays. Jumbo Pass provides critical denning habitat and is a migratory corridor for grizzlies wolverines, mountain goats and other wildlife. Our West Kootenay Chapter also worked closely with the Valhalla Wilderness Society and others in a grassroots effort to stop clearcut logging in the drinking watersheds of the Slocan Valley. We support a locally-proposed ecoforestry-based land use plan that would transfer the management of the Slocan Valley to community control and ensure that forestry in the area becomes ecologically sustainable.
In January 2000 James Jamieson, who has managed various projects for WCWC over the years, was hired on a part-time basis to expand the campaigns managed by our West Kootenay Chapter. James' past contributions include managing WCWC's Information Kiosk at Sutton Pass in Clayoquot Sound for one hot summer (1994) and our trail building and ancient tree surveying camps in the Stoltmann Wilderness (1995, 1997 and 1999).
In the spring of 2000 James will open a new WCWC storefront office and launch a new wilderness campaign to stop the Catsking Resort development that is currently proposed for the oldgrowth-and-wildlife-rich Grohman watershed near Nelson.
Besides launching the Grohman Ridge Wildlife Corridor Campaign, Jamieson will be exploring the East River, reputed to be one of the last unprotected, unburned oldgrowth interior rainforested valleys left in the West Kootenays.
In addition to campaigning against habitat-harming development projects such as Jumbo Pass and Catsking Resort, our West Kootenay Chapter will continue to work with the Valhalla Society and other environment groups, and with First Nations, including the Sinixt Nation, to oppose unsustainable clearcut logging and establish eco-forestry and local control of watershed management in the West Kootenays.
WCWC West Kootenay Chapter
c/o RR #1 Site 16 Comp 22 Winlaw, BC V0G 2J0
Tel/Fax: 250-226-0093
