Pitt River Salmon Runs in Danger
The Pitt River, a tributary of the Fraser, is the best wild coho salmon river left in the Lower Mainland. A proposal to put a huge gravel mine in the Pitt Valley has everyone, including WCWC, up in arms. The Pitt River supports major runs of coho and sockeye salmon as well as steelhead, rainbow trout and Dolly Varden char. There are well grounded fears that the proposed 30 hectare open-pit gravel mine in the headwaters of a small tributary of the Pitt River, an important spawning and rearing ground for coho salmon, would generate so much erosion and silt that it would be the death of one of the last remaining healthy runs of coho salmon in the Lower Mainland. WCWC, Katzie First Nation, Burke Mountain Naturalists, Steelhead Society, Sierra Legal Defense Fund and others are committed to stopping the mine before it gets started. So far the B.C. government, despite strong objections from the Department of Federal Fisheries, has not halted this ecologically disastrous project.
BUY OR EXPROPRIATE BURNS BOGS
It stands out like a "green thumb" on all the satellite images—a 4,000 hectare bog wilderness surrounded by Greater Vancouver urban development. The overwhelming majority of citizens want the entire bog saved. The more scientists study it, the more unique and species-rich we understand it to be. In early 1999, when the B.C. Government announced plans to pave part of Burns Bog for the P.N.E., WCWC published 300,000 copies of Educational Report Vol. 18 No. 3 Buy Back Burns Bog and distributed them to households in the Lower Mainland. WCWC believes the B.C. government should act immediately on the wishes of the people, buy or expropriate the necessary properties and save all of Burns Bog. They should also pass a Wetlands Act restricting all developments including bog-destroying agricultural uses of Burns Bog.
Rainshadow Wilderness Areas MUST BE PROTECTED
Much of the Rainshadow wilderness areas is beautiful alpine plateau. Intact low elevation forests are rare and critically needed by wildlife and must be protected.
The still-wild valleys and alpine ridges of the dry eastern slope of the southern Coast Mountain Range in the Lytton-Lillooet-Gold Bridge region of B.C. are known collectively as the Rainshadow Wilderness Areas. All of these areas, including the spectacular Southern Chilcotins, the Siska Valley. Cayoosh Range and Bendor Range, are endangered by industrial logging, and at least one (the wildlife-rich Cayoosh Range) is threatened by a mega-ski-city development proposed for Melvin Creek.
The B.C. government is currently concluding a land use planning process for the region. WCWC's position, which it has presented to the current B.C. government land use planning process in the region, is that at least 40 percent of this area must be protected to safeguard the ecosystem's Grizzly bears, mountain goats and other wild creatures as well as the region's growing ecotourism-based economy.
In 1999 WCWC helped fund a scientific study of the Rainshadow Wilderness area by bear biologist Wayne McCrory, who concluded that the grizzly bears will go extinct in the area if the current pace of logging in this already heavily overcut region continues.
To learn more and to find out how you can help, order WCWC's free Educational Report Vol. 17 No. 5 published in 1998, To be preserved? To be pillaged? Act now to save B.C.'s Rainshadow Wilderness.
Siska Nation Defends Siska Valley
Siska blockade to stop the logging of their homeland.
In 1994 the Wilderness Committee was asked by the Chief and Council of the Siska First Nation to help them defend their wilderness valley from timber company J.S. Jones of Boston Bar, B.C. Our first project was to help publish and distribute their Siska Valley Tribal Park Declaration that declares their 6,000 hectare valley off-limits to logging and road building. We also commissioned a study by professional biologist Wayne McCrory that revealed that the Siska Valley is critical grizzly bear habitat.
Unfortunately, in 1998, J.S. Jones Timber Company ignored the Tribal Park Declaration and the wishes of the Siska people and blasted a logging road over a 2,000 meter high pass into the valley. In 1999, the Siska people set up a tent camp at the head of the new logging road in an effort to keep the loggers out of their valley. However, J. S. Jones got a court injunction ordering the Siska off the road and succeeded in logging two clearcuts in the valley in 1999. In 2000 the Wilderness Committee will be working closely with the Siska First Nation to help protect their valley and ensure that no further clearcut destruction takes place.
World's largest Western Hemlock found by WCWC researcher
Record tree expert Dr. Robert Van Pelt and assistant posing by the world's biggest western hemlock that was verified by their laser tech based measurements.
In the search to find and re-measure a very large western hemlock documented years ago by the late Randy Stoltmann, WCWC big tree researcher Ralph Kelman discovered an even bigger hemlock. Growing in the Upper Lynn Valley Regional Park near Vancouver; the tree Kelman found in the fall of 1999 has a circumference of 9.54 meters (an impressive 10 feet in diameter).
Dr. Robert Van Pelt, a University of Washington lecturer and head of the Washington State Big Tree Program, hiked in and, using laser technology, measured the free. He determined that it was the largest known western hemlock in the world, eclipsing the current record holder in Washington State by three feet in circumference! Kelman's tree, although it has a broken top, is healthy and towers 150 feet - as high as a 15 story building.
Recently, the B.C. Conservation Data Center assumed responsibility for the registry of record-sized and record-aged native trees in B.C. that was originally started and maintained by the late Randy Stoltmann. For information about how to check for record trees check their web site: www.elp.gov.bcca/rib/wis/cdc/treenom.htm
End all logging in Algonquin Park
Few things get WCWC angrier than logging in Provincial Parks. We believe that industrial timber extraction in parks is morally, ethically and biologically wrong. Here in British Columbia, commercial logging in Provincial Parks is strictly forbidden, but in other parts of Canada it is allowed - even encouraged and that has got to be stopped!
The Ontario Government allows large-scale commercial logging in Algonquin Provincial Park. The proposed 20-year Algonquin logging plan calls for a rate of logging equal to 15,000 logging truckloads per year. That is a higher rate of logging than is found in many of Canada's industrial logging areas. The habitat fragmentation and destruction caused by this continued logging of Algonquin makes a mockery of the word "park".
This year we will produce and distribute 100,000 copies of a opinion poll postcard that will allow people to register their views about logging in Algonquin Park with the Ontario Government. We know from our door-to-door educational canvasses in Ottawa and Toronto that people want the logging to stop...now! If you want to help distribute these opinion poll postcards, phone or write us and we will send them to you as soon as they are printed
Elphinstone Park & Forest Campaign
B.C.'s Sunshine Coast has less than one percent of its low elevation oldgrowth forests left. The recent big parks that WCWC and local groups fought to get in the region, the Caren and Tetrahedron, are in the high country. In 2000, WCWC is launching a campaign to assist local conservationists establish a 1500 hectare park on the low elevation slopes of Mount Elphinstone.
While most of the proposed park area has maturing second growth, it also has pockets of oldgrowth. This area, noted for having the highest biodiversity of fungi in Vancouver's Lower Mainland, was overlooked except for two tiny parks in the last round of provincial park making. Local citizens are also advocating a large sustainably-managed community forest proposed around the Elphinstone Park.
Will Canada finally get a good endangered species law?
Grizzly bears and many salmon stocks are among the many "species at risk" of going extinct in Canada.
It's been 27 years since the International Convention on Endangered Species was signed, 23 years since Canada established the Committee On the Status of Endangered Wildlife In Canada (COSEWIC) to scientifically assess and list Canadian wildlife species at risk, and seven years since Canada ratified the International Biodiversity Convention. It's been nearly five years since WCWC co-published, with seven other conservation groups, 200,000 copies of Protect Canada's Biodiversity - Prevent a Biodiversity Crisis, an 'eight page newspaper explaining why Canada needs Endangered Species Legislation.
Finally, in the year 2000, Canada's Environment Minister, David Anderson, is introducing legislation to protect "Species at Risk ". But will it be strong and effective, especially in the protection of habitat, and will the listing of species be scientifically rather than politically based?
Meanwhile Canada's biodiversity crisis expands. In 1999, for the first time, COSEWIC listed populations of Orcas (Killer Whales) as a Canadian species at risk. Clearcutting continued to destroy oldgrowth forest habitats, including thousand-year-old trees. Governments failed to offer sufficient protection for threatened and vulnerable populations of grizzly bears. And many races of salmon (subspecies stocks) have declined to the verge of extinction.
WCWC has continued to increase pressure to gain effective endangered species legislation, devoting its entire Year 2000 Canada Endangered Wilderness Calendar to Canada's species at risk (call us at 1-800-661-9453 for extra copies!)
