Comment
Who is left to speak for Island's ancient forests?
Mainstream environmental groups are collaborating with industry to the Island's detriment

Ingmar Lee
Special to Times Colonist

Thursday, April 14, 2005
Recently, The Land Conservancy and the Capital Regional District announced that the much-beloved Sooke Potholes had been protected forever in a 156-hectare park.

On that very day, directly across the Sooke River, TimberWest fallers were mowing down 40 hectares of spectacular ancient Douglas fir forest, all the way down to 10 metres away from the most fabulous stretch of Potholes.

The week before that, the Campbell government and American logging giant Weyerhaeuser announced that 140 hectares was being added to Cathedral Grove Park. Not mentioned: Most of the acquisition is a logged-out stumpfield, basically a tax-burden wasteland for Weyerhaeuser, now unloaded onto B.C. taxpayers.

What's wrong with this picture? Southeastern Vancouver Island's ancient fir forest has been 95 per cent exterminated in 150 years of logging.

The second pass is even more voracious, with Weyerhaeuser and TimberWest logging 30-year-old trees to supply their scandalous one million cubic-metre raw-log exports annually.

Deer populations are down 80 per cent in the past decade, salmon runs are at a trickle and Canada's most endangered species, the Vancouver Island marmot, is virtually extinct, while wolves, cougars and golden eagles take the blame. Does anyone care about Vancouver Island's fir forests?

Well, not our biggest professional environmental institutions, namely Greenpeace, the B.C. Sierra Club, Forest Ethics and the Rainforest Action Network, known collectively as the Rainforest Solutions Project (RSP).

Vancouver Island was abandoned for a behind-closed-doors deal with the logging industry over the "Great Bear Rainforest."

In spite of an independent scientific panel conclusion that 40-60 per cent of the largest remaining tract of temperate rainforest must be protected, RSP has settled for just 21 per cent of the Great Bear. RSP members won't criticize Weyerhaeuser, Interfor, Canfor, Norske Skog and Western anywhere else in the province in exchange for the deal. Which explains what is happening to our island.

The logging industry has done its homework and has been reading from Burson-Marstellar-type PR manuals about "How to Co-opt your Pesky Local Enviro-org" and they are following the advice to the letter.

The results are astounding. Last year at Weyerhaeuser's annual general meeting, chief executive officer Steve Rogel flashed up the RSP member logos on his power-point, describing them as "Weyerhaeuser's B.C. partners."

Recently, RSP members stooped to accept a "Forest Leadership Award" at a gala Toronto event key-noted by the notorious logging and fish-farm apologist, Patrick Moore himself.

This week, the Conservation Voters of B.C., which is advised by senior members of the same groups, endorsed Sustainable Resource Management Minister George Abbott, apparently for his services on the Great Bear file. Anyone watching B.C.'s enviro-scene knows that Abbott is as green as an oil slick.

Compromise-collaborationist environmentalism is taking British Columbia by storm. Big Industry and Big Enviro are firmly embedded.

B.C.'s professional enviros stand on the sidelines and watch while volunteer grass-roots citizens take action and do the dirty work. Charitable status, agreements with funders and backroom arrangements with industry preclude involvement by B.C.'s environmental institutions in any direct action or civil disobedience.

Now they await the final fate of their Great Bear deal.

Premier Gordon Campbell's environmental record is in the toilet, but shovelling money just isn't buying him enough of that kind of green. People know that the global ecological catastrophe is driven by his style of government. He badly needs a green announcement.

Will Campbell buy into the Great Bear Rainforest compromise as yet another pathetic pre-election goody? Will he be endorsed by the conservation voters?

Meanwhile, demoralized, horrified and heartbroken B.C. nature lovers look north with admiration to Haida Gwaii, where Guujaw and the Haida Nation, with widespread community support, are demonstrating exactly what it takes to expunge our province of the Weyerhaeusers and TimberWests of the world, and their government lackeys.

Three cheers to the Haida! Would that we had that kind of leadership.

Ingmar Lee is a student of Asian and environmental studies at UVic. He has planted trees in B.C.'s coastal clearcuts for 21 years.