Current Actions

• Protect Juan de Fuca Park

  Our Juan de Fuca provincial park is threatened by plans to build a sprawling resort development along its fringe. When the narrow Vancouver Island park was created in the mid-1990s, the buffer zone around it was part of a Tree Farm License and couldn’t be developed. Now some of those lands have been sold, and a developer wants to construct a massive resort – stretching along 16 kilometres of the renowned Juan de Fuca wilderness trail – that includes 257 vacation homes, a luxury lodge, spa, restaurant, two recreation centres and other buildings.
  

  The resort would threaten the park’s wilderness and wildlife values, and our Wild Coast, and contravene the Regional Growth Strategy for the Capital Regional District. Write a letter to Premier Christy Clark and ask her to take immediate steps­ – on the 100^th anniversary of the B.C. parks system – to expand Juan de Fuca park including the former Tree Farm Licence 25 lands now slated for development, from the ocean to Highway 14.

• Protect Comox Estuary: No Gas on the Dyke

  The proposed gas station on Dyke Road in Comox is an accident waiting to happen. The site is less than 60 metres from the feeding grounds of migrating salmon, and in the middle of a Canadian Important Bird Area, the second most important estuary for migrating birds in B.C. It is on a narrow, high-volume traffic road with a significant history of crashes. If built, the gas station would pose a danger to human life because of heavy traffic flows on a very narrow road.

  The Courtenay River Estuary has the second highest concentration of over-wintering waterfowl in BC, including the Trumpeter Swan, and has been designated a Canadian “Important Bird Area”—a site providing essential bird habitat that contains threatened species, endemic species and a highly exceptional concentration of birds. 

  Despite  widespread community opposition to this project, including opposition from the K'omoks First Nation, the project was granted a development permit by the Comox Valley Regional District and a highway access permit by the Ministry of Transportation. 

  We still have a window of opportunity before the building permit is granted. Please write to Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Blair Lekstrom and ask him to rescind the highway access permit on grounds of public safety.
  
  
  
  

• Bottle up the Bute?

  

  Numbered companies have applied for a series of over 34 licenses to extract water in four inlets on BC's central coast and bottle it for sale on global markets. The proposed projects target the majestic Bute Inlet and the adjoining Jervis, Knight and Toba inlets. 

  Sierra Club BC local groups on Quadra Island and in Powell River are seriously concerned about the impact on the watersheds, which are already suffering drier summers and reduced stream in-flows courtesy of global warming.
  
  Sierra Quadra and Sierra Malaspina, along with Friends of Bute Inlet and the Watershed Sentinel Magazine, are calling on BC’s Environment Minister, Terry Lake, to authorise a full environmental assessment of a connected set of applications for water and land rights on at least 34 streams.
  
  What is happening in the Bute highlights the vulnerability of every river and every watershed in B.C. What is happening today to the Bute, Toba, Knight and Jervis could well happen to the Similkameen River, the Okanagan Lake or the Sacred Headwaters tomorrow – because our century-old water laws do not protect water as the precious resource that it is. There is nothing in B.C.’s water laws to prevent the numbered companies who have applied for licences in Bute, Toba, Jervis and Knight inlets from  extracting the maximum amount of water from all 34 streams at once.
  
  The BC government is currently working on an overhaul of the Water Act. The government is apparently aiming to have the new Water Sustainability Act before the Legislature in 2012. This is  your chance to influence the content of one of BC’s most important environmental statutes. In a world threatened by water scarcity and climate disruption, protecting water flows for ecosystem health, agriculture and community drinking water is more important than ever.

  
  Please take action for the Bute watershed and for strong watershed protection in BC's water laws.

• Help Avert Logging in the Heart of Clayoquot Sound!

  In April, the B.C. government issued a road-building permit to Iisaak Forest Resources, in preparation for logging in intact watersheds on Flores Island. Blasting and logging in these intact rainforest valleys could start any time. Please ask the B.C. government to not issue any further road and cut permits for Flores Island or any intact areas in Clayoquot Sound, enter into direct conversations with Isaak Forest Resources to seek alternatives to logging in controversial areas and to support conservation solutions currently being pursued by environmental organizations with local First Nations.

  Logging the intact forest of Flores Island would undermine the 1999 Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between First Nations and a coalition of conservation groups. In this agreement the two parties identified unlogged watersheds of Clayoquot Sound, including on Flores Island, that should be off-limits to logging. The agreement was billed as a peace treaty in the decade-long "war in the woods." Logging in intact valleys would also undermine solutions like conservation financing for economic alternatives to provide for a diverse, sustainable future for the region's people.

  Please send an email to Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations to share your concerns.

• Help Permanently Protect B.C.'s Flathead!

  Nestled into B.C.'s southeast corner, the Flathead River Valley is part of what National Geographic Magazine describes as "one of the most diverse and ecologically intact natural ecosystems in the temperate zones of the world.” Water in the Flathead River is so pure that scientists use it as a benchmark by which to measure water quality in rivers around the world. Canadian Geographic magazine describes the Flathead as a “nursery” for wildlife, including at-risk species like badgers and grizzly bears. 

  In February 2010, after a campaign by Sierra Club BC and other conservation groups, the B.C. government announced a ban on mining and oil and gas development in the Flathead.  But the Flathead is far from protected. Today it is under threat from logging, grizzly trophy hunting, newly increased road access and the cumulative impact of quarrying permitted under new regulations.

  A strong show of public support is crucial right now. Please take just one minute today to write to Premier Clark and other decision-makers to urge them to protect the Flathead permanently.

  To ensure its lasting protection, the Flathead River Valley needs a National Park in the south-eastern one-third of the valley, to fill in the missing piece of the adjacent Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park and World Heritage Site. We also need a Wildlife Management Area in the rest of the valley and adjoining habitat to protect a Rocky Mountain wildlife corridor stretching from Glacier to the Banff, Jasper and Kootenay National Parks.