WCWC Victoria celebrates a win in helping raise the money needed to expand the CRD's park and trails system
WCWC Victoria Wilderness supporters raise banners in support of preserving the Upper Walbran Valley and Stoltmann Wilderness at the 1998 opening of the B.C. Legislature ceremony hoping to catch the Premier's attention and put wilderness conservation back on the government's agenda.
In August of 1998, the Wilderness Committee's Victoria Chapter joined forces with other local conservation groups to fight for full protection of a Sea-to-Sea Green-Blue Belt around Greater Victoria. Fully protected, it would be a continuous "belt" of wild lands and marine areas linking existing parks from Salt Spring Island and Cowichan Bay through the Sooke Hill Wilderness to East Sooke Park on Juan de Fuca Strait.
The Sea-to-Sea Green-Blue Belt will forever preserve viable habitat for the increasingly threatened native plants and animals of the rapidly growing Greater Victoria urban region. Over the last five years, WCWC has published and widely distributed almost one-quarter of a million copies of four educational newspapers and a three-part opinion poll mailer about the Sooke Hills Wilderness and the Sea-to-Sea Green-Blue Belt. The campaign had already been successful in gaining protection for about 75 percent of the area - the lands that were already in public hands. What remains to be acquired to complete the Belt is the acquisition of parcels of private property and that takes a lot of money!
How the TimberWest Grinch stole the Walbran Valley— a street-play out on by WCWC Victoria in December 1999.
Besides working with the Land Conservancy of British Columbia to privately raise money, WCWC Victoria and other member groups in the alliance have worked to build the public support necessary to prompt the Capital Regional District (CRD) to establish a Parks Acquisition Fund through a special levy of about $10 per household per year. During the fall 1999 municipal elections, many of the CRD municipalities put this question to non-binding referendum. About 70 percent of the voters backed the levy! The voters also elected councilors and mayors who supported the Sea-to-Sea Green-Blue Belt and an expansion of the regional park system to keep pace with the region's growing population.
On January 26, 2000 the new CRD board passed a motion to establish an average $10 per household per year levy, raising $18 million over the next 10 years to go towards purchasing the needed parkland. It's a great campaign victory - thanks to the active support of all our members and supporters in the Greater Victoria region!
Protecting the Walbran
In April of 1998, as part of our effort to save the last of Vancouver Island's ancient temperate rainforests, WCWC officially opened its Upper Walbran Valley Research Station and kicked off our campaign to protect the Upper Walbran Valley. We requested and received permission from the Pacheedaht First Nation, whose traditional territory includes the Walbran Valley.
Among the scientists who will utilize the research station is University of Victoria entomologist Neville Winchester. His work in WCWC's Upper Canopy Research Station in the adjacent Carmanah Valley resulted in the discovery of an estimated 300 to 500 new insect species previously unknown to science and helped WCWC win park protection for the Upper Carmanah.
Less than one-half of the Walbran watershed is protected. This is not enough to fully conserve biodiversity. Continued logging in the upper Walbran puts at risk bird species such as the northern goshawk and the marbled murrelet, along with countless species of insects. Protection of the Upper Walbran is critical, given how few fragments remain of the oldgrowth rainforest ecosystem on southern Vancouver Island.
The Wilderness Committee's Victoria office offers tours into the Walbran to let people see the magnificence of the oldgrowth forest and the devastating impacts of clearcut logging. This year WCWC's Victoria Chapter is intensifying its campaign to save the whole Walbran Valley and protect the remaining oldgrowth areas left out by the CORE process (a regional protected area process). CORE led to only about 13 percent of Vancouver Island being protected. In all, less than 7 percent of the Island's ancient rainforests are currently conserved.
1999 Campaign Highlights
June - WCWC conducts Victoria street-theatre-protest against the B.C. government's proposed public forestland give-away to MacMillan Bloedel.
July - Joint WCWC/Forest Action Network press conference condemns logging by West Fraser Ltd. in the Great Bear Rainforest.
Aug. - WCWC joins forces with the Valhalla Wilderness Society to demonstrate against the privatization of B.C.'s provincial parks.
Sept. - WCWC and Valhalla Wilderness Society mount a "wildlife parade" to the Victoria Legislature where several "grizzlies" delivered 400 letters to the Premier's office in support of the proposed Stoltmann National Park Reserve. WCWC holds another rally several weeks later to protest the September 15, 1999 violent assaults on environmentalists in the Stoltmann by Interfor employees. WCWC organizes a rally against the Weyerhaeuser takeover of MacBlo.
Oct. - WCWC volunteers distribute 80,000 copies of our Sea-to-Sea Green-Blue Belt educational paper and 3-part mailers in Greater Victoria.
Nov. - WCWC mounts a rally for the Stoltmann Wilderness, hauling our 1,150 year-old Douglas fir slab to the Ministry of Forests headquarters and to the steps of the B.C. Legislature.
Dec. - WCWC presents a street theater event entitled "How the TimberWest Grinch Stole the Walbran Valley" at Bastion Square.
2000 Campaign Plans
Hotspots Map
WCWC will produce a Vancouver Island "hotspots" map of endangered wilderness areas and oldgrowth valleys that need immediate protection including the Upper Walbran, Klaskish, East, Nahmint, and Upper Schoen.
Vision Map
In consultation with conservation groups, First Nations and conservation biologists, we will produce an updated version of our 1993 Vancouver Island Conservation Vision Map, which called for 40 percent of Vancouver Island to be protected in order to conserve biodiversity.
Upper Walbran Research Project
WCWC will inventory plants, upper canopy organisms, mammals, birds, fish, as well as oldgrowth tree age and size in the Upper Walbran rainforest. We will concentrate on forests in the proposed TimberWest and Weyerhaeuser cutblocks. We aim to build a scientific case that the entire Walbran must be protected. Stop Bad Logging on Private Lands Newspaper WCWC Victoria will produce and distribute an educational report about logging on private lands (focusing on the Beaufort Range near Port Alberni) and calling for much stricter environmental controls to protect fish and wildlife.
WCWC VICTORIA GETS NEW STOREFRONT OFFICE
WCWC Victoria campaigned this message and several Victorian restaurants now serve only wild Salmon.
After searching for several years, in January 2000 our Victoria Wilderness Committee Chapter found a new home. It had long outgrown its old office space. The newly leased street-level storefront office, at 651 Johnson Street, is only a few blocks away from the old office on View Street and more than three times the size.
By March 2000 our new Victoria storefront office will be up and running - launched by a grand opening party that all are invited to attend. The new place has enough room for our retail store and storage, for volunteers to work on projects and mailouts, our door-to-door canvass crew to receive briefings, members to drop in and our campaigners to get all their work done!
New Staff at Victoria WCWC
Alison Spriggs, who joined WCWC's Victoria Chapter as a door-to-door canvasser in 1991 and ran the Victoria office since 1993, left WCWC in 1999 to work for the Land Conservancy of B.C., where she is helping raise money to purchase private lands to complete the Sea-to-Sea Green-Blue Belt. She is greatly missed, but not lost to the cause! We continue to work closely together.
Ken Wu and Selena Laundrie have assumed the duties carried out by Alison. Ken began working for WCWC in Vancouver in 1993 as a canvasser. He began working as a full time campaigner in Victoria in June 1999. Selena, who has been the office manager in Victoria since the beginning of 1999, began her career with the Wilderness Committee in 1994 as a salesperson and then as store manager in WCWC's Gastown store in Vancouver.
Diona Davies, who canvassed for WCWC in Victoria for two years, is our new Victoria Canvass Director and Campaign Intern. Together, Ken, Selena and Diona form a young, dedicated and energetic team keen to intensify their campaigns to protect a lot more wilderness on Vancouver Island.
WCWC Victoria campaigned with this message and several Victorian restaurants now serve only wild Salmon.
Thanks for supporting our efforts to save Vancouver Island Wilderness!
WCWC's Victoria Chapter is dependent on funds raised by our door-to-door canvass and mailouts to members. We also depend on and are grateful for all the volunteers, who are indispensable to our ongoing work to protect wilderness and wildlife. With all this support we are ultimately bound to succeed!
WCWC Victoria Chapter's new Storefront Office:
651 Johnson Street, Victoria BC V8W 1M7 Tel: 250-388-9292 Fax: 250-388-9223
Email: wc2vic@island.net
