Category Archives: Forests

Energy, Forests

Talk Is Cheap, Part 1: BC Fails to Fulfill its Carbon, Climate, Forestry Promises

The government of Canada, and the BC government, state publicly that they are committed to carbon reduction and proactive responses to climate change; yet both Canada and BC remain consistently among the world’s top carbon emitters per capita. In 2019 Canada was the world’s highest carbon emitter per capita.

On the one hand, our government proposes initiatives that would improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions — in sectors like transportation and construction. But on the other hand, they continue to subsidise existing and new fossil-fuel projects such as LNG Canada and the Coastal Gaslink pipeline — to expand fracking.

Canada’s Liberal government spent $4.5B to purchase the Trans-Mountain Pipeline in 2018, only to announce in Spring 2022 that no further funding would be allocated to the project as cost overruns neared 70%. But wasting money may be the least of our problems. These fossil-fuel projects have huge carbon impacts.

Continue reading Talk Is Cheap, Part 1: BC Fails to Fulfill its Carbon, Climate, Forestry Promises →
Animals, Forests

BC Greens push for provincewide protection for bear den ‘nurseries’

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The BC Green Party has tabled legislation to uniformly protect bear dens, which double as winter nurseries, across the province. 

Adam Olsen, Green MLA for Saanich North and the Islands, said the party’s private member’s bill is timely with bears bulking up before their winter hibernation — a critical period for pregnant sows, which give birth to their cubs in the safety of their dens. 

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Forests

The Quadra Project: A Trillion Trees

Planting a trillion trees would be a major contribution to solving our global climate change crisis, a remarkably simple solution since trees absorb and sequester the excess carbon from fossil fuels that we have been emitting into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.

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Forests

Taxes waived for Lot 302 on Read Island; a brief respite for Cortes Island

Both the Campbell River Mirror and National Observer reported how the tiny Surge Narrows Community Association (SNCA) purchased 20 acres on Read Island in 2019. 

“We just couldn’t bear to see yet another clearcut,” explained Read Island resident Lannie Keller. “It was a beautiful piece of treed land along the main road where people travel to get mail, to the school or the dock.”

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Forests

B.C. failing to meet promised benchmarks to transform old-growth logging

National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Two years after pledging to take a new approach to the management of old-growth forests, the B.C. government is failing to make the grade, environmental groups say. 

The province promised to act on 14 recommendations in an independent old-growth strategic review to protect the most at-risk big tree ecosystems while transforming forestry over a three-year period. 

But the NDP government continues to lag on its most urgent and important commitments, and hasn’t completed any recommendations most of the way through the stated timeline, a report card issued by the Wilderness Committee, Sierra Club BC, Stand.earth and Ancient Forest Alliance suggests.

Continue reading B.C. failing to meet promised benchmarks to transform old-growth logging →