From the Guerrila News Network
By Zoe Blunt
Groups say Big Greens brokered a bad deal, and now ramped-up logging is devouring coastal old-growth.

Kermode In February 2006, Greenpeace, Sierra Club and other groups celebrated a historic agreement with government and industry to bring an end to the “war in the woods” in the Great Bear Rainforest area of coastal British Columbia. Less than a year later, observers say the agreement may be unraveling. Timber companies have ratcheted up the rate of clearcut logging to unprecedented levels, and guidelines for sustainable logging are not being implemented.

Ian McAllister of Raincoast Conservation Society says the sudden increase in logging on the Central Coast is “unprecedented in fifteen years.”

“It’s unbelievable,” McAllister says. “It’s still just cut and run.”

“It’s talk and log,” says Qwatsinas (Ed Moody), hereditary chief of the Nuxalk Nation. “It is not a victory; everyone loses.”

What’s at stake is the largest intact coastal rainforest in North America – home to thousand-year-old red cedar forests, grizzlies, wolves, moose, mountain goats, black bears, and rare white spirit (Kermode) bears. Protected from logging and development by formidable mountains, this wild and rugged coastline stretches hundreds of miles from the tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan panhandle.

The ice-capped peaks rear up from the ocean, cut by fjords and salmon streams and covered with majestic cathedral forests. Whales and orcas swim through the channels and inlets, delighting tourists. First Nations communities fish, hunt, and gather berries, as they have done here for thousands of years.

The Great Bear Rainforest, we were told, is a wilderness legacy for our children and our children’s children.

How did this success story turn sour?

Read full article.