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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
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" On Clearcutting Canada's Primaeval Forests Saving the Wild Forests of British Columbia Professional Foresters and International Logging
Corporations in British Columbia Fieldtrip: Ecomuseum Rheinhardswald, an historic German forest with 600-year-old oak trees How Forestry Fails to Protect Nature The Ruination of East Creek on Vancouver Island Native Forests and Culturally Modified Trees An Activist's View of Forestry in British Columbia "Urgewald" The Case of Betty Krawczyk, a |
How the German Environmental Movement Degradation: Canada's Temperate Rainforest What Can German Consumers Do Weyerhaeuser's Clearcutting of Thousand Year Old Forests on Vancouver Island Not Sustainable: British Columbia's Over 80 Percent Exterminated: Why Save the
Canada's Temperate Rainforest: Visit: Milieucentrum Amsterdam
*** 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: |
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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. 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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