BC

Did you know that your $3 eco-tax for tires sometimes pays for burning those tires? Did you think BC was taking a lead in Product Stewardship and Recycling? Wasn’t the whole idea of the 1991 tire fee to prevent tire fires? Confused? Welcome to environmental policy making in the New Era. It’s pretty much like environmental policy making in every other era. 

by Delores Broten 

by Maggie Paquet

There’s no question that the seeds of civilisation were sown with the beginning of agriculture. In fact, at dif- ferent times, agriculture has shaped the rise of civilisation in every region of the world. In the “fertile crescent” between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, it was rye. In Mesoamerica, it was squash and maize. In Egypt, it was the precursor of modern wheat. In China it was rice. Most of these were wild grasses that became domesticated, likely through a combi- nation of the effects of climate change and inventiveness by small groups of people trying to feed themselves.

Between 13,000 and 7,000 years ago there were a

With dull predictability, the federal Royal Society Expert Panel on the science of whether or not to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas development on BC’s west coast reported in February that there wasn’t enough knowledge to assess the risks, but that shouldn’t stop development. Here are some problems with that report.

by Stuart Hertzog © 2004

1) In reaching its conclusions, the Panel used the same illogic as Dr. David Strong used in the provincial Science Review, that while many knowledge gaps exist they can only be filled by lifting the moratoria, as only then will industry pay for

The AGM was held at Weyerhaeuser Centcom on their massive sprawling complex 25 miles south of Seattle. Weyerhaeuser Way winds through acres of 2ndgrowth forests of fir and cottonwood and leads right to their Corporate Headquarters building next to a large duck-pond with expansive landscaped, manicured golfcourse style gardens.

by Jim Cooperman

It has been slightly more than a year since my last Watershed Sentinel update on BC’s forestry issues. Not much has changed, other than the Gordon Campbell Liberal government has now enshrined in law forestry policies that virtually hand over the

by Mary Desmond

There is a certain path not far from where I live in Shawnigan Lake. It curves up the mountainside where the ferns spill over a small stream shadowed by stately cedar and fir. But as the trail ascends, an ominous brightening warns of an impending change. At the final bend, the sylvan reverie is ruptured abruptly as the light exposes a scene of sombre desolation. The little creek, now shorn of its protective foliage, trickles forlornly through the thorny wreckage of a clearcut.

Despite the presence of a nearby sign admonishing, “Caution: Water Intake Downstream,” no one would ever guess that nestled in the valley

Community discussions regarding local groundwater supplies can often be complicated by conflicting claims about the nature of groundwater and how human activities may or may not affect groundwater supplies. This is not surprising. None of us can see the underground groundwater system. What we know about groundwater comes by observation of wells and

In December Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) discontinued its environmental review of a proposed salmon farm in Bute Inlet, saying that the proponent, Heritage Aquaculture, has withdrawn its application. 

In 2001, the Bute Inlet Downie Range site was proposed as an alternate location for environmentally problematic salmon farms in

“Exploring” BC’s oil reserves would put the BC marine environment in jeopardy before one drop of oil is extracted from the ocean floor.

by Jay Ritchlin, David Suzuki Foundation

Coastal communities, conservationists, First Nations groups and other concerned British

Beetles are killing BC forests. It’s an environmental and industrial disaster. Ministry of Forests’ solution? Inject thousands of unmarked trees with arsenic. Then, ignore the consequences as loggers fall the trees and beehive burners spread the arsenic sky-high.

by Delores Broten

Appeals to common sense, the precautionary principle, the Environmental Appeal Board, public agitation and internal ministry reviews all failed Josette Wier. The Smithers resident, from her home in northern BC, has struggled since 2000 against the Ministry of Forest’s (MoF) desperate attempt to use arsenic against the Mountain Pine Beetle infestation of BC forests.