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Conservationists call on Premier to “Give the Gift that Keeps on Giving” by Christmas Day – Protection of BC’s Old-Growth Forests and Sustainable, Second-Growth Forestry

Today, Saturday November 24th

Speeches by Ken Wu and TJ Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance; Stephanie Goodwin, Greenpeace forest campaigner; Stephen Ben-Oliel, landowner near the Echo Lake Ancient Forest

Today a group of Ancient Forest Alliance volunteers will gather for a brief rally in front of Premier Christy Clark’s riding office in Point Grey before dispersing through the riding to canvass thousands of constituents in the Point Grey and Kitsilano neighbourhoods, delivering thousands of letter-writing leaflets urging local constituents to write to their MLA, who also happens to be the premier. The group will unfurl a huge, 40 foot long “Hands Off the Old-Growth” banner and have a giant Christmas stocking for supporters to drop letters into asking Premier Clark to give a gift of old-growth forest protection by Christmas Day.

The activists will be asking Premier Clark to:

“Premier Christy Clark has less than 7 months left before the next BC election. She can choose to leave a legacy as the premier who ended the ‘War in the Woods’ in BC, or be known as the ‘Despoiler of Beautiful British Columbia’ who supported the status quo of large-scale old-growth forest liquidation and raw log exports in this province. We’re greatly encouraging her to ‘give a gift that keeps on giving’ by Christmas Day this year, that is, to protect our old-growth forests and to ensure sustainable, value-added second-growth forestry. We’ve waited a decade for the BC Liberal government to move forward on this. They haven’t done so yet. Now we’re giving them one more month, and then everything changes from our side,” stated Ken Wu, Executive Director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “We’ll be more than happy to give credit where credit is due, and to dish out consequences for supporting large scale destruction of the environment and BC jobs too.”

The Ancient Forest Alliance was founded in early 2010 and is one of the few major environmental organizations in BC without charitable status, meaning that the non-profit organization cannot issue tax receipts to donors but also is not subject to legal restrictions in its political advocacy and in its campaigns criticizing politicians and political parties.

The organization is best know for its successful campaign to protect the Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew from logging, and is currently also highlighting the Echo Lake Ancient Forest (www.ProtectEchoLake.com) near Mission which the organization would like to see fully protected.

Old-growth forests are important to sustaining endangered species, tourism, the climate, clean water, wild salmon, and many First Nations cultures.

See incredible images of old-growth forests and giant stumps in the AFA’s photogallery at: https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/photos-media/

(media are free to reprint any photos, credit to TJ Watt where possible)

See “before” and “after” maps of old-growth logging on Vancouver Island at: https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/