BC

Where once a thousand spotted owls ruled the night in southwest BC, now slightly more than a dozen hang on while logging rips their remaining old growth forest habitat to shreds. Our goal is to shame BC’s Minister in charge of endangered species, Pat Bell, into ordering a halt to the logging.

by Joe Foy

I write this Wild Times column whilst stationed in a Wilderness Committee research camp which is lo­cated

Wilderness Committee collaborates with the St at imc and other First Nations in the successful environmental movement to gain protection for forests, resulting in a doubling of BC’s protected areas system.

by Joe Foy

We’d been hiking all day to reach the crest of the ridge, and now that we were on top it didn’t seem real.

Will the wildlife-rich region of Fraser Valley, BC become just another paved-over, smog-infested, gridlocked hellhole for the benefit of the few rich and famous?

by Joe Foy

The hawk wheeled around the big cottonwood looking for a place to land – all the while a gang of smaller birds and crows tried to bully it out of the neighbourhood by making an awful racket and dive-bomb­ing its tail feathers.

But she gave them no notice and landed on one of the

Northwest Cascade Power Inc wants to divert all 8 of the Upper Pitt’s main tributary streams into large pipes, totaling over 30 kilometres in length, which would require the park’s boundary to be “adjusted.” Public opposition to the plan is fierce.

by Joe Foy

The thing about power is that you often find it in the

by Joe Foy

By the end of May, if everything goes to plan, the gov­ernment of BC will have enshrined the protection of 11 new provincial parks and 70 new conservancies, totaling almost a million hectares.

The new protected areas span landscapes that were the battlegrounds of the War in the Woods back in the late 1990s. Elaho Valley – Sims Valley – Great Bear Rainforest – Haida Gwaii. They are all represented in the new parks and conservancies. So too are more peaceful valleys in the Whistler area, the Okanagan and up the coast. Every valley, every mountain lake, every stream has a story of the people who laboured for its protection.

Can you envision a BC that doesn’t cut old growth forest any more, has endangered species legislation, bans toxic chemicals, puts transit before freeways, wants to see our power stay public and our rivers stay wild, and salmon farms go away? Tears over needless tragic loss mixed with the courage can make the change for a better future.

by Joe Foy

BC’s expanding network of highways and motorized wilderness access a major threat to bear travels routes, but a new threat bearing down on BC’s embattled grizzlies - private power projects.

by Joe Foy

If approved, the proposed Bute Inlet private hydropower project would be the largest to exist in Canada.

by Joe Foy

I looked at the posters on the wall in disbelief. “There has to be more than this,” I muttered to myself.

Thanks to constant pressure from salmon activists and NDP MP Pe­ter Julian, the federal government has recently announced that it will conduct a judicial enquiry into the disappearance of the Fraser River sockeye.

by Joe Foy

It was a September day in the Fraser Valley that seemed just about perfect, with a robin’s egg blue sky

Old growth Douglas Fir tree on Sumas Mountain in the Fraser Valley, slated to be logged. Local folks are working to preserve the grove.

by Joe Foy

It’s happened again. I guess I was so busy living in the moment, I didn’t even notice a new decade sneaking up on us.