Category Archives: Forests

Two Nanaimo Men On A Hunger Strike For BC’s Old Growth Forests

Robert Fuller and James Darling are on the second day of a hunger strike. The 61-year-old former BC Forest service employee/ treeplanter/ sawmill worker and 35-year old musician had just returned from their Nanaimo MLA’s constituency office when I phoned them. Around ten people were with them, waving signs. Fuller remarked that if the response from people walking or driving by is any indication, as much as 98% of the public may want to see BC’s old growth forests preserved.

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Update on Poaching in The Community Forest

On June 27, Cortes Currents published a personal report about poaching in the Community Forest. Odette Auger lives beside the woodlot in Larsen’s Meadow and says there has been a significant increase in theft since the Community Forest took over management. While her account is subjective, it contains pictures, details of several specific incidents and a record of correspondence with the Cortes Community Forest Cooperative (CCFC) going back several years.

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Saving A Forest On Read Island

Canada’s National Observer, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

It’s a thoroughly unromantic name. Lot 302.

Yet the 20-acre parcel of timber symbolizes the achievement and ongoing battle by a tiny coastal community to protect as much mature forest as they can on their remote B.C. island.

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Tracking BC Timber Sales Progress

The first thing that attracted me was the fine detail. While Global Forest Watch’s online map is full of pertinent detail, it doesn’t look like a satellite map. This is better. Zooming in on Refuge Cove, for example, you can see individual buildings, boats tied up at the wharves, and trees coming right down to the water’s edge. Zooming out to see a larger area, Refuge Cove is set within a block of green. The surrounding area is coloured pinkish- brown, so it can be quickly identified. There are a number of orange blocks east of Refuge Cove. These are the areas that will be logged next. The Wilderness Committee’s new ArcGIS StoryMap is tracking BC Timber Sales extraction of logs from our forests. 

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