INTERNATIONAL DAYS OF ACTION FOR CLAYOQUOT SOUND

A new 10 year Forest Development Plan, recently approved despite First Nations objections, includes 57 new cutblocks with almost 100 km of new roads in Clayoquot Sound. Interfor has stated its intention to log in some of the last pristine valleys of Vancouver Island and Clayoquot Sound.


Interfor Head Office
Duncan Davies - President & CEO
604-689-6800


Windsor Building Supplies
Randy Jones - President & CEO
604-581-4661


Premier Gordon Campbell: premier [at] gov.bc.ca

Stan Hagen, Minister of Sustainable Resource Management:
stan.hagen [at] gems6.gov.bc.ca

Mike de Jong, Minister of Forests: mike.dejong.mla [at] leg.bc.ca


You can participate in this international day of action by jamming government and industry phone lines and/or join a protest in one of the following locations on Wednesday, August 13th, 2003:


Tofino: 9am at the FOCS office - 331 Neill St.
Info: 250-725-4218, liam [at] focs.ca


Vancouver: 12 noon - Interfor Head Office, #4 Bentall Tower, 3500 -1055 Dunsmuir St. (between Thurlow and Burrard)
Info: Doug - interfor_out [at] hotmail.com


Victoria: 11 am - Ministry of Forests, corner of Pandora and Government
Info: WCWC - 250-388-9292


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What's going on in Clayoquot Sound?
Notes and thoughts following the 10 year anniversary of the 1993 protests, August 9th, 2003.
Janine Bandcroft


"The Clayoquot Sound Rainforest Festival celebrates the ten-year anniversary of the 1993 blockades, when Clayoquot Sound was the site of the largest peaceful blockade in Canadian history. Twelve thousand people joined the protest to stop industrial logging of Clayoquot Sound's ancient temperate rainforest, and 856 people were arrested. Many successes have been achieved as a result. However, Clayoquot's ancient rinaforests are still being destroyed by industrial logging.


Send a strong message to Interfor and the BC government that Interfor's large-scale logging of Clayoquot's ancient forest and its threat to its pristine valleys must end.


Let's make history ... again."


Friends of Clayoquot Sound, Tofino, B.C. http://www.focs.ca


Day one of the festival included music, speakers, and workshops with a variety of folk including Valerie Langer of FOCS, Betty Krawczyk's daughter Marion, Tzeporah Berman from Forest Ethics, MP Svend Robinson who's been arrested twice for standing on logging roads, Simon Tom from the Tla-o-qui-aht Band who explained about the eviction notice issued on Interfor to remove themselves from Native land after the BC Ministry of Forests ignored the Central Region Board and approved an Interfor logging plan, 89 year old sustainable forester Merve Wilkinson, activist Jaggi Singh, lawyer Cameron Ward, WCWC representative Ken Wu, musicians John Hollingsworth, Sarah Metzgner, the Raging Grannies, Rae Spoon, Island Rhythm, Dana Lyons, the Wassabi Collective, Shivon Robinsong, and many more.


This was a celebration of progressive accomplishments, a mourning of forest losses, and a re-structuring and re-visioning to continue the struggle.


On day two Maryjka Mchajlowycz led a tour of Interfor cutblocks within the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Assuming that Clayoquot Sound is protected is a common misunderstanding. The UN allows "sustainable human activity" within their heritage sites, and apparently clearcuts fit within those standards.


There are actually four different categories of clearcut certification - the ISO and SFI methods are industry determined, the CSA standards are set by the government, only the FSC standards are determined independently of government and industry - these include First Nations and labour concerns.


In the Clayoquot cutblocks there are 'report cards' nailed to trees, measuring Interfor's activities. They look like this:


EMS CHECKLIST


Significant Aspect S.O.P. Special Action Required


Terrain Stability ˆ
Soil Management ˆ
Wildlife Habitat Management ˆ
Drainage ˆ
Water Quality ˆ
Riparian Management ˆ
Petroleum & Chemical Products ˆ
Fire Prevention ˆ




At the bottom of the sign there's a logo containing the initials PR, and the words "ISO 14001 Registered KPMG," also a logo with a tree and the words "Sustainable Forestry Initiative." On first glance it appears that these signs have been constructed with pre-printed checkmarks, but actually the checks are stuck on afterwards. Nothing at all appeared in the "special action required" column despite the obvious devastation imposed by the cutblock. Is it possible that KPMG is complicit in a corporate lie?


Along the side of the road are piles of rotting trees, graveyards, leftovers from the clearcut logging. These used to be called "slash piles," but the industry now refers to them as "biodiversity enhancement piles." Maryjka suggested "corporate vandalism waste" provides a more appropriate reference. In addition to changes in terminology, some logging procedures have shifted. Where previously entire fields of forest graves were burned, now only the piles are incinerated. Ingmar Lee, previously a tree planter, claims to have seen pillars of smoke rising kilometres into the sky, often set on fire after being doused with flammable substances.


Maryjka told us that of all the ancient forests taken, half of them have been pulped. The logging corporations are required to remit about $10 for each truckload back to the province, then they sell the cedars for around $40,000 each.


Clearcuts leave a lot of waste, or "biodiversity enhancement piles," and smaller logging companies have moved in with "salvage logging" which allows them to take whatever is leftover after the big guys are finished. There's a salvage logging company that's owned 49% by Weyerhauser, and 51% by First Nations. Sometimes the first loggers do "variable retention logging," leaving a few trees standing in the centre of the clearcut, and often those few trees fall over because they're so exposed. That's called "blow down," and salvage permits are issued allowing loggers in to collect whatever falls over as a result of the clearcut. Weyerhauser has been known to take additional cedar from the Walbran when they went in to collect the salvage. They label trees as "danger trees," claiming that they might be hurt by them while they're scavenging, and take a few more to protect themselves.


In the old days, prior to the Liberal New Era, people were employed to catalog the forests so there was some idea of where the black bears, wolves, and marbelled murrelet lived. Nowadays it's not so clear who's living where, since hundreds of Ministry of Forests employees have lost their jobs. Theoretically there's an 800 metre buffer zone around marbelled murrelet nests, but in one instance Interfor gained approval to cut in an area prior to knowing about a nest. They found the nest while cutting, and logged the region anyways. The story is that the Ministry of Forests didn't know the nest was there.


When Gordon Campbell flew over the province he allegedly stated "I don't think you can anticipate the thoroughness of the destruction." I don't know if he was talking about the damage left by recent fires, or the clearcuts. It's interesting that tremendous energy and resources are invested to extinguish the forest fires as quickly as possible while destructive logging practices continue. Environmentalists are repeatedly told to be patient because change takes time. It's ten years later, and they're logging in a UNESCO biosphere reserve. What are we waiting for?!
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corporate privatization doesn't guarantee personal privacy


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"What's the use of a fine house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"


Henry David Thoreau


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Commercial free community radio - CFUV 101.9 FM, 104.3 Cable, http://www.cfuv.uvic.ca.


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