Inspire Hair Design will be donating $1 from every hair service rendered this November to our campaign to protect BC's endangered old-growth ecosystems! Thanks to Inspire Hair Design for being inspired to help the forests! https://inspirehairdesign.ca/
The Ancient Forest Alliance is most grateful for the major support of ethical companies and foundations in helping our organization continue our work to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable, second-growth forest industry. We are giving great THANKS to:
– LUSH handmade cosmetics and soaps, which has provided major support again, both through its Charity Pot program and through an employee vote of preferred organizations, to the Ancient Forest Alliance. We are most grateful for their long-term dedication in supporting numerous environmental organizations, including the Ancient Forest Alliance for three years now! Their staff have also helped to write hundreds of letters and push political decision makers to protect the ancient forests east of Vancouver. See their website www.LUSH.ca
– The Evergreen Foundation, which has provided support for a Coastal Douglas-Fir ecosystem restoration project (invasive species removal and native tree and shrub planting) through their partnership with Canon, as part of the Take Root Program. The Ancient Forest Alliance partnered with the Ecological Pathfinders of Portage Park and the Victoria Green Team to help restore a portion of Portage Park’s native Garry oak and Douglas-fir/maple ecosystem in September. See their website www.Evergreen.ca
– To the Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC) Victoria store and staff, whose staff voted the AFA as their preferred organization to support this year. The MEC was also instrumental in supporting the AFA’s campaign to protect the Avatar Grove in 2012. See their website www.MEC.ca
– To Patagonia Victoria, whose new store in Victoria has chosen the Ancient Forest Alliance as its recipient as part of the 1% For The Planet donation. Patagonia has a long history of supporting the conservation movement and their generosity will allow us to expand our campaigns. See their website.
This great video by Wyatt Visuals, featuring researcher Ira Sutherland and Tla-o-qui-aht canoe carver Joe Martin, describes their work to measure the ecosystem services of Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests, including for First Nations cultural uses, in Nuu-chah-nulth territory in 2014.
Click here to watch on Vimeo.
Avatar Grove Boardwalk: Preliminary Phase Complete – THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Fundraising Continues for Future Upgrades in 2015
**To DONATE go to: https://16.52.162.165/avatar-grove-boardwalk-now-completed-and-open/
The Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew is a majestic old-growth forest of enormous redcedar trees. It has become a major tourism draw, akin to a “second Cathedral Grove”. The now-popular hiking area was saved in 2012 through a campaign lead by the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), with the help of thousands of our supporters and local tourism businesses with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and the Sooke Region Tourism Association. Its protection has bolstered the economy of southern Vancouver Island. Avatar Grove is in the Gordon River Valley, on Crown land in traditional Pacheedaht territory. See photos here: https://16.52.162.165/photos-media/
The AFA has been working since 2013 on construction of a new boardwalk to help protect the area’s delicate understory and tree roots from excessive trampling, to improve visitor access and safety, and to support local eco-tourism.
THANKS to your support, we’ve raised over $12,000 in 2014 so far and have now completed the basic, preliminary phase of the boardwalk, including including vital bridges, steps, tree-viewing platforms, and walkways over several sensitive, steep, slippery and wet sections. This is an incredible improvement from before and one that has been enjoyed by thousands of people already from all across the world. If you’ve yet to visit the grove since the work began, now’s a great time to do so!
***Funding Still Needed for 2015 Upgrades
While the initial phase of the boardwalk is complete, funds are still needed to support important future upgrades, to be continued in the spring of 2015, including walkways across the flat “muddy areas” prone to flooding and steps down the steep slope to the creek in the Upper Avatar Grove.
$100 sponsors 1 metre of boardwalk and you will receive a thank you certificate with your name or a friend’s name if it’s a gift!
Thank you all again for your tremendous support of this important conservation project! The trails at Avatar Grove will be enjoyed by many many folks for years and years to come.
After decades of conflict and tense meetings where nerves frayed, news of whether environmental groups, First Nations, the logging industry and government have finally settled the fate of the Great Bear Rainforest may break as soon as Monday.
To fully appreciate what a momentous moment this is for B.C. and those facing environmental conflicts around the world, one needs to start at the beginning.
The Chairman
It was the first Traditional Land Use committee meeting dealing with the Great Bear Rainforest in northern B.C. and everyone, unsure where to begin, decided the next person to show up would be the chairman.
Spanning 64,000 square kilometres along British Columbia’s Central and North Pacific Coast, the Great Bear Rainforest was one of the largest unspoiled temperate rainforests in the world, and the centre of a heated battle between industry and environmentalists.
Dallas Smith, whose imposing stature is countered by his cheerful smile, was just 23 at the time. He wandered in late eating a sandwich and was assigned the job. His community, the Tlowitsis Nation on Turner Island, lacked the capacity and resources to respond to the endless demands made by industry and government so he was happy to help where he could.
It was supposed to be a short-term gig, a two year deal that gave him a way to make some money and gain a bit of experience before heading off to university.
Twenty years later, Smith, now President of the Nanwakolas Council, is still on the job.
Sitting across from me wearing a sweatshirt and a baseball hat, Smith holds his grinning 18-month old daughter Amelia and talks about how that first meeting turned into a career and became a key component of the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, an exhaustive consultation process now nearing completion.
After four years of global environmental campaigns and 15 years of often tense negotiations, representatives from the forest industry, environmental groups, First Nations and government are now about to take the last crucial step from negotiation to implementation and legislation.
“Most of government, 'big G' government, thinks the Great Bear Rainforest is done. We announced it, they announced it 20 times, they all got lots of podium time about it… the hubbub is kind of over,” said Smith. “But what the general public doesn't know is that it all has to be implemented now.”
If finalized, the agreement will distinguish the province by protecting not only a massive tract of rainforest, but also salmon rivers, bears and wolves. It's home to the iconic “Spirit Bear”, a white bear revered by First Nation cultures, found nowhere else on the planet.
It will also be an agreement that is unique in the world, with conflicting parties coming together to keep an ecosystem intact.
“What’s going on right now is a tremendous amount of work,” said Valerie Langer, director of B.C. forest campaigns at ForestEthics Solutions. “There's an unbelievably busy schedule of policy writing, drafts of legislative language and meetings between all the parties.”
“The province is poised to seize this moment — Maybe Premier Clark thinks it was somehow part of the Campbell legacy that she didn't want to be a part of, but it's totally theirs (the Clark government's) to seize. This is an opportunity of a global scale.”
Langer has been an activist for most of her life, largely focusing on protecting the forests on the B.C. coast. She speaks with the insights gained from years of fighting to keep British Columbia's forests standing.
“First Nations, the forest industry, and the environmental community are all aligned and saying ‘we're ready, by the end of 2014 we have a package ready and it can go out’,” Nicole Rycroft said about meeting the upcoming deadline after years of frustrating delays. Rycroft, a native Australian, is the founder and executive director of Canopy, an influential NGO that uses market forces to protect forests around the world. A fearless activist, she once arrested at the Beijing Olympics for climbing billboards to hang a banner that protested the Tibetan occupation.
She jokes that her hair has “gone gray” since the early years of Great Bear Rainforest conservation efforts.
“Everybody recognizes that it needs to be legislated [to] provide a level of certainty for the Great Bear Rainforest.”
The Great Bear Rainforest Agreement includes four key elements: rainforest protection, improved logging practices, the involvement of First Nations in decision making, and the provision of conservation financing to enable economic diversification. The Rainforest Solutions Project, a coalition comprised of ForestEthics, Greenpeace, and Sierra Club B.C., describes it as a “conservation and human well-being initiative”.
From blockades to boardrooms
It's hard to imagine today, but up to 2005, just seven per cent of what became known as the Great Bear Rainforest was protected in parks. Logging companies had already been in the area for 100 years, and it wasn't until the 90s that environmentalists — the very same who had led the biggest blockades in Canada's history at Clayoquot Sound — demanded that industry stay out of pristine areas of the Great Bear Rainforest.
“People started to understand what's going on in forestry….[they] were becoming very concerned about the tremendous increase of the amount of logging in the province,” Langer said.
“The industry figured that the environmentalists would just never get there. It was so remote and logistically, it would be too difficult,” Patrick Armstrong of Moresby Consulting said in a TV interview. A former logger, Armstrong was an forestry industry representative who was at the forefront of the negotiations that were to take place.
Armstrong was amazed to hear on the radio while at a logging site on Roderick Island that there were people in white coveralls, emerging from the woods.
By the time the logging crew arrived, activists had locked themselves with bike locks to various pieces of equipment and hung massive banners calling for the protection of the rainforest.
A game-changing marketing campaign
Before a pattern of cooperation set in, “there were incredibly acrimonious campaigns on both sides,” as environmentalists, governments, and industry all fought to get the public on their side. “We were slinging metaphorical bullets at each other,” Valerie Langer smiles to remember it all as she tells the story.
Environmental organizations bought ads in Der Speigel and The New York Times while companies hired global PR giant Burson-Marsteller, whose clients have included Monsanto and tobacco company Phillip Morris.
“We launched into vicious campaigns calling each other down,” said Langer.
Many in the First Nations community were shocked at the amount of attention the campaign was getting. “We had global interest in the plight of our communities,” Smith said. “No matter how all this plays out, that's one thing I’ll always owe the environmental community, the awareness they brought to how unacceptable it is how my people have lived and been treated in Canada.”
From that flowed a market campaign that shook industry. “There had been boycott campaigns done before, where you get the consumer not to buy. But this was different. Instead of going to 300 million people and saying ‘change your minds about what you buy’, we were going to 200 major purchasers and saying ‘don't purchase from here’,” Langer said. The campaign targeted huge paper suppliers like Kinkos and Home Depot. “Their corporate decisions affected 300 million people.”
Their ads called out logging companies by name. They garnered international attention and inspired protests worldwide.
Then logging and paper corporations — including Canadian Forest Products, Western Forest Products, and Weyerhaeuser and Interfor — came to the table to talk with Rainforest Action Network, Natural Resources Defense Council, Greenpeace International, Greenpeace Canada and Sierra Club of British Columbia as part of the Joint Solutions Project. They came to a 'standstill agreement' to stop the market campaigns and start negotiating. Province and First Nations got involved as well, in later government-to-government talks.
“It was extremely difficult to get to the point where we could actually sit in the room to find solutions,” Armstrong told the Vancouver Observer.
“The catalyst for that was that both the industry and NGOS knew they couldn't sustain open warfare forever. They actually had to come up with some outcomes in the interests of both parties.”
Table-flipping arguments
In the early days, it was hard for polarized parties to talk to one another.
Negotiations with First Nations representatives got heated. Smith explained how logging companies responded to discussions about social licensing and revenue sharing.
“They went nuts,” he said. “There were meetings where there was literally violence. Tables got flipped, probably quarterly. We’d have to pull people apart, get them to calm down.”
Armstrong said he didn't recall any tables thrown in his meetings but he said the process was “very, very tense.”
He also said the negotiations changed the relationship between environmentalists and industry.
“Once you start actually negotiating with one another, it requires a type of accountability from the environmental groups too…, because they'd gone to the marketplace, dealing with big businesses in the publishing or paper side, or in the lumber side. The Home Depots. The Time Magazines of the world. They suddenly needed to be accountable to those organizations. They couldn't just show a bunch of photos about how bad everything was and ignore the fact that…there's a change taking place.
He said once conflicting parties start negotiating with each other, they couldn't resort to saying “outrageous things” about the other party anymore.
“Once you are collaborating you can't do that any more. If you do it, you lose all credibility.”
Eventually, however, people from every side began to forge unlikely alliances. They had been working together long enough, Smith said, that their clashing positions started to give way to personal connections.
“We all have roles to play, but when you're stuck in Bella Coola because of a storm, you gotta go for dinner at some point. There are only two restaurants, and you gotta sit with somebody,” said Smith laughing.
“You get past the conflict and start to realize, okay, he’s got a family just like I do.”
An international model for forest conservation
Currently under ecosystem based management, 33 per cent of the old-growth is preserved while the other regions is logged responsibly, with the need to protect animal habitat and water systems taken into consideration. It aims for high levels of human well-being at low ecological risk.
Huge changes have happened over the course of negotiations. Ten years ago, less than ten cent of the Great Bear Rainforest was under protection. In 2006 Premier Gordon Campbell put 2.1 million hectares of forest under protection and collected $120 million to be put toward First Nations initiatives. And in 2009, amendments to logging regulations set an additional 20 per cent of the forest off limits, totally 50 per cent of old growth forests under protection.
While 50 per cent is a big achievement on paper, conservationists and scientists say that to sustain the ecological integrity of the Great Bear Rainforest, 70 per cent of natural levels of old growth forest have to be maintained.
“Seventy per cent of the old growth needs to be conserved,” Nicole Rycroft confirmed.
“If we only get 50 per cent…we're going to fail as to what the ultimate objective was that everybody agreed to.”
Human well-being in the Great Bear Rainforest
When recommendations were presented collaboratively by forestry representatives and environmentalists in January 2014, “the two warring parties,” it showed the government that the fighting was finally over – that the former adversaries had agreed on how the Great Bear Rainforest should be saved, Rycroft said.
“There’s an unbelievably busy schedule of policy writing, drafts of legislative language, and meetings between all the parties,” she said.
“[And] we have this elephant in the room… The First Nations have said since 2009 the next round of conservation doesn't happen without the human well-being initiative,” she said.
The human well being component of the Great Bear Rainforest is a key part to the agreement, yet it has remained poorly understood for years. Largely, Smith said, because it is a big concept rooted in thousands of years of history.
“My people have been in our territory since time immemorial… we’re not simply dependent on the ecosystems around us, we’re a part of the ecosystems,” said Smith.
“We need to all work together to make sure that we continue to be a functioning part of these ecosystems. And what it takes to keep us there is the sharing of benefits and revenues that come from the extraction of resources,” he said.
Though specific details have not been released, the human well-being initiative would aim to raise the standard of living for First Nations communities in the Great Bear Rainforest until education, employment, and health levels were on par with rest of Canada.
“We’re one of the most economically advanced countries in the world, with the highest levels of comfort and all those sorts of things, but you go 50 miles outside of a major urban area and it is just deplorable,” said Smith.
Smith and his colleagues went to the 27 First Nations in the Great Bear Rainforest and asked them to list the ten biggest challenges facing their communities. The process took years but the results were clear. Each distinct nation listed nearly identical challenges, they were even in the same order of importance.
The top issue faced by each nation was the lack of capacity – training, time, funding – needed to process and respond to proposals from industry planning to extract resources from their land. The inability to engage with industry, often because they are overwhelmed by so many referrals at once, means First Nations communities are losing out on the opportunity to have a say on what goes on in their traditional territory.
“It was literally an epiphany moment for us,” said Smith of the realization that every community was struggling with the same issues. It gave them the ability to focus, organize solutions, and work collaboratively across nations.
Other often cited concerns were linked to high poverty levels, unemployment rates, and mental and physical health. The communities said they needed local employment security, relevant jobs training, and the establishment of a guardian watchman program that would allow them to monitor the commercial activity taking place in their region.
Expecting people in rural communities to leave to find work when there is so much money being made off of their traditional land is not good enough, Smith said.
“We watched millions of dollars a day worth of our natural resources get trucked out, right past our reserves, while we’re living in third world conditions,” he said. His people are struggling to live off the land like they used to because of all of the industrial activity, yet they are also not making a living wage off of the economic boom that is happening around them.
For Smith and his collogues the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement is about more than economics and business negotiations. There has been so much anxiety and disparity in this process he says. He pauses to smile at his daughter who is grinning at him from her highchair, but his face falls when he turns back to explain how heavy this situation has become.
“Industry, government, and ENGOs forget we have to go home and we have to face our community,” said Smith. “I have to go look people in the eye who lost someone to suicide because they literally said in their note ‘I have no other options, there is nothing I can do in this community, I had to find a way out.’”
“We have to face that. And it’s family, it’s all family.”
Pushing over the finish line
A sign of the Province’s commitment came in 2013 when Forestry Minister Steve Thompson left a caucus meeting and flew out to attend a customer-investor roundtable that was attended by some of the NGOs.
Rycroft said he gave the group a personal guarantee that finalizing the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement was a priority for the government.
“The key piece is that the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement is not finished,” said Rycroft. “We can see the finish line. We just need to push it over.”
“The forest industry wants to see these agreements implemented,” Armstrong said firmly.
“Where I sit today, there's a lot of leadership being taken by the players. I am confident we are on track to implementing the agreements, we are close to achieving what we sett out to do 15-years ago.”
Smith is cautiously optimistic that negotiations will be successful by the end of December.
“I hope I get everything on my list but I’m pragmatic, I’ve been around enough to know I’m not going to get it all now. Over time? Yeah, I’m going to get everything on that list and that is a guarantee.”
People around the world care deeply about British Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest because of its spectacular natural beauty, rich First Nations cultures and their hope that thriving communities and intact rainforest are about to become reality in this region.
The public’s optimism that this is possible is built on the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements announced in February 2006 by the provincial government, First Nations, a group of logging companies and environmental groups, which marked a breakthrough after years of land use conflicts, and were celebrated around the world.
By March 2009, a number of key milestones were met, including setting aside half of the rainforest, $120 million for First Nations community well-being and shared decision-making, and a new five-year-plan agreed on the outstanding steps to meet the goals of a healthy rainforest and communities by 2014.
Today, after years of technical work, negotiations and planning, all parties involved have a clear understanding of what the solutions package will include: improve decision-making between Province and First Nations; new human well-being commitments for First Nations; increase the amount of rainforest off-limits to logging to 70 per cent of the natural old-growth and an ecologically-sound forest management framework.
All that is missing at this point is for the B.C. government to heed the call from First Nations, forestry companies, environmental organizations and a majority of British Columbians (68 per cent, according to a 2013 poll) and focus leadership and resources to finish the task in the coming weeks.
Eight years since the historic announcement, here are eight reasons why now is the time for the B.C. government to fully deliver the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements:
1. Because there is only one Great Bear Rainforest.
Twice as big as Belgium, the region represents some of the largest intact tracts of coastal temperate rainforest on the planet. Temperate rainforests have always been globally rare, covering less than one per cent of the planet’s land mass, and today few areas remain unlogged. It is the only home of the rare white spirit bear and provides intact habitat for unique coastal wolves, grizzly bears and all five species of Pacific salmon.
2. Because we urgently need a model for an economy that respects the limits of nature.
The new approach to forest conservation and management introduced in the Great Bear Rainforest is based on Ecosystem Based Management. Its key principle is to respect Mother Nature’s needs and undertake careful planning to make sure enough forest is being set aside before logging happens. Whether looking at clean water, clean air, wildlife habitat or a livable climate: This is a model the world is desperately waiting for.
3. Because success is paramount to build trust that collaboration can work.
All parties involved, some of them with a long history of conflict, managed to move from confrontation to collaboration. With perseverance, vision and leadership, the B.C. government, First Nations, logging companies and environmental organizations have managed to work through complex issues and endorse an integrated set of agreements including conservation, economic activity, funding and decision-making. Not following through would put the trust in collaboration at stake.
4. Because it is a model for a new relationship between First Nations and the Province.
The government-to-government relationship and the resulting progress toward shared decision-making, reconciliation and revenue-sharing between the Province and First Nations has become an integral part of the agreements and implementation progress in this region. And it offers a potential answer to pressing questions arising out of the recent milestone Supreme Court William case that strengthened First Nations rights.
5. Because one of the best carbon banks on the planet will be protected.
There are few ecosystems on the planet that store as much carbon per hectare as coastal temperate rainforests. Protecting the rainforest keeps carbon out of the atmosphere. These large intact old-growth rainforest areas are more resilient than other forests under a changing climate.
6. Because it matters to B.C.’s coastal forest industry.
The conservation commitments contained in the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements have resulted in significant reputational benefits for the forest industry operating in the region (despite the fact that forest management remains dismal in almost all other parts of the province). But as long as conservation gaps remain, the marketplace remains concerned about potential conflict.
7. Because we will inspire action to protect the lungs of the world.
The world’s life support systems are on the brink. Intact natural forests are the lungs of our planet, habitat of a large part of the world’s species and home to hundreds of millions of human beings. Success in the Great Bear Rainforest will inspire change elsewhere, from the Boreal to the equator and beyond.
8. Because the world is watching.
The Great Bear Rainforest is a global treasure and its fate a global concern. From forest products customers to people working to protect tropical rainforest and Prince Charles, the world is watching to see if promises made in 2006 and 2009 will be kept. There are few moments in the history of British Columbia where a provincial government is presented with an opportunity of this global significance to show leadership and make a gift to the world.
Jens Wieting is Forest and Climate Campaigner with the Sierra Club BC, Eduardo Sousa is Senior Forests Campaigner for Greenpeace, and Valerie Langer is Senior Campaigner with ForestEthics Solutions.
The Ancient Forest Alliance's petition to protect British Columbia’s endangered old-growth forests and forestry jobs recently crossed the 30,000 signature mark! Thank you to everyone who has signed and shared the petition so far. You're helping send a clear message to BC's politcians that we need to protect our endangered old-growth forests, log second-growth sustainbly, and ban raw log exports. Can you now help us reach 50,000 by sharing this link online? ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/
