"In the vacuum that is provincial park creation in B.C., a West Kootenay-based environmental group is stepping up to call attention to that fact and to lobby for the creation of three new parks in one of the rarest ecosystems in the world."
Public presentations across British Columbia | June 2–22, 2026
>The New Forest Act Roadshow is a series of public presentations across British Columbia explaining what the New Forest Act is, why BC’s current forestry system is failing, and what a workable legislative solution looks like.
>That solution is the New Forest Act – a proposed policy framework developed over several years through research, public input, and lived experience in communities directly affected by forestry decisions.
https://boundaryforest.org/new-forest-act-roadshow-2026-info/
Southern mountain caribou were listed as threatened in 2003 under Canada's Species at Risk Act. So why did the BC government allow logging in threatened caribou habitat even though there is a provincial recommendation against it?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-logging-caribou-habitat-9.7202598
Massive herbicide spraying is turning forests into toxic plantations.
Canada does the same with the exception of Quebec.
https://open.substack.com/pub/animalpolitics/p/roundup-in-the-national-forests-how
Conserved and protected areas in Canada are invaluable — but we have 9 charts that try to capture their economic impact
>The federal government’s vision for conservation, laid out in its 2026 nature strategy, is of a nation that “protects, restores, and values nature as a foundation of our economy, sovereignty, and well-being.”
>One of the pillars to achieving that vision is “valuing nature and mobilizing capital,” according to the strategy. It estimated the value of “ecosystem services” — the direct and indirect contributions of nature to well-being and quality of life — to be $3.6 trillion, or “more than double our 2018 GDP.” In other words, the government is looking to spur more private sector investment in conservation by showing businesses how valuable nature is to their bottom lines.
https://thenarwhal.ca/canada-conservation-economy-in-charts/
Unfortunately it seems like the government wants to set aside land to most likely tokenize it for carbon credits rather than save it for its innate ecosystem and infrastructure values. Is this new focus on "mobilizing capital" and conservation financing tools treating ecosystems as merely investment opportunities rather than essential to life? What will be the end result - a large scale sensor network polluting our forests (please see ONE Amazon article below)? And will we be kept out of nature as has been increasingly happening already?
ONE Amazon and the "Internet of Forests"
https://reddmonitor.substack.com/p/in-september-2022-one-amazon-and
Short documentary about Vancouver Island's ancient forests. At about 8:50 minutes the moisture retention of downed trees is shown. They hold moisture throughout the summer while nurturing trees growing on them.
Within a forest they are not the dried out logs that they are made out to be.
>Most people are unaware of how forests cause rain, and how deforestation brings drought. We're having a lot of drought right now and have had numerous large forest fires in recent years. We are driving a cycle of deforestation, drought and desertification. But mainstream media and climate journalism give very little attention to the effects of deforestation.
(From 3 years ago).
As of this morning, Fairwinds/Seacliff have illegally trespassed on private property with heavy machinery and are currently degrading the Schooner Cove shore frontage, crating slope instability, and endangering people and wildlife. The excavator ran right over vegetation which was teeming with wildlife.
NONE OF THIS IS LEGAL.
RDN will not enforce the bylaws.
The people in Nanaimo, Fairwinds, and Victoria need to be very aware that any Seacliff Development is rife with corruption and destruction to the environment. They have NO respect for environmental laws, residents safety, residents rights or fair process.
This is not a housing project either. It's a small walkway to nowhere. The collusion between RDN staffers and Fairwinds/Seacliff is so bad that RDN will not even enforce their own bylaws when they're violated. In fact, RDN changes the bylaws after violations occur to accommodate this developer.
This is the definition of corruption.
I really don't love the tone of this article blaming people based on skin colour but Mennonites originally from Canada have been altering the landscape of Bolivia and growing soy for a long time. Even though they have been there so long they should respect the value of forests and not be farming at this scale causing so much destruction. I value farmers and farming very much but not anyone clearing vast tracts of forested land to do it.
Without forests we get heat islands, drought, flooding, erosion, biodiversity loss and so on.
>The main reason people clear forests in Bolivia is to make way for cattle. It’s typically cheaper to buy forested land and remove the trees than to acquire existing pasture, says Daniel Larrea, science and technology program director at Conservación Amazónica, a Bolivian NGO. Plus, under the country’s legal system, landowners risk losing their land in Bolivia if they don’t demonstrate that they’re using it “productively,” such as by raising cattle for beef, effectively creating an incentive for deforestation.
>The other major source of forest loss in Bolivia is the rapid expansion of soy farms, the nation’s top export crop, by weight. Between 2001 and 2021, soy farms in Bolivia — which feed global demand for animal feed and soybean oil — destroyed some 2.2 million acres of forests, according to a 2023 report by the nonprofit Amazon Conservation Association (affiliated with Conservación Amazónica). That’s roughly the size of Puerto Rico.
>...Mennonites were among the first groups to introduce commercial soy farming to Bolivia, helping turn the country into a top-10 soy producer globally.
>Researchers estimate that Mennonites caused nearly a quarter of the soy-related deforestation in Bolivia over the last two decades — and that share has risen in more recent years, according to Amazon Conservation Association’s Monitoring of the Andes Amazon Program.
Surging deforestation is more due to expanding agricultural production as a state policy. Food companies and consumers are also at fault in driving this deforestation due to demand for meat and soy-based livestock feed. Which largely goes to poultry and pig feed. Choosing pasture-raised meat and eggs would largely alleviate this problem.
(Bolding mine).
https://www.vox.com/climate/487548/bolivia-deforestation-mennonites-climate-change
I can't believe that even some of the last redwoods are at risk.
"A majestic grove of 1,000-year-old redwoods in Northern California is facing an imminent threat — and it needs your help.
Richardson Grove State Park in Humboldt County shelters one of the last protected stands of accessible old-growth redwood trees in the world. But a plan to widen Highway 101 to make room for oversized trucks would cut into and pave over the root systems of the thousand-year-old trees, causing dieback of the canopy and possible loss of parts of the grove.
There's no reason to imperil these majestic trees, as other cost-effective, environmentally sound solutions to improve the movement of goods along the coast exist.
This may be our last chance to save these irreplaceable redwoods. Urge California Governor Gavin Newsom to save Richardson Grove."
The province hopes to boost logging rates. But slashing the fee on exports risks more mill closures, one advocate warns.
How does what the BC NDP is doing make any sense?
"As pulp mill and sawmill jobs plummet in number, British Columbia’s Forests Ministry is opening the door to more exports of unprocessed logs, including those produced from trees cut down in old-growth forests.
Under current rules, companies wanting to ship raw logs from B.C. to buyers in China, Japan, Korea and elsewhere pay a “fee in lieu of manufacturing” — a penalty designed to encourage more domestic log manufacturing.
But in February, the provincial government quietly lowered those fees. The reduced fees will make it more profitable to ship logs away, and although the government says it will incentivize more logging, others warn that the change risks undermining already precarious manufacturing jobs in the province’s struggling forest industry."
https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/04/30/BC-Quietly-Cuts-Penalty-Exporting-Unprocessed-Logs/
If you find your comments removed it's probably because you called someone stupid or told them to f off.
Feel free to disagree but please be civil about it.
Logging the Tsitika watershed seems like logging for the sake of logging and means destroying so much biodiversity and a critical watershed for little reward.
>Pacific Wild is urging the B.C. government to halt logging in a Tsitika watershed cutblock flagged for old-growth deferral, warning that B.C. Timber Sales (BCTS) is auctioning rare and ecologically critical forest for little economic return.
>In letters sent this week to BCTS and other government decision makers, the organization included new data, maps, and field evidence showing that cutblock TA1375—identified by the Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel as a Priority Deferral Area—provides essential habitat for threatened species and significant carbon stores. The cutblock was auctioned in March despite opposition from scientists, community members, and multiple First Nations whose territories overlap with the Tsitika watershed.
>“This watershed supports some of the highest numbers of Marbled Murrelets on Vancouver Island,” said Dr. Petrell, who has been leading the research in the area. “It makes sense to protect the old-growth nesting habitat critical to so many birds.”
>“This is a high-risk, low-reward cutblock,” said Registered Forest Technologist (RFT) and former BCTS Forest Technologist Greg Herringer. “It would sacrifice irreplaceable ecological values for very little economic gain.”
https://pacificwild.org/press-release-experts-urge-halt-to-tsitika-old-growth-sale/
What we are losing is incalculable.
Most of Vancouver Island has been logged. Now, one of the last ancient forests, in the Tsitika River watershed, is on the chopping block.
>A new old-growth logging controversy is unfolding in British Columbia, dividing Indigenous leaders and pitting the provincial government against scientists and conservation groups.
>The Tsitika River watershed, on northeast Vancouver Island, is home to ancient rainforests and an abundance of wildlife, including bird and lichen species at risk of extinction.
>Most old-growth forests surrounding the mountainous watershed have already been clear cut. The remaining forest was deemed to be at such high risk of biodiversity loss that the B.C. government placed it in an old-growth deferral area, off limits to logging.
>But last year, the government quietly removed a large tract of the cedar and hemlock forest from its old-growth deferral list.
>And then in March, the government agency BC Timber Sales auctioned off 24 hectares for clearcutting.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2026/04/22/Forest-Quietly-Removed-BC-Old-Growth-Deferral-List/