New risk of logging in Clayoquot Sound
Photo: Tofino Photography
The B.C. government has received an application for cutblocks in the old growth rainforest of Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
On January 19, more than 130 scientists across North America signed a declaration calling for permanent protection of Clayoquot’s remaining intact old-growth rainforests.
Read the Times Colonist article.
A new Sierra Club BC map, also released on January 19, shows that only 21 of Vancouver Island’s 282 rainforest watersheds are unlogged. Of these unlogged watersheds, five are in Clayoquot Sound and lack permanent protection, including on Flores Island.
“Our map shows that there is nowhere else left on Vancouver Island, except Clayoquot Sound, that provides extensive high quality habitat for rainforest species such as bears and wolves,” said Jens Wieting, Forest Campaigner with Sierra Club BC.
Located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Clayoquot Sound’s ancient temperate rainforests are awe-inspiring dynamic ecosystems. Coastal temperate rainforests like Clayoquot's shelter more than half of all of B.C.'s wildlife species, and store more carbon per hectare than almost any other forest on earth.
Learn more about the unique ecology of Clayoquot Sound.
Clayoquot was designated a United Nations Biosphere Reserve in 2000, but that designation does not confer legal protection. A 1999 Memorandum of Understanding, signed by First Nations and environmental groups, outlined intact rainforest valleys in Clayoquot deserving protection, including the valley now slated for logging on Flores Island, north of Tofino. Yet those valleys are still unprotected.
The logging company Iisaak applied to the B.C. government for cutting permits on Flores during on-going talks with environmental groups about conservation financing for Clayoquot’s intact valleys. Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Sierra Club BC and other environmental organizations working to protect the intact rainforests of the region are calling on the B.C. government to offer short-term alternatives to logging, in order to allow more time to develop solutions for protection like conservation financing.
January 20 update: The BC government has informed us today that they have not yet received the full application for logging on Flores Island. In December, Iisaak submitted a map for cutblocks on the intact east side of Flores Island, opposite the offshore helicopter log-drop zones that were approved by the BC government earlier in 2011.
Logging in the unprotected intact valleys of Clayoquot Sound would be an irreparable loss. These intact valleys must be protected. Equally essential is to protect First Nations community well-being, by addressing the socio-economic inequities that they currently face.
A new model is needed that will provide for a sustainable, diverse economic future for the region's people.
Sierra Club BC has been working for more than two decades to protect the remaining intact rainforest valleys in Clayoquot Sound. We are working together with five other environmental organizations as the Clayoquot Sound Conservation Alliance (ForestEthics, Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Greenpeace, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Wilderness Committee) and seek to work collaboratively with First Nations toward lasting conservation solutions for Clayoquot Sound’s remaining ancient rainforest valleys.
