WaldAktion BC

 

The

Ongoing Destruction

of British Columbia's

Ancient Forests

is an

International Issue

 

 

Ingmar Lee's European Tour

19 November - 12 December 2003

 

Lecture Programme

 

 

 

Left: An 1885 engraving of a primaeval rainforest with gigantic Douglas firs and mammoth red cedar trees, Fraser River Valley, Vancouver, British Columbia. Today exterminated.

Lecture Programme

"In Wildness is the Preservation of the World"
Henry David Thoreau, 1851

On Clearcutting Canada's Primaeval Forests
Opening by Green Party Leader Stefan Wenzel
Date and time: 19 November, 19:00
Location: Göttingen (Germany)
Hosts: Karen Wonders, Institute for the
History of Science, University of Göttingen
Website: http://www.gwdg.de/~uhwg/
Philipp Kühler, Stephan Röhl
Koordinationszentrum Natur und Umwelt
Website: http://www.naturschatz.org

Saving the Wild Forests of British Columbia
Date and time: 20 November, 11:30
Location: Göttingen (Germany)
Host: Dietmar Freimann, Felix-Klein-Gymnasium
Website: http://www.fkg.goe.ni.schule.de

Professional Foresters and International Logging Corporations in British Columbia
Date and time: 20 November, 19:30
Location: Göttingen (Germany)
Hosts: Philipp Kühler, Stephan Röhl
Koordinations-zentrum Natur und Umwelt
Fachschaft Forst, University of Göttingen
Website: http://www.forst.uni-goettingen.de

Fieldtrip: Ecomuseum Rheinhardswald, an historic German forest with 600-year-old oak trees
Date and time: 22 November, 10:00
Location: Hofgeismar (Germany)
Host: Martin Becker
Website: http://www.eco-archiv.net

How Forestry Fails to Protect Nature
Date and time: 24 November, 14:00
Location: Stockholm (Sweden)
Host: Björn Hansson, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation
Website: http://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se

The Ruination of East Creek on Vancouver Island
Date and time: 25 November, 11:00
Location: Stockholm (Sweden)
Host: Hans Berglund, World Wide Fund for Nature Sweden
Website: http://www.wwf.se

Native Forests and Culturally Modified Trees
Date and time: 26 November, 10:00
Location: Alnarp (Sweden)
Hosts: Ken Olwig, Department of Landscape Planning; Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Website: http://www.lpal.slu.se

An Activist's View of Forestry in British Columbia
Date and times: 27 November, 10:00 & 14:20
Location: Hoersholm (Denmark)
Host: Mette Fog, Danish Landscape and Forestry Research Institute, Ministry of the Environment
Website: http://en.sl.life.ku.dk

"Urgewald" The Case of Betty Krawczyk, a
75 year old Forest Activist Imprisoned in BC

Date and time: 30 November, 10:00
Field trip: Elisenhain; a mediaeval monestry forest
Location: Greifswald (Germany)
Host: Carsten Brinckmeier
Website: http://www.womeninthewoods.org

How the German Environmental Movement
Can Help Protect British Columbia's Forests

Date and time: 1 December, 19:00
Location: Berlin (Germany)
Host: Alexander Gerschner, Robin Wood Berlin
Website: http://www.robinwood.de

Degradation: Canada's Temperate Rainforest
Ecosytem Threatened by the Forest Industry

Date and time: 2 December, 17:00
Location: Bremen (Germany)
Host: Annette Kolb, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Bremen
Website: http://www.vegetation.uni-bremen.de

What Can German Consumers Do
for British Columbia's Forests?

Dates: 3 & 4 December
Location: Münster, Sassenburg, Dissen (Germany)
Discussion: On endangered forests and rising consumption; on recycling and the pulp & paper industry. With "Initiative 2000 plus"
Host: Lydia Bartz, Urgewald
Website: http://www.urgewald.de

Weyerhaeuser's Clearcutting of Thousand Year Old Forests on Vancouver Island
Date and time: 5 December, 18:00
Field trip: Harz National Park
Location: Bad Harzburg (Germany)
Host: Susanne Fortunski, Haus der Natur
Website: http://www.nationalpark-harz.de

Not Sustainable: British Columbia's
Old Growth Forest Destruction Industry

Date and time: 8 December, 14:00
Location: Trier (Germany)
Host: Karsten Gutzler, Zjelko Brecec
Lokale Agenda Trier
Website: http://www.la21-trier.de

Over 80 Percent Exterminated: Why Save the
Last Primaeval Forests of Vancouver Island?

Date and time: 9 December, 19:45
Location: Hamburg (Germany)
Host: Rudolf Fenner, Robin Wood Hamburg
Website: http://www.robinwood.de

Canada's Temperate Rainforest:
a Unique and Endangered Ecosytem

Date and time: 11 December, 19:30
Location: Wiesbaden (Germany)
Host: Hans-Ulrich Hill, NABU-Wiesbaden
Website: http://www.nabu.de

Visit: Milieucentrum Amsterdam
Date and time: 12 December
Location: Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Website: http://www.amsterdams-milieu.nl

 

*** We hope that international attention on the clearcutting of ancient trees in BC may serve to stop the barbaric destruction of First Nations aboriginal heritage and Canada's wilderness legacy.

Programme organized by:
Dr. Karen Wonders, Research Fellow
Institute for the History of Science
Papendiek 16
Georg August Universität Göttingen
D – 37073 Göttingen, Germany


Description

European countries to premier Ingmar Lee's film: "Beyond the Cutting Edge, A Trip to the Primaeval Forests of East Creek."

The film takes viewers on a voyage to the most remote and wildest corner of Vancouver Island, where coastal First Nations communities prospered for millenia before British colonization.

In this awe-inspiring place lies the still pristine East Creek Watershed, one of Canada's most imminently threatened treasures of rainforest biodiversity.

Already over 80 percent of the wild forests and rivers of Vancouver Island are gone due to the relentless industrial onslaught by generations of Europeans and Euro Americans. Today Weyerhaeuser and other transnational corporations are completing the final clearcutting of BC's ancient rainforests.

Increasingly desperate pleas are being made by conservationists, and activists are turning to more vigorous forms of protest, some illegal, such as blockading logging roads.

As a lifelong professional BC forestry worker, Ingmar Lee has planted more than a million trees in all the diverse biotopes of the province. He speaks from a wide range of hands on experience and grass roots activism, bringing to Europe an insightful Canadian perspective on the urgent international problem of old growth deforestation.

This is the first stage of a two-step campaign being organized by German and Canadian environmental groups to rally popular opposition to the new "Working Forest Initiative" of the BC government, better known as "The Corporate Forest."

In Germany BC is known as the "Brazil of the North" due to the success of industrial lobby in turning the spectacular wild lands and waters of the province into clearcut and polluted wastelands over run with toxic tree plantations and fish farms.

Many of the industry claimed sites are either on publicly owned land or on land never ceded by the original inhabitants, the First Nations peoples.

Endangered wilderness forests in BC include the Great Bear Rainforest, the Upper Walbran Valley, the South Chilcotin and many others.

Even the famous Clayoquot Sound Biosphere is again under threat from logging. Among the atrocities committed this year was the destruction of a unique 1,000 year old cedar forest, located not far from Victoria, the capital city of BC. Rather than preserve this ancient forest for the ecotourism industry, the giant trees were clearcut for fast and easy profit.

Vancouver was recently selected to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. Ironically, one of the front runners in the Olympic mascot competition is the close to extinction Vancouver Island marmot, a victim to industrial logging and massive habitat eradication..

In just over half a century, the aggressive and short-sighted exploitation of BC's natural resources has resulted in a massive loss of the old growth flora and fauna. Once gone, the primaeval forests, the wild heritage of human beings everywhere in the world can never be replaced or restored.

People want to live on an earth where there is a place for wild nature, for cathedral like forests of ancient trees, for wild salmon to spawn in free-flowing and untainted rivers, and for grizzly bears to roam freely and undisturbed in their wilderness habitat.

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