Juan de Fuca Marine Trail

Bear Beach, wild and rocky, is about a 40 minute drive from Sooke en route to Port Renfrew on Highway 14, the West Coast Road along the south-western side of Vancouver Island. Proper access is from China Beach, the beginning of the Juan de Fuca Trail, but local knowledge will cut you in from the highway, down an old logging road, past Ministry of Transport storage of large and heavy items, to a plateau rich in the bloom of second growth recovering forest. Giant stumps of sitka spruce and cedar ghost the landscape.The Juan de Fuca trail is world‐famous and attracts tourists internationally.

When Juan de Fuca Provincial Park was created in the mid-1990s, the buffer zone around it was part of a Tree Farm Licence and couldn’t be developed. In 2007, the B.C. government allowed the Western Forest Products to sell the lands for development - a widely criticized decision that was slammed by the province's Auditor-General. A Vancouver developer promptly submitted a proposal to construct a massive resort--stretching along 16 kilometres of the trail, complete with 257 vacation homes, a luxury lodge, spa, restaurant, two recreation centres and other buildings.

After years of public process culminating with an amazing three-day public hearing, the CRD Board voted down the proposed Juan de Fuca development in September 2011. Together, hundreds of rresidents of the Capital Regional District voiced their opposition to the development in a marathon public hearing in which over 200 people from all walks of life and from across the CRD spoke in favour of protecting the trail.

Thanks to the commitment of thousands of citizens of the Capital Region, the Juan de Fuca Park is safe from a sprawling resort being built on its fringe - for now. But what about next time?

This beloved regional trail, which every year attracts thousands of visitors from Canada and all over the world, 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 – on the 100^th anniversary of the B.C. parks system – to expand Juan de Fuca park including the former Tree Farm Licence 25 lands, from the ocean to Highway 14.