British Columbia:
Forest Ethics induced forest die off & species extinction
Your article about Minister of Forests and Range Pat Bell (NDN, Jan.
13) stated that the Valhalla Wilderness Society has criticized the BC
government’s plan to protect the mountain caribou. Indeed it has! Most
of the so-called habitat protection was to be placed largely outside
of the areas where the habitat is being destroyed by logging. But that
was fifteen months ago. Today very little of the protection promised
has materialized, an approved plan doesn’t even exist and the
government hasn’t even deigned to tell the public why.
Meanwhile, it
is cruelly slaughtering wolves under the pretext of saving mountain
caribou, when it knows very well that its own scientists have advised
that habitat protection is the key component of any plan that would
save the caribou.
The process started as a federal-provincial public
process under the Canadian Species at Risk Act. For the first two
years Valhalla directors attended all-day meetings of the Mountain
Caribou North Kootenay Recovery Implementation Group (NKRIG),
traveling for hours to do so. Valhalla attended many conferences and
meetings with government scientists working on the plan, made several
presentations to the Species at Risk Coordination Office (SARCO) which
was under Bell’s ministry, and traveled to Ottawa to make a
presentation to the federal committee on Species at Risk. Upon the
request of SARCO scientists, Valhalla turned over to the government
habitat maps worth tens of thousands of dollars that our scientific
consultants had created with a large proportion of volunteer labour.
The government scientists told us that there was no way they could
undertake a similar endeavor.
In 2006, Valhalla hosted a conference of
26 environmental groups and activists working on the Inland
Rainforest, and invited a representative from Mr. Bell’s ministry, Pat
Field, to make a presentation. The groups gave verbal input on a
number of issues. Mr. Field informed us that henceforth the
government would only talk to two groups, ForestEthics and Wildsight.
All the rest of us had to feed our input to them. The groups
protested this as an unprecedented infringement on equal rights, and
an attempt to manufacture consent from the environmental movement by
putting selected groups in a position of power with exclusive access
to government. Then in late 2007 Valhalla had to blow the whistle on
secret negotiations that Bell’s Ministry was holding with the logging
industry, the snowmobile clubs, heli-ski businesses, and ten
environmental groups called the Mountain Caribou Project (MCP).
ForestEthics and Wildsight were representing these groups, which all
had to sign confidentiality agreements to participate.
The so-called
“plan” emerged from these secret negotiations. While disaparaging
Valhalla for noncooperation, Bell gave unbridled praise to Dogwood
Initiative, ForestEthics and Wildsight, as three of the ten groups
that collaborated in the backroom deal. But there are many other
groups and many environmental activists in BC who do not believe there
is honour in collaborating with this particular kind of government
behaviour. Unfortunately, the Minister was not accurate about the
groups with which his Ministry “worked closely.” Dogwood Initiative
has denied in writing that it had anything to do with the mountain
caribou plan.
Sincerely, Anne Sherrod
Chair: Valhalla Wilderness Society, New Denver
