Today Friday, September 17th, is the 3 year anniversary of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA)!
We've come a long way in this short time and have accomplished many important steps towards our mission to ensure the science-based protection of Canada's most endangered ecosystems, from old-growth temperate rainforests to grasslands, from southern deciduous forests to northern conifer forests - all supported by a modest budget.
Can YOU donate here (monthly donations are most powerful, but all donations are greatly needed and welcome!) and help us grow at this critical juncture in history for nature protection?
The UN Biodiversity Conference, where a new international protected areas treaty will be negotiated, takes place in October while the UN Climate Summit, with an emphasis on protecting nature or so-called "natural climate solutions", takes place in November. There has never been a better chance to protect endangered ecosystems in world history.
We cannot squander this opportunity, due to a lack of resources, to inform and mobilize the public on the largest scale, to engage new key allies, and to push politicians with our greatest strength to avert the extinction and climate crises by protecting native ecosystems across the country and the world. The world really is at stake here.
What has the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance done over our first 3 years?
Here's a quick overview. We have:
Played a pivotal role moving old-growth forest protection forward across BC, by:
Moving the BC NDP government by September of 2020, after years of major public mobilization, media coverage and policy analyses, to start developing new old-growth policies and legislation - the first time in decades, and our best chance now to finally end old-growth logging here.
Framing the issue with our key analyses and media coverage, leading the way from the start in the conservation movement in making critical distinctions on forest productivity and in ensuring that funding for First Nations old-growth protection initiatives is understood as absolutely vital to protect old-growth forests on the ground.
Informing and mobilizing tens of thousands of British Columbians directly via our action pages, and reaching millions of Canadians via social media, the news media, and our own videos.
Building key allies, including various businesses, conservation groups, and politicians, and working with First Nations organizations and activists to protect old-growth forests.
***Recently we landed a major victory - a $50 million BC old-growth protection funding commitment from the federal Liberals (along with the existing $2.3 billion fund already baked into last spring's federal budget to expand protected areas across Canada, including several hundred million dollars available for BC), with the federal NDP following suit promising a similar fund. This fund, which is critical to support First Nations Indigenous Protected Areas, land use plans, and Indigenous guardians programs tied to old-growth protection, by itself is still insufficient to protect all the endangered old-growth forests. However, it creates major momentum for earmarking a much greater amount of federal funding to save old-growth forests sourced from the larger pot of national protected areas funding - and exerts huge pressure on the BC NDP government to follow suit.
**It was fundamentally the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance and our thousands of supporters (THANK YOU!), along with our allies at the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and several outspoken politicians including Green Party MP Paul Manly, who launched the campaign calling on the federal government to dedicate key funding specifically for the protection of old-growth forests in BC. See the original media release here, the more recent media release here, and a news article from the Narwhal here.
Before that we successfully campaigned to ensure that the province of BC allow in key federal funding (about $200 to $300 million) to expand protected areas in BC, including for old-growth protection - previously, the BC NDP government had been vetoing and obstructing the federal funding.
In Alberta, we helped to kill the United Conservative Party government's plans to eliminate or close 175 provincial parks, recreation areas and natural areas, by getting thousands of supporters to send messages and helping to make it a national issue via social media. The UCP government backed down from their plans late last year.
We also helped to ensure that Alberta's United Conservative Party (UCP) government reinstated the 1976 Coal Policy that prohibits open-pit coal mining over vast swaths of the Alberta Rocky Mountains and foothills. Again, we got thousands of supporters to send messages and helped to make it a national issue among our supporters coast to coast, backing key local Alberta enviro-groups, most notably the CPAWS Southern Alberta chapter that spearheaded these Alberta campaigns.
We played a key role to help move the South Okanagan National Park Reserve proposal forward, by mobilizing thousands of EEA supporters during the critically-important public input process. Now a Memorandum Of Understanding has been signed between the Syilx First Nations, province of BC, and federal government to negotiate the terms and boundaries of a potential national park in the grasslands of BC.
We helped to get the BC NDP government to commit to devising new provincial protected areas targets - which we hope at a minimum is in line with the 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 federal protected areas targets for Canada's land area. We are still waiting on what their numbers will be - but at least our campaign has helped to break through their reluctance against systematically expanding protected areas across BC.
We helped to make ecosystem-based targets an issue for various conservation groups and even political parties – for example, recently in their platform the federal Conservatives have emphasized the importance of expanding protected areas in southern Canada to include the most endangered ecosystems (despite having weak protected areas targets and other glaring deficiencies in their platform on protected areas).
We've produced and released 3 videos so far (with half a dozen more coming shortly), seen by over 1 million Canadians on social media, about BC's Endangered Old-Growth Coastal Temperate Rainforests, the Great Grasslands of BC's Interior, and EEA's approach and plans for 2021.
See our videos on our website here.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel to catch future installments.
We've mobilized tens of thousands of Canadians via our Action Pages on numerous campaigns to protect native ecosystems, via slideshow presentation tours and public hikes (pre-Covid), and Zoom presentations (post-Covid).
We informed almost 90,000 Canadians regularly on key conservation issues, including 63,000 on Facebook, 4000 on Instagram, and 20,000 via email newsletters.
Now we've begun to focus on reaching out to thousands of businesses, unions, faith groups, and outdoor recreation groups to get behind the expansion of protected areas across BC and Canada, with the first several dozen businesses coming on board... and a lot more to come!
...and so much more. You can see our news section on some of our key work here.
Now, for our 3 year Anniversary, we need your help to grow and expand in strength at this absolutely pivotal time in history for nature protection.
We need to pay for core staffing needs (we need to go from 3 to 6 staff, at least), to help mobilize millions of Canadians, undertake key projects including finishing our Amazing Ecosystems of Canada mini-documentary video series, and for core expenses (software, travel, ads).
Can you help us? Future and current generations of endangered species, ecosystems, and humans will be most grateful for your help! Donate as generously as you can!