Environmental Hotspots

In April 2010, the government announced that it will proceed with the highly controversial Site C dam mega-project in the Peace River Valley. The Site C dam would flood almost 20 percent of class one to three farmland in the Peace River Valley and fails to meet minimum international standards for large dam construction.

Kinder Morgan is planning to twin its Transmountain pipeline through Vancouver to service growing tar sands oil production in Alberta. Also in the works is a plan to dredge the Second Narrows channel to allow larger tankers to access the Kinder Morgan terminal and carry the oil to the US and Chinese markets.

Imagine a remote, hurricane-swept landscape of stunted shrubs and tufted hairgrass, echoing with the voices of thousands of seabirds nesting on bare rock and in underground burrows. This is Triangle Island, part of the Scott Islands Archipelago off the north-western tip of Vancouver Island. It is home to about half of the world's population of Cassin's Auklets, the quirky Rhinoceros Auklet and BC's largest colony of Tufted Puffins.

The Sacred Headwaters is the shared birthplace of three of B.C.’s most important wild salmon rivers: the Skeena, the Nass and the Stikine. Royal Dutch Shell plans to turn the Sacred Headwaters into a coalbed methane gas field scarred by a maze of wells, pipelines and roads.

The Flathead River Valley, tucked into B.C.’s southeast corner, is a hotspot for biodiversity and a Noah’s Ark for many species that have lost habitat elsewhere. Until recently, the Flathead was threatened by a land use plan that promoted mining and energy development above all other values.

B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest is a global ecological treasure. Until 2006, the Great Bear Rainforest was threatened by industrial logging. An historic land use consensus was achieved in February 2006. Now, as conservation groups work towards achieving full implementation of the five-year plan agreed to by stakeholders in 2009, the Great Bear Rainforest is facing new threats, including a proposed oil pipeline and tanker traffic.

Located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound’s globally rare temperate rainforests are awe-inspiring dynamic ecosystems. Now, with few economic alternatives in sight, logging once again threatens the 60,000 hectares of Clayoquot’s remaining intact rainforest valleys that are still unprotected.

Enbridge Inc. plans to pipe crude oil from Alberta’s tar sands to B.C.’s Port of Kitimat, and ship it in supertankers to Asian markets. More than 200 tankers a year would weave a hazardous path through an obstacle course of narrow, reef-studded channels and inlets of B.C.’s north coast. The vast majority of British Columbians are opposed to oil tanker traffic through the Great Bear Rainforest.

In 1996, the B.C. government promised to acquire 395-hectares of private land that links two popular Quadra Island parks.

Bridge Lake is one of the largest lakes in an area known as “the Fishing Highway,” east of 100 Mile House. A portion of its forested shore, home to loons, grebes, otter and mink, was set aside in 1945 as a protected Crown Reserve and is used for recreation by locals and visitors.

In March 2012, the BC Government approved a controversial luxury ski resort proposed for the wild Jumbo Valley. The 6,500-bed resort, on a receding glacier, would fragment critical grizzly bear habitat and threaten river flows.

The proposed Raven Coal Mine near Fanny Bay is one of three new coal mines proposed for Vancouver Island.

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, is the controversial practice of blasting water, sand and toxic chemicals into deep, underground shale formations to release natural gas. Despite rising public concern over health, fresh water and environmental impacts, the controversial use of fracking in natural gas production is speeding ahead.

This beloved regional trail, which every year attracts thousands of visitors, deserves to be permanently protected from encroachment by expanding the narrow buffer zone. Write a letter to Premier Christy Clark and ask her to take immediate steps­ to expand Juan de Fuca park including the former Tree Farm Licence 25 lands, from the ocean to Highway 14.

The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) announced in November 2011 that it would review a second proposal from Taseko Mines Ltd. for a Fish Lake gold and copper mine. Taseko’s revised project avoids draining picturesque Fish Lake. Instead, Fish Lake would be surrounded by the proposed open-pit mine and unusable for the life of the mine (up to 33 years).