FIVE YEAR FIGHT TO SAVE THE WILD ELAHO VALLEY
Interfor's Aggressive Logging is Destroying the Heart of the Stoltmann Wilderness
Ancient Elaho fir - dead
Ancient Elaho fir - alive
The oldest known living trees in the Stoltmann Wilderness and there could be even older ones because the search has not been exhaustive!--are found in a few groves of Douglas firs and Western Redcedars growing in the Sims and Elaho Valleys. They were seedlings in 700AD and good-sized trees when Leif Erickson "discovered" Vineland (the coast of Newfoundland) in 1000AD.
These trees and the wild rainforest ecosystem that grows them are at the center of a long and increasingly more heated "war in the woods" in British Columbia, Canada. The groves of thousand-year-old trees in the Stoltmann Wilderness are the last of their kind. This stark reality has hardened the resolve of both the conservationists who seek to preserve them and the timber company, International Forest Products (Interfor), that is targeting the best groves, for immediate logging, then selling this rare prime oldgrowth in the global market place.
The Stoltmann Wilderness is not a remote place. It's located close to the world-famous four-season resort community of Whistler, B.C. The Elaho Valley, the ancient forested heartland of the 500,000 hectare proposed Stoltmann National Park, is only a three-and-one-half-hour drive away from downtown Vancouver.
The Stoltmann Wilderness isn't just big trees and oldgrowth rainforest. It's big alpine meadows, big mountains, big icecaps and a refuge for big wildlife like grizzly bears. It sprawls across the glacier-carved spine of B.C.'s southern Coast Mountains, linking the coast with the interior plateau.
Over 80 percent of the proposed park area sparks no conflict because it has no commercially exploitable timber or minerals. Conflict rages over the rest – the lower-elevation valleys carpeted with ancient temperate rainforests like the Elaho. These multi-aged forests and their 1000-year-old giant trees are precious and beautiful. They are more than the sum of their trees they are home to mosses, ferns, fungi, insects, birds and all the big North America predators: grizzly bear, black bear, wolf, and cougar, that have hunted their prey of mountain goat, deer, moose and marmot here for millennia.
From an objective viewpoint, the Stoltmann Wilderness equals or surpasses all other National Parks in Canada for sheer landscape grandeur and ecosystem diversity. It is the political power of the multi-national timber industry and their co-dependent unionized workforce that thwarts protection. Tens of thousands of Canadian citizens have written their governments in support of preserving the Stoltmann Wilderness. More and more people and companies around the world are joining the boycott of Interfor products. Yet Interfor continues to enjoy special government support, including 24-hour-a-day RCMP "security" to protect its logging operations.
the still pristine upper Elaho Photo credit:
Leaders of the Squamish First Nation, whose traditional territory encompasses the Elaho and Sims, key valleys within the proposed park, have condemned the clearcut logging. But to date, these aboriginal owners of the land have not yet declared what land use they want for this part of their traditional territory. One possibility they are investigating is Tribal Parks.
No Federal or provincial government leader has stepped forward to protect this special place - although it contains some of Canada's oldest known Douglas fir trees and its protection makes good sense for the growing tourism economy. Instead, they pretend the controversy doesn't exist - or isn't their responsibility - despite the fact that the recent violence by Interfor loggers gives Canada an international black eye.
In the fall of 1999, eight conservationists were beaten up by Interfor thugs when an organized gang of about seventy loggers descended on a protest camp in the Elaho Valley. A WCWC employee heading up our Stoltmann "millennial tree research camp" was assaulted, too. An Interfor supervisor identified the day in his calendar as "ethnic cleansing day".
Citizens have refused to give up their fight to protect the Stoltmann Wilderness, despite the loggers' violence. Hundreds have volunteered their time to build hiking trails, inventory plants and animal species, search for the oldest trees, and photo-document the Stoltmann's amazing beauty. Over a dozen citizens have stood in the way of the logging trucks in peaceful defiance of Interfor's clearcut destruction of the Elaho Valley. Some of the arrestees, including 71-year-old Betty Krawczyk, have received record jail sentences for their commitment to nature.
Will Interfor's aggressive anti-conservation tactics covered-up by a clever public relations machine succeed in destroying this gem? NO WAY! say thousands of Canadians - we've just begun to fight! Read on to find out about the amazing Elaho Valley in the Stoltmann Wilderness and what you can do to help preserve it for future generations.
