What do I need to know about the old-growth logging protests in BC?
Let's catch you up on the stand-off taking place near Fairy Creek, Vancouver Island.
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This week, we’re tackling this question: What do I need to know about the old-growth logging protests in BC?
TL;DR: Over 100 people have been arrested so far near Vancouver Island’s Fairy Creek as they protest the logging of old-growth trees in the area. Now that the RCMP is using exclusion zones and injunctions to block media from covering the protests and arrests, media outlets and press freedom groups have decided to take them to court.
Vancouver Island is a key battleground in the fight to save old-growth forests in British Columbia. Let’s zoom in on an area called Fairy Creek, the only intact old-growth area remaining on Vancouver Island’s southern end.
In April, forestry company Teal-Jones obtained a court injunction to allow the arrest and removal of protesters standing in the way of their logging route, many of whom had been there for months. On Tuesday a daily record of 55 people were arrested (making the total 112 so far this week) as they sat in trees, blocked bridges and stood in the middle of roads to stop logging routes.
Backgrounder: Old-growth or ancient forests have been proven crucial to preserving endangered species, carbon storage, and the general health of the ecosystem. According to the Ancient Forest Alliance, BC’s coastal old-growth trees are between 200 and 2,000 years old — but they are being logged every 30 to 80 years. (In case you need to cultivate a bit more awe for the province’s forests, this New York Times Magazine interactive on a UBC professor’s quest to learn the secret language of trees is stunning.)
During his re-election campaign last fall, Premier John Horgan said the BC NDP would protect the province’s old growth-forests. Activists are now calling the backtracking on this promise to be politically and economically motivated.
“The promise should have been a relief, but in the months since the election, that hope has faltered as logging continues as usual,” wrote longtime environmental activist Tzeporah Berman in a recent Globe and Mail op-ed, who was also recently arrested. She was also an organizer of the anti-old growth logging protest back in the 1990s, dubbed the “War in the Woods.”
In September, the Ministry of Forests released a report called A New Future for Old Forests, which was meant to guide an overhaul of forestry rules (more analysis on that here). But a report released in May by a group called the Wilderness Committee actually suggests that old-growth logging approvals in BC have risen by 43 per cent in the past year.
But it’s important to note that not all members of the Pacheedaht First Nation are on board with the protests.
Another thing: transparency around what’s happening in Fairy Creek has been abysmal.
The RCMP is once again enforcing “exclusion zones,” or marked areas that the media and the public are not allowed to enter. Exclusion zones are a tactic that the RCMP has used before, including as they dismantled camps on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory. Even when reporters are granted access, it has reportedly been under stringent conditions.
Canadian media has had enough. Several media outlets and press freedom groups have decided to take the RCMP to court over their right to full access to these demonstrations.
Meanwhile, the RCMP claims that there are “no restrictions on media.”
“The RCMP have been using broad exclusion zones to interfere with members of the media for at least eight years, across multiple provinces,” said Ethan Cox, an editor with Ricochet Media, in a statement from the Canadian Association of Journalists. “Legal precedent and the RCMP’s own oversight body say doing so is beyond the authority of the force, but it keeps happening.”
Have more questions about what’s happening in BC? DM us on any platform or shoot us a note at thesupplementnewsletter@gmail.com
Here’s someone to follow:
This week, check out Stacy Lee Kong, a Toronto-based editor, writer and cultural critic. Stacy’s newsletter, Friday Things, deconstructs the biggest entertainment stories and breaks down their social and political implications. You stay up to date with your gossip and learn a lot along the way.
Here’s a story to check out:
I swear I didn’t intend to recommend another crime story… but I can’t control that they’re all so good lately! This time it’s a longform piece from Ethan Lou in Toronto Life about a man named Sanjay Madan, who was given a job to distribute pandemic payments to Ontario families and instead found an ingenious way to take millions for himself.