Editors Note: This is a very long article. I will post a portion of it here and then I am hopeful you will go into the link and read the remainder of the article! Meticulous records have been kept and are documented within the article itself.
It angers me that we have to fight so hard to save everything that is precious to us. Until the population rises up and helps with our fights to save our animals, our watersheds and our forests...the decimation will continue!

NOTES FROM THE VALLEY OF FIRE AND ICE

THE REST OF THE STORY

Upper Clearwater Valley, 1 January 2019

This webpage has two parts: first a summary overview of the issues at hand, and second a timeline chronicling the “rest” of the story – that is, from early April 2017 down to today, or thereabouts. (Skip ahead to beginning of timeline. Skip ahead to end of timeline.)

TO RECAP:

The purpose of our Death by 1000 Clearcuts website is threefold: first, to call upon the premier of British Columbia to establish a moratorium on industrial logging adjacent to southern Wells Gray Park until such time as its Mountain Caribou show definite signs of recovery and the Guiding Principles agreement is reinstated as a formal government objective; second, to prevail upon the federal Minister of Environment to act on an emergency protection order that has languished in her office since early April; and third, to call upon CANFOR to stand down from further logging within federally designated Critical Habitat for Caribou near Wells Gray Park.

BEARING WITNESS:

The story now unfolding in the Upper Clearwater Valley has many elements, not least including some of the big ticket social and environmental issues of our time: disregard for science, disinformation, post-truth politics, cynicism, nature deficit disorder, habitat destruction, deepening climate change, environmental destabilization, species extinction, economic destabilization, growing fiscal inequality, increasing unemployment.

For convenience, these issues can be organized under four headings:

1. Our prevailing Neoliberal Mindset: This is the view, first, that the Earth and its nonhuman inhabitants have value only insofar as they contribute to human well being; and second, that human well being requires constant economic and material growth. Taken together, these beliefs demand the ever-expanding conversion of natural resources into monetary wealth and, from this, the implacable creation of ‘sacrifice zones.’ Sacrifice zones are places where people find themselves obliged to give up their own long-term best interests in exchange for short-term employment based on finite resource extraction. Such employment ends when the resource in question becomes depleted and, so to speak, tomorrow is finally overtaken by today. What happens next is never pretty: Community Alert.

2. Broken-treaty Governance: To judge from events in the Upper Clearwater ValleyGuiding Principles, B.C.’s provincial government cannot be depended upon to uphold formal agreements with its citizens. Such behaviour harkens to a shameful time in Canadian history which most of us like to think is securely in the past – except it isn’t.

3. Climate Denialism: Forestry operates over timescales measured in decades or longer. As climate change deepens, past weather events can no longer be counted on to predict future weather events. Yet CANFOR steadfastly refuses to accept that the impacts of the cutblocks it clearcut logs today will play out against a backdrop of increasingly extreme weather. In mountainous regions, this places downstream communities at long-term risk of flood.

4. The Sixth Global Extinction: Planet Earth is now undergoing a human-induced extinctionary spasm, the like of which has been seen only five times in the four billion year history of life. Aligning well with this is the precipitous decline of the Mountain Caribou – arguably Canada’s most blatant intersection with global extinction. As such, the story now unfolding in Wells Gray Park raises two disturbing questions: (1) if Canada, one of the world’s wealthiest nations, is unwilling to secure a future for its most iconic endangered species, then what hope is there for better outcomes elsewhere; and (2) is this really who Canadians are, that is, in their heart of hearts?

SO WHO’S TO BLAME?

The multiple wrongs being perpetrated upon a small rural community and a nearby endangered species are of course systemic; they mirror our prevailing understanding of the world as resource. Yet at higher resolution they invite censure on the part of five institutions and governing bodies that to varying degrees are no longer working on behalf of the public good.

First, to CANFOR, for failing to live up to its social license. Consider the chasm that separates CANFOR’s public commitment to its social license from its actions on the ground. First, here’s what Don Kayne, CANFOR President and CEO said about his company on 9 July 2012: “We will not support actions that impact parks, riparian areas or areas that provide critical habitat for species at risk, or other important environmental values such as biodiversity and old growth.” And now, here’s how CANFOR actually behaves out in the real world: Canfor rushes to clearcut critical habitat for endangered Mountain Caribou.

Second, to the B.C. Liberals for short-sighted environmental deregulation that over 16 years punished the environment and hollowed out rural communities. Above all, the policies of Christy Clark (and before her Gordon Campbell) betrayed the efforts of earlier B.C. governments to give lasting sanctuary to B.C.’s plants and animals, not least the Southern Mountain Caribou: Decline of Mountain Caribou in Southern Wells Gray Park

Third, to the honourable Catherine McKenna, Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, for seeming indifference to the pending extinction of a Canadian icon: for shirking her responsibility under Canadian law to adjudicate in a timely fashion an emergency petition on behalf of a federally listed species at risk, here the endangered Southern Mountain Caribou: Emergency Alert.

Fourth, to British Columbia’s professional bodies, the Association of BC Forest Professionals and the College of Applied Biology, for failure over many years to censure professional foresters and biologists whose behaviour transgressed their codes of ethics. In effect these organizations have turned a blind eye to the kind of behaviour that now threatens the future of endangered species like Mountain Caribou. They have much to atone for: Unprofessional Reliance.

And fifth, most regrettably, to Canada’s mainstream journalists, for indifference toward an international tragedy. The Canadian media has been curiously reluctant to bring to public attention the demise of this country’s icon of mountain wilderness: the mountain caribou. As mentioned, these animals are arguably Canada’s most potent intersection with the sixth great extinctionary episode now sweeping the planet. If the media spotlight’s not intended for the likes of them, then who in the name of all that’s wild and alive is it meant for?

WELLS GRAY CHRONICLE: APRIL 2017 THROUGH AUGUST 2018

The period from early April through late August was a critical one vis-a-vis Wells Gray’s Mountain Caribou. Here are some highlights: (1) a formal petition is sent to the federal government asking for an emergency protection order against further logging in Critical Habitat for Caribou near Wells Gray Park; (2) both CANFOR and the B.C. Forest Service are made aware of this petition; (3) CANFOR responds by logging yet another large cutblock in federally designated Critical Habitat for Caribou; (4) after 16 years of environmental deregulation, the B.C. Liberals are voted out of office; (5) the federal government fails to respond in a timely fashion to an emergency petition on behalf of Mountain Caribou; and (6) formal complaints are prepared against two key professionals – a forester and a biologist – whose actions will likely accelerate the decline of Wells Gray’s endangered Mountain Caribou.

Now the details:
Go to the link to read the rest please.

http://1000clearcuts.ca/the-rest-of-the-story/