Preserving Wilderness

Currently, over 14% of the land now called British Columbia is protected as parks including provincial parks, national parks, Tribal parks, Indigenous protected areas, park reserves, conservancies and ecological reserves. It has taken generations to increase wilderness protection in BC, but it's far from complete.

Since the early 1980s, the Wilderness Committee has been following the lead of Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations [pronounced new-chaw-nulth] and working with like-minded environmental groups to protect the intact ancient forested valleys of Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. We are seeking protection for...

Fish Lake (Teztan Biny [pronounced teltan bee] in the Tsilhqot’in [pronounced sill-ko-teen] language) is a mountain lake, located on the Chilcotin Plateau, 125 kilometres west of the town of Williams Lake. Fish Lake and the Chilcotin Plateau are within Tsilhqot’in territory. A mining company, Taseko Mines Ltd...

Logging, mining, and hydroelectric development all threaten the Heart of the Boreal right now. The Wilderness Committee is working to ensure that the vision and values of First Nations involved are honoured and respected, and that the majority of the Heart of the Boreal is preserved with large, interconnected protected areas.

Vast expanses of intact, representative ecosystems in Manitoba provide clean air and clean water. Unfortunately, many of these remaining natural areas are under direct threat from development.

Natural areas in Ontario have been and continue to be subject to intense pressure from colonial activities. From mining, logging, urban sprawl, agriculture and polluting industrial practices, in many places ecosystems have been lost or severely degraded. The Wilderness Committee works to identify and protect precious...

Old-growth forests are diverse: from wet rainforests with towering, mossy Sitka spruce trees and gnarly red cedars with trunks wider than a car's length; to dry forests with contorted Garry oak and arbutus trees and massive Douglas-firs; to high elevation, slow-growing yellow cedars and mountain hemlocks covered in...

The Skagit Headwaters Donut Hole has got to be one of the strangest names for a wilderness area we’ve ever seen. As its name suggests, this area is a “hole” in provincial park protection afforded to the wildlands that surround it.

The South Okanagan and the Similkameen Valleys are one of our greatest conservation opportunities! It's the campaign to protect desert, grasslands and ponderosa pine forests in Syilx peoples' territories (southern BC).

In unceded Pacheedaht Territory, on southern Vancouver Island, one of the most spectacular ancient rainforests is threatened by clearcut logging. Despite decades of protests and blockades, Kaxi:ks [pronounced ka-hecks], or the Walbran Valley, remains largely unprotected.