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Cortes Island residents who blockaded roads for a week in a fight to modify logging plans say they are hopeful talks with Island Timberlands can lead to a compromise.

Residents of an idyllic island off the west coast of Canada are facing off against corporate opponents set to include a Chinese sovereign wealth behemoth, the US$480 billion China Investment Corporation (CIC).

The conflict over the past week between local Cortes Island residents and Island Timberlands over the company’s contentious plans to log endangered forests has conservationists renewing their call for political leadership in BC to resolve the “War in the Woods”.  Last week, local residents on Cortes Island repeatedly blocked Island Timberlands’ attempts to begin logging.

Cortes Island forest activists and residents celebrated today as Island Timberlands (I.T.) withdrew crews and announced that they would not attempt to move forward with operations for at least a week.Tensions on the island had been rising since the residents gathered to stage a logging blockade broke at the end of last week.

Environmental groups were preparing for another round of the war-in-the-woods after logging tape was found this summer near Castle Grove and the "Castle Giant." The western red cedar has a five-metre diameter and is listed in the B.C. big tree registry as one of the widest in Canada.

Conservationists are breathing a sigh of relief as Canada’s finest stand of old-growth redcedar trees appears to have been spared the axe – for now. The Castle Grove in the Upper Walbran Valley on southern Vancouver Island (west of Lake Cowichan) had been flagged for logging in August by the Teal-Jones Group and subsequently was the focus of an intense environmental campaign by the Ancient Forest Alliance.

These unprotected forests are within a Woodlot License, a smaller logging tenure on Crown lands, which the BC government states is not subject to the creation of new Old-Growth Management Areas. However, it is within the government's power to shift the Woodlot License boundaries to another second-growth forest area among the thousands of hectares of Crown lands in the region.

A Cortes Island blockade of Island Timberlands went into its third day Thursday as swelling ranks of environmentalists, residents and their children maintained a human shield against the logging company’s crews and equipment.