Right next to the world-renowned resort municipality of Whistler is a 500,000 hectare stretch of wild country that rivals any of the Rocky Mountain parks in scenery, grandeur and wildlife, yet it remains largely unprotected and subject to on-going heavy damage by industrial activities - primarily clearcut logging. In 1998 Western Canada Wilderness Committee, Canada's largest membership-based conservation organization, proposed that this wild area, called the Stoltmann Wilderness, become a National Park. This paper lays out our proposal in detail including maps and photos.

The Stoltmann National Park

Wilderness Committee Educational Report Vol.17-No.06 - Winter 1998/1999

WILDERNESS WITNESSES

Chief Bill Williams, elected representative of the Squamish First Nation has been an outspoken critic of International Forest Products' logging practices in Squamish Nation Territory, which includes much of the Stoltmann Wilderness. Chief Williams has worked together with Vancouver area conservationists Nancy Bleck and John Clarke to create the Witness Program, a series of educational camp-outs in the Stoltmann's Sims Creek Valley, done in the tradition of the Squamish Nation.

Participants in the Witness Program learn about Squamish Nation culture and history and about the Squamish people's relationship with, and respect for, nature. They are asked to bear "witness" to the great beauty and diversity of the area and to its ongoing destruction by Interfor. They are also asked to tell the story of what they have seen to friends and family. Over the last two years 1,300 people have come and participated in a Witness Weekend in the Stoltmann. These highly successful events demonstrate the educational and eco-tourism possibilities of a fully protected Stoltmann Wilderness National Park co-managed by the federal government and local First Nations.