Heather Conn Blogs

In the wide, stick nest across the street from us, two “baby” bald eagles (they’re now almost the size of their parents) are getting ready to fly. Only one appears at a time, a high brown hulk, sitting on the edge of the nest, repeatedly opening and closing its wings, as if testing out the equipment. It will hop from one side of the nest to the other, flap its wings some more, then stop.

These short-distance hops and the wing fluttering have gone on for weeks. Sometimes, one will bend down from the side of the nest, look below, then sit up again. A few moments later, it will peer over the side of the nest again. To me, it’s thinking: Gee, that’s a long way down. The nest is about 100 feet up in a thin Douglas fir.

Yesterday, one of the babies sat perched on a branch to the right of the nest. This was progress – for the first time, it had ventured beyond the nest itself. But, ever the impatient one, I’ve been wondering: What are they waiting for? Are they trying to get the courage to jump off? Why don’t they just go for it?

Too ready to judge them for cowardice, I remind myself of my own fears about jumping off into new creative work or a different career path. It feels risky to leap when you don’t know what’s waiting for you. It takes time to build resolve. The eagles remind me of the courage required to let go and surrender to flight in all of its forms.

As for the height itself, I’ve had my own surprises. Normally, I love being in high places; I’ve climbed to 20,000 feet and feel exhilarated when I’m on a mountain or looking down at some astounding panoramic view. Yet, last year, when I tried the zip line set up in downtown Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, I felt petrified just walking up the few flights of stairs to the launch site, then stepping down three small steps to take off. It was only about three stories up, for heaven’s sake. I couldn’t believe that my legs were wobbling. I was teamed up with a construction worker, who’s used to spending weeks at least 30 floors up on high-storey buildings, and he had the same reaction. This surprised us both.

Years ago, while up in a hot-air balloon in Langley, BC, I was too afraid to let go of the vertical supports to take photos. We were only about 1,500 feet off the ground. This mystified me. I told myself it was because we were moving around in the air, not resting on something solid.

Next month, the CN Tower in Toronto will open its Edge Walk, letting harnessed people walk on, and hang out from, a platform that has no guardrail and is 1,168 feet up. I doubt that humans will ever stop pushing for new high-level thrills. Yet, fear is always there, waiting.

I’m feeling more compassion for these young eagles now and their probable fear. Let them take more time before they fly. Maybe they’re just exercising what I need more of: patience.

Okay, so I learned a lot more than what dematerialization is — and it’s not when someone on Star Trek vaporizes, then reappears in regular form. It is the process of directing more activities “to achieve an improved quality of life that is not based on increased consumption of materials, will allow continued economic growth, and help redress the imbalance in resource consumption between industrialized and industrially less developed countries” (Metro Vancouver definition).

When I first heard about the 2011 Sustainability Congress hosted by Metro Vancouver, BC, I was skeptical. The five featured male panelists were all what I’d call power brokers in mainstream business; I hardly expected them to come up with grassroots solutions that weren’t blinkered by privilege and prosperity. They were David Berge, Vancity’s senior vp of community investment; Tun Chan, director of The Vancouver Foundation; Stephen Owen, vp of external, legal and community relations at UBC; Robin Silvester, president and CEO of Port Metro Vancouver; and Bing Thom of Bing Thom Architects.

Yet, as one of 600 registrants who attended this free event, held June 25 in downtown Vancouver, I came away feeling contentedly surprised. Each speaker revealed far more insights and sensitivity to the needs of the Metro Vancouver region than I had expected. With a focus on three pillars — environment, economy, and society — the first part of the event highlighted these issues:

• the value of First Nations culture and our need for connectedness and a revitalized sense of community;
• competing pressures on land; the impact of population; the limitations of the landscape (mountains, waterways, and a delta) that define the area
• our region’s vulnerability in the event of a widespread catastrophe such as a pandemic
• a desire to return to small, community-responsive businesses on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and elsewhere
• a need for more cross-cultural sharing of all ages in media, neighbourhoods, and religious practices, beyond token events like an annual Multiculturalism Day. One solution: Build up regional town centres and make them cultural hubs.
• Over the next five years, women will be the biggest growth economy, double the combined growth of China and India (!)
• Sustainability takes strategic thinking; leadership; collaboration and dialogue; a change in thinking at the individual level; and participation. Tung said: “Knowledge is nothing unless you put it into action.” (Rather than sustainability, Owen preferred the terms “resilience” and “mitigation.”)

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“Sustainability was far more than just a buzz word to these executives”

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The panel of “community leaders,” moderated by Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer at the Fairmont Waterfront Hotel, began the Saturday event, which ran from 9 to 2:30 p.m. As a whole, the tone of their talk was warm and spirited, yet pointed, with an obvious “Let’s get to it” refrain. These weren’t guys who just ramble along, spouting rhetoric. They’re results-oriented, solutions-based thinkers who function in a context of success (literally, in Chan’s case — he’s former CEO of S.U.C.C.E.S.S.). It was clear that sustainability was far more than just a buzz word to these executives; they were familiar with top thinkers and contemporary authors in the field.

I enjoyed Thom’s comments the best. He was the most outspoken, considering it lunacy to have built Richmond on land so vulnerable to outside forces, from earthquakes to sea-level rise. He noted that it will cost billions to replace the dykes in Richmond as a result, and he called the decision to run the Canada Line to Richmond “insane.” Instead, “We needed it to Coquitlam.” He stressed the need for a clear head when making such large, regional-use decisions: “We need to think strategically.”

As someone immersed in the arts who makes creativity my lifeblood, I loved these remarks by Thom: “Don’t underestimate the power of culture and the arts. The human heart is only twelve inches away [from our head] but it’s the hardest to reach.”

Johnny Carline, Metro Vancouver’s commissioner and chief administrative officer, said that he heard less on energy from the speakers than he had expected, and I agree. I heard very little mention of transportation issues and alternative energy, other than Owen who mentioned that UBC is looking at bio-energy for its heating system. (I was surprised to hear Owen citing Guy Dauncey, a popular author on climate change solutions, and president of the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association. That pleased me.) Within the “society” pillar, I heard nothing about the homeless and creating affordable housing. Similarly, Metro Vancouver’s initiative to use incineration for waste disposal makes a mockery of clean-air concerns and worries about greenhouse gas emissions. 

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We were meant to answer: Where do we need to focus time and resources?

Who should lead the charge?

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Following the panel event, attendees broke into groups in separate rooms, to discuss responses and possible solutions, and ultimately, to vote on five priority areas defined by Metro Vancouver: food; climate change; energy; security; and dematerialization. (Before the Congress, we had received by email the worksheet Future of the Region: Building a Shared Roadmap.) For each of the five topics, we were meant to answer: Where do we need to focus time and resources? Who should lead the charge?

At my table, our group of nine was a great mix of thinkers and experience, ranging from a PhD student at UBC focusing on food security issues, and a woman from Society Promoting Environmental Conservation to a businessman who does propane conversions on vehicles. A Metro Vancouver employee served as our informal moderator and kept us on task. We shared respectful, open-minded, and passionate talk, discussing whether a certain area would be best handled by Metro Vancouver, local groups, or at the national and international level.

(I found it intriguing that some of the opinions voiced around security issues in post-Canucks-riot Vancouver echoed the same ones I heard that week at a community meeting in rural Roberts Creek on the Sunshine Coast: We don’t need a bigger police presence. People at the community level need to be more watchful of each other.)

After a working lunch and our separate discussions, we reconvened upstairs as a plenary, where we each received a small, portable voting machine to vote electronically. The results were immediately tabulated and displayed on large screens before us, dividing us into our professional groups, ranging from business and government to “other” like me. The majority thought that Metro Vancouver was the best level to address all of the areas, except for security. (Click here to see the results breakdown.)

I applaud Metro Vancouver for seeking public feedback on these important issues and hosting such a well organized, multi-media event. We didn’t revolutionize change in the region or the world in a day, but we did create strong footing and inspiration for future action.

To make sustainability a reality, we need to create connections across, and beyond, many otherwise political, social, and cultural barriers. When it comes to saving our future and our planet, we need a broad vision that requires building new relationships with an open mind. This Congress helped to forge that path.

The Congress was live streamed and a video of the proceedings is available on the Metro Vancouver website. The event will be broadcast on Shaw TV on July 10 at 9pm, repeating at July 16 at 4pm, July 17at 3pm and  July 23 at 9am

(For anyone who thinks that technology hasn’t taken over communication, consider this: When Congress moderator Johnny Carline asked who, in the gathering of hundreds, did not own a cell phone, only about 10 people put up their hand.)

             My husband likes to watch – bald eagles, that is. Every day, he has a telescope trained on the white-capped couple who live in the penthouse — a large nest of uneven sticks — in a Douglas fir across the street in Roberts Creek. Before moving to Canada’s west coast from the eastern U.S., he had never even seen a bald eagle. He’s enthralled by every screech and movement they make and always tries to get me to come to the telescope to watch them.

            Sometimes I do, but most of the time, I’m thinking: I’ve seen bald eagles for over thirty years. I’ve seen a pair join talons in the sky. I’ve seen one dive for a salmon and fly off. I’ve seen dozens of bald eagles of all ages in Brackendale, BC. While sleeping near the sea, I’ve been shaken awake by one when it landed on the tree that supported my hammock. I love hearing them cry and squeak and watching them soar while I’m working at my desk, but mostly, I’ve been a bit jaded when it comes to bald eagles.

            Until last week. My husband urged me, more emphatically than usual, to look through the scope. I did, and this time, saw a small fuzzy head rise slightly above the top of the nest. A baby! I felt like an auntie. My husband christened the youngster Chester. Today, my hubby made another discovery – Chester has a sibling. Hester. We’re thrilled. Who needs a 24-hour eaglecam? We’ve got our own vicarious family in the ‘hood.

As far as inspirational speakers go, I’d put my friend Annie Leonard among the top. I recently heard her give a talk to several hundred folks on Salt Spring Island, BC in Canada’s Pacific Northwest. After listening to her impressive knowledge of depressing facts regarding pollution levels and how we’re destroying our planet — “We’re in a system in crisis” — you’d think that I’d come away feeling hopeless.

Not at all. Instead, her passion, smarts and insightful perspectives inspired me to take immediate action on an issue I had previously dismissed. Her talk expanded my view of how we can make meaningful and lasting change on a broader scale. I felt invigorated by her enthusiasm.

We’ve all heard the quick ways to help our planet: Ride a bike. Unplug appliances. Buy organic produce. Start a vegetable garden. Yet, when it comes to truly transforming the planet and society, a focus on small, individual actions is ultimately a placebo and mere distraction, says Annie Leonard of The Story of Stuff fame.

“We’re so used to identifying with our consumer role: Shop differently,” she told a crowd of young and old at Salt Spring Island’s Centre for Child Honouring. “We have to start to re-engage as a citizen and engage in our civil society. Our citizen muscle has atrophied.”

She reinforced that individual lifestyle changes are not enough. As a provocative systems thinker, Annie believes that we need deeper, systemic change and to ask tougher questions beyond: Where should I shop? (She promotes the approach of “NOPE” (Not on Planet Earth) rather than the all-too-common NIMBY (Not in my backyard).) She asked a fundamental question: “Why is economy based on growth?” Who says that we need growth? What happened to “Small is beautiful”?

In Annie’s view, we need to rethink our role on the planet to the core, beyond commonly accepted approaches espoused even by many environmentalists. For instance, think in terms of “Waste less” not “Recycle more.”

She says: We need to change the rules of our production methods, to do a life cycle analysis of products. Resist upgrades of electronics. Make them safe. Make them last.

Annie identified our three “simple” problems:

• We’re trashing the planet
• We’re trashing each other
• We’re not having fun.

Besides that, we’re carrying toxic body-burden levels, she says. Annie has had her own body analyzed for harmful chemicals and had 80+ identified. Today’s babies are born pre-polluted with high levels of chemicals found in their umbilical cord, she noted. At the same time, one billion people are chronically hungry.

Amidst North America’s rush for materialist goodies, Annie pointed out four things, according to researchers, that determine happiness:

• the quality of our social relationships
• having leisure time
• a sense of purpose and  meaning in our life
• coming together with others with shared goals.

Facing an audience that included Green Party leader Elizabeth May in the front row, Annie outlined a few of her solutions for creating a healthier planet of happier people:

• Build a clean, healthy, green economy.
• Apply technology to help the planet, whether it’s using zero-waste designers or  biomimicry, whereby scientists study and emulate the processes and systems of nature to solve human problems. For example, how does a peacock make black? (See Biomimicry Institute for more details.)
• Honour and embrace children as a culture. One way is to have nation-wide, annual testing of breast milk, to monitor what chemicals our vulnerable infants are ingesting. Elizabeth May stood up and told the group: “Nobody can breastfeed without fear on this planet.” Annie expressed her own dismay and worry while breastfeeding: industry has contaminated our most elemental human relationship. (Find out more at Making Our Milk Safe.)

Another way to honour children is to spend more time with them. As  a  single mom who’s on the  road a lot, Annie makes quality time with her daughter Dewi a top priority. When she can, she brings Dewi with her as a combined work trip/holiday. ”Children should be first and foremost in our decision-making,” she said.

Our education system offers a great forum for honouring children and offering them ways to serve the planet and society. Annie has worked with teachers to develop curriculum and actions guides for youth around her concepts in The Story of Stuff. (She shared how neocon commentator Glenn Beck raged against her for a week on his previous talk show, telling schools that they should punish any teacher who showed The Story of Stuff in class.)

• Adopt the same regulatory approach as the European Union. For example, the EU has banned 11,000 chemicals; the United States has banned only 11.
• “Get corporations out of our democracy.” As event host, Raffi (Annie’s friend, a well-known children’s entertainer and founder of the Centre for Child Honouring) asked: “What choices are you being given by corporations?”

Overall, Annie reinforced that we need to make doing the right thing our default action. In her simplest terms: “hope, love, truth — not fear.” She said: “We need to rebuild community and communication. There is a giant dim sum table of possibilities.” Let’s dig in.

Since my post this week on the election of Green Party president Elizabeth May, a leftie friend has sent me more info about her, citing a 2008 article in Canadian Jewish News. Initially, I found some  of it disturbing, but it did not all pan out.

I have always considered Canada’s Green Party a progressive, leftist force; it certainly garners a lot of leftie support. Well, May’s political roots seem to come from the right. In the mid-1980s, she served as senior policy adviser to Tom McMillan, the Tory environment minister under then-prime minister Brian Mulroney. That’s distressing, yet I’d like to know: How  much have her views and policies changed since then?

In this year’s federal election,  she received an endorsement from Fraser Smith, who spent six years on the Reform party’s executive committee, according to a National Post article. (My friend said that Smith was May’s chief strategist, but I couldn’t find any online info to confirm that.) Smith called her “a good conservative” in her views about the economy.  I don’t have an issue with that. If she’s not going to spend us into humungous debt, that’s a good thing.

May has apparently said herself that her party is not of the left. And yet she’s got  Ken Wu, a former forestry activist with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, as her communications manager. He doesn’t sound like somebody who would support a Tory.  (I dislike such limiting terms as “right” and “left” yet they make convenient labels. Unfortunately,  they usually lend themselves too easily to black-and-white thinking. Humans and their activity are a lot more complex than that.)

Back in 2008, May said that she would raise the GST back to six per cent and use this as a source of revenue for “community-level” needs such as public transit, sewer and water facilities, recreation areas and bike paths. That sounds good to me.

She’d also reduce corporate tax rates, supposedly tied to the incentive of reducing greenhouse gases. That sounds more dubious and more conservative. Yet she also said that she wanted to direct more money to low-income Canadians. And she claimed that the Green Party would scrap the Conservatives’ child-care tax benefit (a token $100 a month per child up to age six) in favour of fully accessible child-care spaces,  early learning educational experiences, and support for  families who want to raise a child at home. That all sounds great to me.

I’m not worried that May is a closet Tory in green clothing. I think that she’s got enough progressive thinkers and activists around her, and who voted for her, to keep her honest and to remind her that protecting the environment, indeed, is a prime mandate — not an impediment to jobs and corporate “progress.”
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Meanwhile, the thought of what prime minister Harper can do in Canada with a majority government is truly frightening. As someone said to me, the Canada that Tommy Douglas built might never be the same. Still, I’d rather put my energy into proactive responses and activism and hope rather than despair and alarmist rhetoric.

Yet, my friend points out that the first thing Harper plans to do is legislate away all funding to political parties. (Right now, they get a financial amount based on their number of popular votes.) As my friend wrote me in an email: “Since the Liberals are heavily in debt, this may be another nail in their coffin (which is Harper’s intent). Can you spell f-a-s-c-i-s-t? This guy is very, very dangerous.”

Go Greens Go! I am thrilled and delighted that Canadian Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has won her seat in British Columbia. This is the first election of a Green Party candidate in North America. At last. She even ousted the Conservative incumbent Gary Lunn.

May achieved this success in her Saanich-Gulf Islands riding even after a media consortium, which included the CBC, refused to allow her to participate in the nationally televised federal candidates’ debate. Her victory occurred in a province where some people think that even Stephen Harper’s views are too liberal (scary!).

For instance, a local eight-page rag where I live, The Sunshine Coast Times,  was promoting the “search for truth, justice and the real Canadian way” of the Western Block [sic] Party. The publisher includes this disclaimer in his paper: “If you are a tree hugging, dope smoking, granola eating, left wing commie pinko and are prone to vote liberal, the material herein will probably cause you some serious pain.”

Like I said: scary. Go, May, go. However, one measly seat in a huge nation like Canada does not give a party any significant clout. The Green Party here is still only a ghost of its political role and impact in Germany, its founding nation. In Australia, the Greens have five senators, one MP, and 24 elected reps in state and territory parliaments plus more than 100 local councillors, according to Wikipedia. Canada, we need a lot more elected green thinkers in the political arena.

Meanwhile, the NDP has become the official opposition in Canada, for the first time ever. Another tremendous victory. Yet people are saying  that NDP leader Jack Layton will have less power now than he did as part of the previous coalition. I think that’s an overstatement.

However, the new majority government of Stephen Harper’s Conservatives is indeed a sad day for Canadians and the environment. What are people thinking? Harper is a strong proponent of Alberta’s Tar Sands, and like his former U.S. political buddy, George W. Bush, refuses to acknowledge the threat of global warming and the related impact of human activity. I won’t regurgitate  Harper’s long, poor record on disregarding ecological concerns — it would read too much like a eulogy for the earth.

You can get a good summary of Harper’s standing on the environment and other issues by watching this tongue-in-cheek video by a group of edgy women on Saltspring Island, part of May’s riding. Sadly, Canadians didn’t hear their message: Stephen, ya gotta go.

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UPDATE: A friend who read this post tells me that he’s skeptical of Elizabeth May, since learning her stance on abortion. Leftie activist Judy Rebick ended her support for the Green Party after she says that May called abortion “frivolous.” May is quoted on Life Site News as saying: “I don’t think a woman has a frivolous right to choose. What I don’t want is a desperate woman to die in an illegal abortion.”

What does May mean by “frivolous”? I don’t know. May does support her party’s position of keeping abortions legal. You can read the original story, posted in 2006, on the link above and make your own decision.

Two days after Earth Day, birds are chasing each other in my trees while a male robin puffs out his chest, looking for a mate. He makes me think of a strutting general, laden with medals. (I’m told that they do this because they’re cold, but I prefer to think it’s a form of flirtation.) For weeks, the male red-headed sapsucker has been tapping on our metal downspout, trying to attract a female. (Poor guy — I guess persistence works.) I heard the buzzing whir of a hummingbird yesterday, my first of the season. Time to put up the feeder.

Spring is my favorite time of year. I love the smell of hyacinths in our garden, the yellow splash of daffodils, and the blossom colours on streets here and in Vancouver: bursting branches of apple, cherry, and magnolia petals. It’s a glorious time of new buds, fresh dark soil, and clearing out dried old leaves and underbrush.

David Suzuki says that every day is Earth Day, and I agree. Having special days of ritual are important to celebrate Mother Earth and draw attention to her plight, but circumstances don’t change the next day. Global warming still remains, as does the need for all of us to conserve energy and tread more lightly on the planet.

Let’s keep spring — and all seasons — a time of magic. Think of the Earth when you’re making choices about transportation and travel, buying products from dish soap to a car, and who to vote for. Your decisions now can make a difference.

A threatened yellow cedar on Dakota Ridge

I still remember, decades ago, standing amidst the vast array of stumps of old-growth trees in the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island, B.C., feeling sickened by the gutted, clearcut landscape. Right next to it stood a thriving forest of cedars and firs. I stared at both of these side-by-side scenes, which represented the opposite extremes of devastation and vibrant life, and wondered: How could anyone witness this loss of ancient life, so close to an abundant forest,  and not think that something was out of kilter?

A friend of mine recently went up to the forest on Mount Elphinstone near Dakota Ridge recreation area on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast, where ancient yellow cedars are slated for logging, and shared these comments:

“I was astounded with what I discovered. Just 300-400 metres from the access road (quite nearby to the D-Ridge parking lot & warming hut) is a forest unlike any I’ve seen anywhere — and I’ve explored plenty of forests. It’s a high-elevation Old-Growth remnant (i.e. an island) about 45 hectares in size, chock-a-block with veteran yellow cedar and hemlock trees, many of which are easily 400-1000 years of age. I’ve never seen such a dense old growth forest.

“But that’s only part of it — by rough estimate, at least a couple dozen of the veteran Yellow Cedar trees still living here are ‘culturally-modified’ – that is, they bear signs of having had bark removed (“modified”) several hundred years ago by ancestors of the Sechelt Indian Band. It is like a living museum.

“Clearly this site is incredibly precious — for its cultural, biological, and educational values as well as a carbon sink (old growth coastal forests store huge amounts of carbon).

“And … this small, remnant forest is all ringed with orange flagging tape as a proposed ‘elimination’ logging site for BC Timber Sales, which is the logging company owned and operated by the provincial government. Log it and in a few short weeks, it’s gone forever. At rock-bottom prices for lumber and pulp. Save it and we will have an educational site more valuable than Stanley Park or Cathedral Grove (which lack the culturally modified trees).”

I recently wrote to various B.C. government ministers, requesting that this rare parcel of forest (it’s 44 hectares or 110 acres, known as Block A84612) be spared from logging. I received a letter, dated January 12, from Tom Jensen, Assistant Deputy Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands. He explained the various regulations that pertained to this cutblock, stating that this “landscape unit . . .is considered available to timber development opportunities.” He said that this cutblock does not affect class 1, 2 or 3 marbled murrelet (species at risk) nesting habitat and that “significant old growth ecosystems on the Sunshine Coast are protected in parkland.” By that reasoning, anything that is not parkland is fair game for logging, right?

The minister added that any cutblock believed to contain Culturally Modified Trees (CMTs) that predate 1846 or are thought to predate 1846 requires a permit for logging, as per the Heritage Conservation Act. B.C. Timber Sales has commissioned a “detailed archaeological assessment” that will examine the scarred trees in this cutblock for their potential to be CMTs. Therefore, the auctioning of the timber sale for these hectares has been deferred until B.C. Timber Sales receives the recommendations of the archaeological report.

Since then, 24 CMTs have been identified and tagged in this cutblock, including “taper peels” (long strips of cedar bark removed), notched planks, and test-holes.

Meanwhile, the Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) Group states that an estimated, less-than-two-per-cent of original, old-growth forests remains after a century of logging in the Mt. Elphinstone Forest Service map area.

“Old-growth forests provide ongoing environmental, recreational, and cultural services that need to be recognized as key economic contributors,” says ELF’s Ross Muirhead. ”Short-term logging revenues pale in comparison, especially in light of the fact that BC Timber Sales has been losing money for several years. ”

Muirhead notes that new ways of assigning values to intact forests (I’m not sure what he means by that) show that forests actually generate up to $7,000 per hectare in services. That means that a 44-hectare forest provides $294,000 in yearly services to our community.

” We are not prepared to sit back and see our remaining old-growth forests that support bio-diversity be plundered,” says Muirhead.

If you would like to take action to preserve old-growth forest on Mount Elphinstone, please contact the Ministry of Forests, Mines and Lands and B.C. Timber Sales, quoting Block A84612.  Ask, or demand, that they place the cutblock and all remaining old-growth on Mt. Elphinstone under a moratorium until permanent protection is granted. Call and/or write to:

• W. Blake Fougère, Resource Stewardship Officer, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, Sunshine Coast District, 7077 Duncan Street Powell River, B.C. V8A 1W1, Phone 604-485-0728 Fax 604-485-0799;Blake.Fougere@gov.bc.ca

• Dana Hayden, Deputy Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands, Victoria Ph (250) 356-5012, email: forests.deputyministersoffice@gov.bc.ca
• Copy to: Mike Falkiner, Executive Director, Field Operations, BCTS Tel: 250-387-8309, email: Forests.ExecutiveDivisionOffice@gov.bc.ca
• and cc to: Norm Kemp, Planning Forester, BCTS Campbell River Ph. (250) 286-9359, email: Norm.Kempe@gems7.gov.bc.ca

For more information contact: Ross Muirhead 604-740-5654, or Hans Penner 604-886-5730. See them on Facebook by searching for Elphinstone Logging Focus

We might not live in Kenya, but we have something in Roberts Creek, BC unique to the world: 1,000-year-old yellow cedars in ancient coastal rainforest that has never been logged. Like Wangari Maathai, founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, we face a challenge to stop logging of these untouched forests on local Crown land.

For more than 30 years, Maathai endured army-led beatings, police harassment, public humiliation, and condemnation as an enemy of her Kenyan government, all because she led a grassroots movement to plant trees in her native land. Founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement and 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Maathai is inspirational proof of the impact that one courageous and determined woman can have.

Few people would imagine a link between this East African activist, who has saved Kenya’s dwindling forests and launched the planting there of more than three million trees a year, with a logging issue in upper Roberts Creek, BC. But on Dec. 3, about three dozen locals learned of the disturbing parallels between Maathai’s environmental struggle and our own here on the Sunshine Coast.

We watched the documentary Taking Root — the Vision of Wangari Maathai, thanks to the Green Team at Gibsons United Church. This excellent, award-winning film by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater highlights how Maathai’s efforts to teach Kenyan village women to plant trees grew into a nation-wide force to save the environment, defend democracy, and protect human rights.

In the film, Maathai recalls growing up amidst lush forest and mountains (sound familiar?), where a beloved “spirit tree” nearby, centuries old, is logged. Both the forest and the stream, where Maathai played as a kid, disappear. Decades later, when Kenya’s corrupt president Daniel Arap Moi decides to build a glossy skyscraper and four-storey statue of himself in Nairobi’s only park, Maathai and dozens of women, including many grandmothers, launch a hunger strike and sit-in at the park to prevent destruction of the area’s forest. Democracy activists join them, and soon the military move in with their batons, beating defenceless women.

We see Moi’s public shaming of Maathai and his legacy of brutal rule in a country where the average income is a dollar a day. We discover how the profits from sales of timber, logged on Kenya’s Crown land, go to his political cronies. Maathai and other women confront the loggers to prevent the cutting of forests, and again, Moi calls in soldiers to beat and disperse the group. Eventually, after 24 years in power in a country where he outlawed opposition, Moi leaves the presidency in 2004. In Maathai’s words: “It is the people who  must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated.”

By then, some of the same soldiers who had once challenged and beaten Maathai and her supporters are now planting trees on military property. As one soldier says, he sees these seedlings as brothers: the trees protect the environment, while the soldiers protect the people. Maathai, the first woman in East Africa to receive a PhD, becomes Kenya’s deputy minister of the environment. (Maathai’s success and Green Belt movement are cited as sources of tremendous hope in Hope’s Edge, written by Frances Moore Lappe and her daughter Anna. Click here to read my review of the book, published in Alive magazine.)

After the film screening, local activist Hans Penner explained how a British colonial system in both Kenya and our own province adopted the same practices and policies: exploit forests as much as possible for profit, ignore traditional, indigenous uses of the land, and don’t acknowledge the negative impact of logging on groundwater and watersheds. 

BC Timber Sales will soon be advertising to sell off chunks of our rare old-growth trees — 1,000-year-old yellow cedars — on Crown land in upper Roberts Creek to private bidders. They have slated three cutblocks on 44 hectares (109 acres) on Mount Elphinstone; in one of these areas, at least 30 families get their water. This never-logged area stands at about 900 metres (3,000 feet) altitude. Two of the cutblocks are within only about a kilometre of the road access to Dakota Ridge ski area.

“A thousand-year-old tree is a real treasure,” said Penner. “The forest that’s there is an irreplaceable heritage. There’s nothing like it on the planet. In this upper-elevation forest, there’s never been a forest there, it’s never been logged. The forest has been living since the last ice age.” He noted that most people have never even seen a forest like this one, which has no stumps.

Sometimes, forestry companies consider ancient trees a hazard and cut them down without even using the wood, said Penner. ”They’re mowing the forest right down to the ground,” he told us.

When he and local Ross Muirhead recently snowshoed through two of the proposed cutblocks, they flagged 30 cedar trees, 300 to 400 years old, deemed “culturally modified” because local First Nations people have used their bark as part of their customs and heritage.

“We’re the closest people in the world to this,” said Penner. “We have a special responsibility. “We’re like witnesses to a crime, where we’re standing there.”

Who will take action and who will remain a silent bystander? Penner recommends writing to the following people in government: B.C.’s forestry deputy minister Dana Hayden forests.deputyministersoffice@gov.bc.ca, who has the authority to stop the timber sale ads, B.C. Minister of Forests Pat Bell (pat.bell.mla@leg.bc.ca), and Don Hudson at BC Timber Sales (don.hudson@gov.bc.ca).

You can also contact the deputy minister to the premier, Allan Sekel.  His phone number is 250-356-2209. The government website does not include his email address — how’s that for open government? — but his address is P.O. Box 9041, Stn. Prov. Gov’t, Victoria, BC V8W 9E1.

If you’re on Facebook, you can join the group Elphinstone Logging Focus and/or contact our MLA Nicholas Simons on Facebook. Nicholas is also available at 250-387-3655 or Nicholas.Simons.MLA@leg.bc.ca. For more information about this issue, you can call Ross Muirhead at 604-740-5654 or Hans Penner at 604-885-5730.

 Polar bears have gained an edge in U.S. Arctic waters — for now. A federal U.S. court has stopped oil and gas companies from going ahead with drilling  operations in millions of acres across Alaska’s Chukchi Sea. known as one of the country’s “polar bear seas.”

This victory comes after George W. Bush sold off drilling rights cheap in the fnal days of his administration.  This move prompted a federal lawsuit from Alaska First Nations residents and environmental groups such as Earthjustice and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The suit charged that the U.S. government had failed to study the long-term impact of oil development and had broken the nation’s environmental law.

A federal judge agreed, ordering the Obama administration, which had adopted the Bush administration’s drilling policy, to start again and obtain missing information about environmental risks.

“We can’t afford a repeat of the Gulf oil spill disaster in the Arctic,” said Chuck Clusen, director of NRDC’s Alaska projects.

Unfortunately, this court ruling does not cover the Beaufort Sea, where Shell and BP still operate. Shell says that it will apply for new permits to drill in this region next year after Obama last summer put Shell’s plans on hold to drill off the coast of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. BP also is preparing to drill in the Beaufort, using the biggest drill rig in the world. Environmental activists are demanding that the Obama administration reject BP’s appication to drill, and they will go to court on this, if necessary, to stop the drilling.

Meanwhile, the Canadian federal government is studying the “economic benefit” of polar bears. Gee, I guess just existing as magnificent wild creatures, with lives threatened by global warming,  isn’t enough these days.

The Globe and Mail had a funny editorial cartoon on Oct. 1 about this. It depicts a government tax man with a briefcase standing in an inflatable raft, pointing an income tax form at a polar bear on an ice floe; he’s notifying the perplexed creature of its tax reporting obligations and deadline.

(Most of this information came from the NRDC newsletter Nature’s Voice.)