It's Time to Save What's left!
View inland over the West Coast Trail and the ancient rainforest of Walbran and Logan creek valleys. Only a 1,200-metre-wide coastal strip is protected from clearcut logging. Photo Credits: Randy Stoltmann
INDUSTRY'S LEGACY: WILDERNESS AND JOBS ON THE EDGE
Vancouver Island, British Columbia - The old growth forest adjacent to the internationally famous West Coast Lifesaving Trail section of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve is the last large fragment of ancient temperate rainforest remaining on southern Vancouver Island. Over the last century, hundreds of watersheds on Vancouver Island have been clearcut logged - stripped of their natural forests and converted into forest fibre-farm plantations.
Only 13 percent of the wild and stately forests on the southern third of the Island remain. One-quarter of these forests are already protected in the existing Pacific Rim and Carmanah Pacific park reserves. The proposal to create a West Coast Trail Rainforest wilderness involves saving an additional one-quarter of this remaining natural forest. The remaining half of the surviving original forest is in scattered ridge-top fragments surrounded by plantation forests.
Five-metre-diameter western red cedar in the Walbran Valley. Photo Credits: Randy Stoltmann
This area along the West Coast Trail has survived only because the coastline is extremely rugged, and the forests, until recently, were too remote to cut. It will continue to survive as a natural ecosystem only if there is a radical change in forest practices, tenure and allocation.
Jobs in forestry and tourism must be created to compensate for mistakes made in the past - overcutting and not designating enough for parks and protected areas. New jobs can be developed by starting to commercially thin and practice selection management forestry on the hundreds of thousands of hectares of second growth stands which are now entering a "thrifty mature" stage. While not generating as much money in the short term as could be made through liquidating the last of the old growth, the new jobs created will not only be sustainable but will also provide the only basis possible for a sustainable industry in the future.
WALBRAN, CARMANAH, KLANAWA, CULLITE, LOGAN, MICHIGAN...
These are the last unprotected wilderness valleys on southern Vancouver Island. Along Canada's famed West Coast Trail, we are racing against the logging industry to save this global rainforest heritage.
The current relationship between the big companies and the provincial government must be modified. Community forest tenures must be established. Room must be made to accommodate a just settlement of aboriginal land title and to allow natives a meaningful way to exercise aboriginal rights and continue their cultures. Tenures must be modified so that the last and only opportunity left to save a sizable, sustainable, contiguous area of the original forest - the West Coast Trail Rainforest - can be exercised without a ransom paid to the companies. Everyone knows that originally they obtained the cutting rights to the forest without public hearings for only $1.
In January, 1992, the BC provincial government announced the formation of the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE). Chaired by the former ombudsman for BC, Stephen Owen, CORE is charged with developing a land-use plan for the entire Vancouver Island through an 18-month public consultation process. Everyone must participate. This is the last chance to prove that it's not too costly to save our priceless wilderness heritage. It is also the last chance to convince the public that preservation of the West Coast Trail Rainforest is an absolute necessity for the maintenance of a sustainable forest industry and way of life in the future.
