Archive for month: September, 2010

Port Renfrew, BC- Malahat-Juan de Fuca MLA John Horgan, CRD Director for the Juan de Fuca Electoral Area Mike Hicks, and Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce member Jon Cash joined the Ancient Forest Alliance’s TJ Watt and Ken Wu for a visit to the threatened Avatar Grove, San Juan Spruce (Canada’s largest spruce tree), and a nearby clearcut with giant stumps this past Tuesday, September 28. The provincial and regional representatives have expressed an interest in the protection of these world-class old-growth stands.

In a seemingly unlikely event, the Ancient Forest Alliance stood in solidarity with members of the Pulp, Paper and Woodworkers of Canada and the United Steelworkers Union in Nanaimo yesterday as part of the ongoing fight to ban raw log exports in BC. AFA forest campaigner TJ Watt spoke alongside union officials, Nanaimo MLA Leonard Krog, and Nanaimo-North Cowichan MLA Doug Routley to the hundreds of workers in attendance, denouncing the export of raw logs and calling for the protection of BC's threatened forestry jobs.

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigners took issue after a Cantelon's constituency assistant included an AFA website hyperlink in an e-mail to a Nanoose Bay woman asking government to save coastal Douglas fir forests.

An environmental group working to protect old-growth forests in B.C. is condemning local MLA Ron Cantelon’s office for insinuating they support the logging of a parcel of Coastal Douglas Fir forest in Nanoose Bay. “It’s a sleazy tactic to try and link us in their responses to concerend citizens when they write letters back as somehow insinuating that we are supporting the Nanoose Bay ancient forest logging,” said Ken Wu, one of the founders of the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) in Victoria.

I read with dismay that BC Liberal MLA Ron Cantelon's office has been invoking the Ancient Forest Alliance's name to insinuate that we somehow support logging of the Nanoose Bay old-growth forest (block DL-33) because we support their decision to keep 1600 hectares of Coastal Douglas Fir ecosystem off-limits to logging through a new Land Use Order. That's like saying "because you like the new rain jacket I got you, you'll like me dumping this bucket of cold water on your head, too.