For Immediate Release ö Tuesday, May 15, 2001

Western Canada Wilderness Committee Tells Legislators To Improve Canada's Proposed Endangered Species Law - Or Get Rid Of It.

Ottawa, Canada - At 2:30pm, with a giant inflated grizzly bear standing on Parliament Hill as a backdrop - the Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) made public their Bill C-5 Species at Risk Act Comments Brief which was presented earlier in the day to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.

Using the Chilliwack Valley (located in SW British Columbia, on the border with Washington State) as an example of how BC is failing to protect threatened and endangered wildlife populations from the effects of industrial activities like logging - the Wilderness Committee today called on the federal government to enact strong Species at Risk legislation, that would kick into action to save species and their critical habitats across Canada whenever provinces, like BC, fail to do so.

Wilderness Committee campaigners Joe Foy and Gwen Barlee presented a seven page brief to the Standing Committee this morning, which bluntly called for the federal government's current proposed Species at Risk legislation Bill C-5, to be substantially strengthened or tossed out all together.

"We explained to the Standing Committee that the Province of BC, is pushing two threatened populations of animals to their demise in the Chilliwack Valley and the surrounding North Cascade Mountain Range," said Joe Foy, WCWC Campaign Director. "Without some sort of powerful intervention the North Cascade Mountains populations of spotted owl and grizzly bear on the Canadian side of the international boundary, will be finished off because of aggressive logging practices, which are permitted by the government of BC, " explained Gwen Barlee, WCWC endangered species campaigner.

The Wilderness Committee argued in its brief that to enact Bill C-5 in its present toothless form would give timber companies a public relations tool which they could use to fend off international market pressure. According to WCWC a weak Bill C-5 would do nothing to protect species like the spotted owl and grizzly bear in Canada - and would actually speed up their demise by calming the concerns of domestic and foreign buyers of Canadian timber products by making them think that some thing is actually being done to protect Canada's species at risk - while at the same time allowing timber to be cut from the owl and grizzly bear's shrinking North Cascades habitat.

"We told the Standing Committee that - it's sad to say - but in its present form Bill-C5 is dishonest legislation and really is worse than having no endangered species legislation at all," said Foy.

WCWC has posted its comments about Bill C-5 to the House of Commons Standing Committee on the WCWC web site: www.wildernesscommittee.org

For more information contact:
Joe Foy or Gwen Barlee - Cell tel: (604) 880-2580
Sue Fox - WCWC offices (604) 683-8220