Welcome to our Vancouver office, which is the head office of the Wilderness Committee. It was established on Earth Day 1987. From our beginnings, in 1980 our all-volunteer organization was founded around a kitchen table and did most of our work out of our founder’s home. But with the opening of the Vancouver office and with the addition of our first paid staff, the Wilderness Committee entered a phase of membership growth and nature protection success, which continues until today. Some of our early successful campaigns pushed forward the designation of much loved protected areas such as the Stein Valley Nlaka’pamux Heritage Park, Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and the Ts’ilʔos Provincial Park, to name a few. More recently we’ve been battling to save the old-growth forest habitat of endangered species such as the northern spotted owl and southern mountain caribou and we are standing for a stable climate by opposing the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project and development of fracking and LNG.

Today our head office on 6th Avenue in Mount Pleasant is home to approximately 20 staff members, a large mailout area for volunteers, an in-house print room and a make-shift store where you can still buy calendars, cards, First Nations products and more. Scroll down to take action; and volunteerdonate, or shop online for eco-gifts, cards and calendars.

Our Campaigns

Currently, about 15% 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.

All energy production has an environmental impact and not every site is appropriate for renewables. But there are enormous opportunities for wind, solar, geothermal, tidal and small hydro projects in BC. With the consent and participation of Indigenous communities, clean power can and must replace fossil fuels in our homes and vehicles.
Two-thirds of the land base now called BC – 60 million hectares – is covered in trees. Only about 22 million hectares of this vast forest was ever suitable for logging, and much of this has already been logged. These logged forests once harboured the biggest trees and the best wildlife habitat. Now, big stumps mark...
Closeup of an American badger in front of its den
Photo: Isabelle Groc

Biodiversity, or biological diversity, is the variety of living things on Earth. Worldwide biodiversity is declining and BC is no exception. The list of species at risk in BC keeps growing.

Two bumblebees on a pink flower
Photo: Chris Bidleman

A specific class of pesticides called neonicotinoids (neonics) are harmful to bees and it’s slowly being recognized and banned, all over the world but Canada still hasn’t banned this harmful pesticide. Bees may be small, but the impact they have on our environment – and our daily lives – is immense.

For years, we’ve stood up for a healthy climate in Canada by opposing new fossil fuel infrastructure. But parallel to this fight is to create a vision for the communities we want to live in.

A polar bear walks across ice
Photo: Mike Grandmaison
Studies show over 50 per cent of wildlife species across Canada are experiencing population declines. How can this be happening if we have a federal Species at Risk Act (SARA) that is supposed to protect them?

British Columbia wants to build a natural gas industry that will rival the tar sands. In the northeast corner of the province, fracking projects litter the landscape and poison First Nations communities.

A flotilla of canoes and Kayaks floats in Burrard inlet in front of the Kinder Morgan oil tank facility
Photo: Michael Wheatley

This Pacific coast is a beautiful and diverse ecosystem teeming with life. We won’t stand by and let the Trudeau government use our tax money to build a pipeline that violates Indigenous rights, fuels climate change and puts this spectacular place at risk of a catastrophic oil spill.

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.

Native Okanagan grasslands with blue mountains rising in the background
Photo: Gwen Barlee

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).

Three southern mountain caribou run across a snowy landscape
Photo: Isabelle Groc

Southern mountain caribou are threatened by industrial logging eliminating large swaths of their old-growth forest habitat. This sub-population of woodland caribou found in lands now called BC and Alberta need these forests for a source of their main food in winter – tree lichens.

A spotted owl stares into the camera from its tree perch
Photo: Wayne Lynch

This handsome medium-sized owl, with its unusual dark-brown eyes, relies on old-growth forests to roost, nest and forage. In Canada, the range of the endangered northern spotted owl population is found only in the southwestern corner of British Columbia.

Contact us

Vancouver Office
46 E 6th Ave
Vancouver, BC
Unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ Territories
V5T 1J4

Hours: Monday to Thursday, 9am - 4pm, or by appointment.

(604) 683-8220
(604) 683-8229 (fax)

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