Conservationists are applauding the leadership of the Ahousaht, Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation and BC NDP government for yesterday declaring the protection of 76,000 hectares of land – an area about the size of Manning Provincial Park - in new conservancies in Clayoquot Sound near Tofino. Most of the lands committed for protection are comprised of some of the grandest and most intact coastal old-growth temperate rainforests on Earth, and the new protected areas will represent the largest old-growth forest protected areas victory in BC since the Great Bear Rainforest conservancies were announced in 2006. The historic milestone also includes major support from provincial, federal and conservation sources to facilitate sustainable economic development opportunities for the communities to facilitate their economic and social well-being.
Read moreNew protected areas law a ‘game-changer’ for nature and biodiversity protection
OTTAWA, ON - Today, conservation and environmental groups are applauding the federal environment Minister’s introduction of the Nature Accountability Bill, in keeping with commitments under the United Nations Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This first-of-its-kind law would, if passed, enshrine Canada’s biodiversity protection targets into law, including its commitment to protect 30% of lands and water by 2030. There is clear evidence that nature and biodiversity is in crisis, with a million species at risk of extinction over the next few years, according to scientists. Without action, nature will remain in a dangerous decline.
Read moreMedia Release: BC Opens the Door for a Potential Paradigm Shift in Conservation: Prioritizing the Most Endangered Ecosystems via Ecosystem-Based Targets
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance executive director, Ken Wu, stands amongst the spectacular yet unprotected ancient forests of the Mossome Grove near Port Renfrew in Pacheedaht territory.
If done right, conservationists say the Biodiversity and Ecosystem Health Framework (BEHF) could ensure the protection of the most endangered and least protected ecosystems, such as big-treed old-growth forests (“high productivity” old-growth forests with the classic forest giants) and diverse valley bottom and low elevation ecosystems - rather than the status quo of primarily protecting areas of low timber values (alpine, subalpine, bog). Conservationists commend the vision in the draft framework for being a potentially revolutionary game-changer in conservation - the devil will be in the details when the framework is completed in the spring.
Read moreMedia Release: BC Launches Vital Conservation Financing Mechanism to Protect Old-Growth Forests and Ecosystems
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance Executive Director, Ken Wu, stands beside a giant Sitka spruce tree in an old-growth forest west of Lake Cowichan in Ditidaht territory.
BC Launches Vital Conservation Financing Mechanism to Protect Old-Growth Forests and Ecosystems
Starting with an initial $300 million of provincial and philanthropic funding, the indispensable fund that will “fuel” or power the creation of new protected areas by supporting First Nations protected areas initiatives will continue to grow with additional federal, provincial, and private funds. Conservationists give thanks to Premier Eby for fulfilling a key commitment.
Read moreMedia Release: Conservation Groups Urge BC Government to Hurry Up and Close Gaps in Old-Growth Protection
An aerial view over the intact McKelvie Valley near Tahsis in Mowachaht/Muchalaht territory where 2231 hectares (1852 hectares of old-growth) are now deferred from logging. Credit: TJ Watt - Ancient Forest Alliance
Today on the three-year anniversary of the BC government’s September 2020 acceptance of the Old-Growth Strategic Review Panel’s 14 recommendations to ensure a “paradigm shift” in the conservation and management of old-growth forests in the province, the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) and Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) are urging the BC government to hurry up and close the gaps in old-growth protection in BC.
“The BC government under Premier Eby has taken some great steps forward in policy commitments: pledging to double protected areas from 15% to 30% of BC’s land area over the next seven years (it took over a century to protect the first 15%), bring major conservation financing support for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, and to target protection for biodiverse areas, which would naturally include the productive old-growth forests with big trees. Premier Eby started off strong nine months ago with these commitments, and now he needs to pick it up and close the remaining gaps to secure old-growth logging deferrals in all of the most at-risk old-growth forests and to ensure that funding and protection go to the right areas,” stated Ken Wu, Endangered Ecosystems Alliance executive director.
Read moreMedia Release: Motion For Old-Growth Fund & Export Ban Introduced By MP Patrick Weiler
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance executive director Ken Wu stands beside a giant old-growth redcedar tree growing unprotected on Nootka Island in Mowachaht/ Muchalaht territory.
The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) and the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) give great thanks to Member of Parliament Patrick Weiler (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country) for his new motion to help protect old-growth forests in BC and Canada.
Weiler has crafted a motion, introduced into federal Parliament yesterday, calling for the $82 million BC Old-Growth Protection Fund (increased from $50 million previously, and contingent on matching BC funding that would bring it to $164 million), to end the international export of old-growth raw logs and wood products from across Canada as quickly as possible (and by no later than 2030), and to protect old-growth on federal lands on Department of National Defense and National Park lands from any destructive infrastructure developments.
Read moreMedia Release: The BC government starts laying the path for expanded forest conservation
Kanaka Bar Indian Band Lands Manager Sean O’Rourke and Junior Land Guardian Domonique Samson stand by an old-growth Ponderosa pine tree in the band’s T’eqt’aqtn’mux Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) proposal, which is being supported by the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation, Endangered Ecosystems Alliance and Ancient Forest Alliance. About 125 square kilometers of old-growth forests will be encompassed by the IPCA when finalized.
The BC NDP government has removed the “unduly restrict clause” from forest planning that has limited forest conservation measures for decades, committed to developing a conservation financing mechanism to support First Nations economic development linked to new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s), committed more support to expand value-added forest industries, and with First Nations has added about 200,000 hectares of additional old growth forests into logging deferral areas.
Read moreMedia Release: Closing the Conservation Gaps in Canada: Provincial buy-in, protection targets for all ecosystems, and conservation financing for Indigenous Protected Areas needed
A hardwood swamp forest in the Minesing wetlands of southern Ontario
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance (EEA) calls for a federal “Endangered Ecosystems Act” to ensure protected areas targets are devised for all ecosystems, to motivate the provinces to adopt protection targets and to ensure funding for protected areas expansion
Montreal - As 196 countries meet in Montreal at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP15) to negotiate new international protected areas targets and policies, conservation groups are increasing their pressure on the Canadian and provincial governments to close the conservation gaps in expanding the protected areas system in Canada.
Read moreMedia Release: BC’s New Premier David Eby commits to double protected areas by 2030 & to develop a conservation financing mechanism for IPCAs
Conservationist Vicky Husband and Endangered Ecosystems Alliance executive director Ken Wu stand among unprotected old-growth redcedars in the Jurassic Grove on southern Vancouver Island in Pacheedaht territory near Port Renfrew
Yesterday in his mandate letter to the new Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship Nathan Cullen, BC’s new Premier David Eby committed BC for the first time to protecting 30% of the province’s land area by 2030 (currently 15% is protected). He also tasked Cullen to work with First Nations to support new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s) and to help “develop a new conservation financing mechanism to support protection of biodiverse areas.”
Read moreMedia Release: Before COP15, Conservation Groups call on BC Government to Commit to Funding and Targets to Expand Protected Areas in BC
EEA Executive Director Ken Wu in the Jursassic Grove on Southern Vancouver Island near Port Renfrew in Pacheedat territory
BC has a chance to protect the most endangered ecosystems and promote community economic, social and cultural well-being linked to nature conservation - and also to finally end the War in the Woods over old-growth forests.
Read moreMedia Release: 250 Businesses Call on BC Government to Commit to Ambitious Targets and Funding to Expand BC’s Protected Areas System
The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance has released a resolution signed by 250 businesses, including 228 based in BC, calling on the BC government to help avert the extinction and climate crises and to benefit our health and the BC economy by committing to meet Canada’s national and international protected areas targets (to protect 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 of Canada’s land and marine areas) at a minimum in BC and to ensure adequate funding to enable these goals. This includes protecting BC’s old-growth forests, ensuring protection targets for every ecosystem-type (ie. not just overall provincial targets), and to provide the necessary funding particularly for First Nations sustainable economic development that would enable new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s) to be established.
Read moreMedia Release: Spin-filled Announcement Reveals BC Government’s Failure to Ensure Net Gains in Old-Growth Logging Deferrals
An ancient redcedar cut in the Caycuse Valley in 2021 on southern Vancouver Island in Ditidaht territory. Photo by TJ Watt
Yesterday, the BC government released new and misleading statistics about old-growth logging on the one year anniversary of its science panel’s recommendations that logging should be deferred on millions of hectares of the most at-risk old-growth forests in BC. In November of 2021, the province’s independent science panel, the Technical Advisory Panel, recommended that the rarest, grandest, and oldest fraction of the remaining unprotected old-growth forests in BC, totalling 2.6 million hectares, be deferred from logging, while the province developed new management policies and legislation based on its Old-Growth Strategic Review panel’s recommendations.
Read moreMedia Release: Conservation group buys one of BC’s most diverse Old-Growth Forests for First Nations
Kanaka Bar leaders and conservationists, from left to right: Kanaka Bar CEO Greg Grayson, Kanaka Bar Lands Manager Sean O'Rourke, Kanaka Bar Chief Jordan Spinks, Endangered Ecosystems Alliance Outreach Director Celina Starnes, Nature-Based Solutions Foundation Co-Founder Ken Wu, Nature-Based Solutions Foundation National Coordinator Hania Peper, Ancient Forest Alliance Campaigner TJ Watt. Photo by TJ Watt.
One of our partner organizations, the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation (NBSF), has just completed the purchase of perhaps the most diverse old-growth forest in BC - with both dry-adapted old-growth Ponderosa pine and wet-adapted western redcedar growing side-by-side - to be gifted with a conservation covenant to the Kanaka Bar Indian Band whose unceded territory it is on.
Read their press release here.
Read moreKanaka Bar Indian Band to Protect Unique Old-Growth Forests and Endangered Ecosystems in Proposed T'eqt'aqtn Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area
Over 12,500 hectares of some of BC’s most endangered and diverse old-growth forests will be protected in in the territory of the Kanaka Bar Band, a Nlaka'pamux First Nation in the Fraser Canyon near Lytton, when a major new Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) is finalized. The Kanaka Bar Band announced their vision today to protect a total of about 35,000 hectares of their unceded lands in British Columbia in this IPCA.
Read moreMedia Release: Major Old-Growth Logging Deferrals on Mosaic's Private Lands on Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii
The largest private landowner in British Columbia, Mosaic Forest Management, is moving to defer 40,000 hectares (400 square kilometers) of old-growth and older second-growth stands from logging on their private lands for the next 25 years, via a carbon credit program. The lands are mainly located on southeastern Vancouver Island, with a few scattered stands on other parts of Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii.
Read moreMedia Release: Over 100 BC Businesses Call on BC Government to Expand and Fund the Creation of New Protected Areas
To date, 113 businesses - 104 based in BC - have signed a resolution calling on the BC government to help avert the extinction and climate crises and to benefit our health and the BC economy, by committing to at least meet Canada’s national and international protected areas targets (protecting 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 of Canada’s land and marine areas). This includes protecting BC’s old-growth forests, and providing the necessary funding to do so.
See the resolution and signatories here
Read moreMedia Release: Significant Progress Towards Old-Growth Protection - Critical Funding Missing Still
Significant Progress to Protect Old-Growth Forests in BC, with Critical Funding Still Missing: “Building an Amazing Car without an Engine” – for now
BC Government Accepts Science-Based Old-Growth Mapping and Enacts Major Old-Growth Logging Deferrals in BC Timber Sales Areas (about 20% of remaining old-growth) – Vital Funding for Indigenous old-growth logging deferrals and protection sorely needed.
Read moreMedia Release: Federal Liberals’ $50 million BC old-growth fund an important step towards a needed $600 million old-growth fund - BC NDP Gov’t a Conservation Laggard
Federal Liberals’ $50 million BC old-growth fund an important step towards a much greater $600 million old-growth fund that is needed – BC NDP government continues as reluctant conservation laggards for funding old-growth protection.
Read moreMedia Release: “Things to Watch For” – A Conservationist’s List for BC Premier John Horgan’s Old-Growth Forestry Announcement Today
Today BC Premier John Horgan is expected to present an “intentions paper” on the BC NDP government’s coming direction in regards to old-growth forest logging and/or protection, the forest industry and First Nations.
The announcement carries high stakes as the War in the Woods explodes in BC, with over 140 conservationists being arrested at old-growth protection blockades on southern Vancouver Island over the past month and ancient forest rallies erupting at BC NDP MLA offices across the province, with a groundswell of momentum that continues to rapidly grow nationally and internationally.
Media Release: BC Urged to Join National and International Protected Areas Movement in order to save Endangered Old-Growth Forests and Ecosystems
The BC NDP government must commit to Canada’s protected areas targets and the key funding to protect 25% by 2025 and 30% by 2030 of its land and marine areas, at a minimum.
Read more