The British Columbia
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Spiderwort Strategy by
Sadeo Ichikawa
Act Now to Save the Juan de Fuca Trail
Stop the Hunt: Protest to B.C. Environment Minister
Hotspots of Western
Canada Map
SEA SHEPHERD Conservation Society
Alexandra Morton, The World that Salmon Feeds
The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble by Andrew Nikiforuk
Burns Bog
Conservation Society
Watershed Sentinel Anniversary 
Global Compliance Project by Joan Russow
The Enbridge Oil Sands Gamble by Andrew Nikiforuk
Get the Farms Out Emergency protection for Wild Salmon Narrows
BC Government Confirms Grizzly Bears Missing on BC North Coast
The British Columbia Environmental Network (BCEN) Webpages
Member organizations within the Network advocate for environmental responsibility and community participation in activities leading to ecological sustainability.
The time has arrived when we must begin to examine the underlying realities of our relationship to all life around us, the life that we are just beginning to appreciate as the true medium of our innermost identity. We need to move neither further to the Left nor further to the Right - rather, we must seriously begin to inquire into the rights of rabbits and turnips, the rights of soil and swamp, the rights of the atmosphere, and ultimately the rights of the planet. For those in the end are the containers of our entire future evolution, and everything else rests upon whether or not we come to terms with the politics of Earth and sky, evolution and transformation, God and nature. Otherwise, in our lifetimes, we shall suffer the enactment of the saga of Genesis, our expulsion from paradise and the fall of nature itself.
-Robert Hunter
Warriors of the Rainbow
The Network demands to know why it is being shut out of communications with Environment Canada regarding the promised funding for fiscal year 2011-2012. Neither Environment Minister Peter Kent nor his departmental officials have explained why they are not delivering on their promise of continued core funding for the Network, which comprises its key environmental constituency across Canada.
“The Canadian Environmental Network received a letter from Environment Canada in May this year stating their intent to continue core funding in the amount of $547,000 for the current fiscal year. In keeping with our over three-decades-long partnership, we ask that EC honour this letter,” said Olivier Kolmel, Chair of the RCEN.
“The RCEN consists of over 640 highly diverse large and small, rural and urban organisations from coast to coast to coast. The Network forms an invaluable and irreplaceable grid of communication among environmentally concerned Canadians and the Government of Canada. A huge part of our understanding of environmental issues, and traditional indigenous, community, and scientific knowledge and experience has reached Canadians’ kitchen tables largely due to the existence of the Canadian Environmental Network,” said Larry McDermott, Aboriginal Representative and Board member of RCEN, and Executive Director of Plenty Canada.
“For the past nearly 34 years, the RCEN has functioned as the formalised mechanism through which Canadians contribute to policy, legislation, and environmental management in this country. Without the RCEN, this important community-based knowledge coming from every part of Canada will be lost. The fate of our environment will be jeopardised by cutting this important voice for Canadians,” said Maggie Paquet, RCEN Board member representing British Columbia.
“The RCEN is the epitome of what democracy in this country has always strived to achieve. The Network allows small and large organisations alike the opportunity to stand side-by-side and be part of the Government of Canada’s decision-making. The loss of the Network would be a tragic loss for democracy and for all Canadians,” said Stephen Hazell, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and of the Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society.
The Canadian Environmental Network is urging every Canadian to speak up for democracy and the rights of Canadians to have an effective means of communicating and understanding environmental issues and sharing the knowledge and expertise. We urge Environment Canada to renew its partnership with the Canadian Environmental Network and save this critically important Canadian institution.
The collaborative and democratic partnership model that EC and the RCEN have created is the envy of countries worldwide. The RCEN is considered widely as the best environmental network in the world. It is essential that this remarkable network be acknowledge and supported for the health and wellbeing of our country and all Canadians.
:
Citizens Rally in Vancouver to Stop Smart Meter installation in B.C. homes?
Smart meters are a tax-payer rip-off and pose serious health threats to British Columbians, a crowd gathered at BC Hydro's Vancouver headquarters heard from the spokespeople of an number of organizations opposed to the provincial government-mandated program. (2 min) See Video by Damian Gillis, of Common Sense Canadian:
Smart Meters Effects. Click for Video
Why no public debate. Concerned citizens demonstrated opposition to the BC Hydro plan at the B.C. Legislature.Smart meters fail on economic grounds and add to wireless radiation burden on human health.
To Send Letter to BC Hydro Download here:
Now it threatens both wild salmon and herring, say biologist Alexandra Morton and Simon Fraser University professor Rick Routledge, whose laboratory led to the discovery of ISA in B.C. salmon smolts.
Morton is calling for removal of Atlantic salmon from B.C. salmon farms. “Loosing a virus as lethal and contagious as ISA into the North Pacific is a cataclysmic biological threat to life,” said Morton. “The European strain of ISA virus can only have come from the Atlantic salmon farms. European strain ISA infected Chile via Atlantic salmon eggs in 2007.”
Morton says ISA was first found in Norway in 1984. “Since then, there have been lethal outbreaks in every important salmon-farming region around the globe, with the exception – or so we thought – of B.C. Now we know for sure that it has hit B.C.
“The Cohen Inquiry revealed ISA symptoms have been reported in farm salmon in B.C. since 2006. The Fisheries Ministers have written me repeatedly that B.C. is safe from ISA. Clearly they are not in control of the situation.
“If there is any hope, we have to turn off the source: Atlantic salmon have to be immediately removed.”
The virus was found in two of 48 sockeye smolts collected as part of a long-term study, led by Routledge, on the collapse of Rivers Inlet sockeye populations.
Dr. Fred Kibenge of the ISA reference laboratory at the Atlantic Veterinary College in P.E.I. made the diagnosis and notified the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) of the positive results for the European strain of ISA virus.
Says Routledge: “ISA is a deadly exotic disease which could have devastating impacts on wild salmon and the many species that depend on them throughout much of British Columbia and beyond. “The combined impacts of this influenza-like virus and the recently identified parvovirus that can suppress the immune system could be particularly deadly.”
Morton adds: “The New York Times reported from Chile that the Chilean aquaculture industry suffered more than $2 billion in losses, saw its production of Atlantic salmon fall by half, and jobs were lost.” “A scientific study concluded that salmon eggs shipped from Norway to Chile are the ‘likely reason’ for the outbreak of the virus in Chile in 2007. And nearly 40 million Atlantic salmon eggs have been imported into B.C. since 1986.” “This is devastating news and something I worked hard to prevent. This has international implications throughout the North Pacific.”
Routledge concurs that the only plausible source for the European strain of ISA virus that he found on B.C.’s Central Coast is the Atlantic salmon farms. Rivers Inlet is on the B.C. Central Coast in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest – 100km north of a cluster of Norwegian-owned Atlantic salmon feedlots off Port Hardy and 140km south of Marine Harvest’s feedlots near Klemtu.
“The potential impact of ISA cannot be taken lightly,” said Routledge. “There must be an immediate response to assess the extent of the outbreak, determine its source, and to eliminate all controllable sources of the virus – even though no country has ever eradicated it once it has arrived.”
Routledge is a fish-population statistician who was a founding member of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. Morton received an honorary degree from SFU for her work linking sea lice infestation in wild salmon to fish farming in the Broughton Archipelago, which has sparked international attention.
The two researchers said that the federal Cohen Commission on the decline of sockeye salmon runs in the Fraser River was told that more than 1,000 cases of ISA-type lesions have been reported on B.C. salmon farms since 2006 – yet no suspect cases or diagnoses of ISA were reported to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or to the World Organization for Animal Health (known as OiE, from its former name of Office International des Epizooties).
Morton, who long ago urged the federal government to close the border to Atlantic salmon eggs as the virus spread in fish farms around the world, says the fact that ISA was found in smolts suggests it has been loose in the Pacific for several years.
“Government and industry are clearly not testing effectively. There needs to be an international volunteer epidemiological team formed right now. No one party can own the data. We have to use everything we know to try and contain this.”
The researchers say if there is any hope of controlling this disease it must be addressed at the source. The virus is also prone to mutating into increasingly virulent forms.
In 1992, the salmon farms were placed on the Fraser sockeye migration route, and the Fraser sockeye went into steep decline.
Peace Valley Agricultural Land at Risk from Proposed Site C Dam
"The Lower Peace River and its associated ecosystems support a diverse range of wildlife, including threatened populations of bull trout, grizzly bears, wolverines, and countless other plants and animals. Because of its fertile soils, moderate climate, and accessible terrain, the bottomlands along its banks and gentle valley slopes have supported farming families for more than a century. These farmers grow forage, cereal, and oilseed crops, as well as raise cattle and growing market gardens.
To First Nations and other local people whose traditional lands and farms were flooded and livelihoods destroyed by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in the 1960s, the prospect of yet another dam that will flood long sections of the Peace River Valley, destroying farms and forest, is unacceptable." Protecting the Peace: David Suzuki on B.C.'s Site C project
Read: PVEA Letter to Minister of Environment, Peter Kent: The purpose of this communication is to convey the concerns of thousands of people in Northwest Canada who are troubled by the proposed construction of a third dam on the Peace River in Northeast British Columbia. While the proposed project, known as Site C, will soon be entering the Environmental Assessment stage, there are good reasons to believe that the process has already been tainted.
The Story of the Peace River and the Threat of the Site C Dam
The Treaty 8 First Nations, the Wilderness Committee and the Peace Valley Environment Association are on a province-wide speaking tour to talk about the threats to the beautiful and the ecologically important Peace River Valley.
The beautiful Peace River Valley is under threat. Come learn about the consequences of the Site C project and hear first hand from some of the people most directly impacted by the project. If you care about climate change, food security, indigenous rights and wilderness areas, or are curious about energy demands in the province, this is a must attend event.
Our province is full of beautiful places, but there are few places with both the spectacular beauty and the ecological importance to match the Peace River Valley.
Nestled in the northeast corner of British Columbia, the Peace River flows from the Rocky Mountains towards the Arctic Ocean. The valley is home to Treaty 8 First Nations' hunting, fishing, and trapping grounds, fertile agricultural lands and farms, old-growth boreal forests, and is one of the most important wildlife corridors in the Yellowstone to Yukon migration corridor chain.
In an area already fractured by oil and gas development, and on a river already choked by two existing dams, the government of BC wants to build the $8 billion Site C Dam. The proposed 60 meter high Site C mega-dam would flood over 100 kilometres of river valley, drowning a land area equal to 14 Stanley Parks, and causing landslides as the banks of the reservoir erode over time.
The cost of the proposed Site C Dam continues to skyrocket and it’s going to hit the pocketbooks of all BC citizens. In 2006, the estimated cost of the 60 metre high dam was less than $3 billion. In 2008, the cost jumped to $6.6 billion. Currently, BC Hydro’s revised estimate for the mega-hydro project is almost $8 billion. This astronomical amount, in addition to a budgeted $6 billion dollars for maintenance on existing dams, is bound to increase residential rates well over BC Hydro’s estimate of 50% in the next 5 years.
Company unable to answer questions about how much water it would take to wash metallurgical coal, or where the company plans to get the water.
"Bearing the Heavy Burden of Coal Mining:" Maya Stano, Mining Caucus, BCEN
Information at Coalwatch on draft AIR/EIS Guidelines
Before the Election, the Harper Government planned a $222-million or 20% reduction in spending at Environment Canada.
This was to include a $141 million cut to climate change and clean air initiatives, as well as a $19.5-million cut to a federal action plan dealing with contaminated federal sites, and about $3-million in reductions for compliance promotion and enforcement for wildlife and pollution.
Meanwhile, in 2010 to 2011, Environment Canada’s program activities amount to just over one billion dollars while National Defence spending is over twenty billion.
The price tag for F-35 Fighter Jets will approach $30-billion, budget watchdog warns. This is equivalent to $1,000 for every man, woman and child in Canada, and equals the entire federal government’s annual spending on health care.”
Send an email to:The legislators in your riding and national party leaders
Joan Russow, Global Compliance Research Project
Distributed at the COP16 Climate Change Conference at Cancun
Militarism is likely the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, yet the IPCC does not indicate in a separate category the extent of military contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.
Militarism is the largest source of toxic chemical and radioactive poisoning of peoples and environment around the globe, and plays a major role in promoting false solutions that only worsen the problems (biofuels, nuclear technologies, climate geoengineering etc.)
We will not accept the death spiral of militarism, war and climate change. It is time to break the cycle! In Cancun and beyond, we Demand:
1. The renouncing of war. Including the end to oil and resource wars. Reinstatement of diplomacy and respect over use of force in all foreign relations.
2. End all occupations. Close all foreign military bases and convert national bases.
3. Redirection of the vast majority of military funding to fund human services, ensure decent quality of life, payment of ecological and climate debt, and compensation to countries and peoples damaged by militarism.
4. Dismantling of the military-industrial complex, and military based organizations including NATO.
The Impact of Militarism on the Environment by Abjeer Majeed, Physicians for Global Survival
Watch Pacific Wild's latest video release -- a beautiful short animation focusing on the whales of the Great Bear Rainforest. Produced by Picture Cloud film & animation of Victoria B.C. this visually stunning and thought provoking animation explores the dire threats facing whales by acoustic ship pollution. The return of Humpback and other species of cetaceans to the waters of the Great Bear Rainforest is a welcome event since the dark days when whale killing ships travelled our waters. But this may be short lived if oil tankers begin moving Alberta tar sands crude through the Great Bears fragile waters.
Video: News Report of Agreement Between Sea Shepherd and Republic of Palau
VANDANA SHIVA: "We don’t give rights to nature. Nature has rights. And more often than not, nature’s rights and people’s rights are allied as one in most places of the world, where, in places like Jaitapur or places like the POSCO area, people are saying, "This land is our mother." This is not an esoteric idea. It’s the most relevant, potent, democratic idea of our times."
Bolivia's first article of the Law of Mother Earth says that every human activity has to "achieve dynamic balance with the cycles and processes inherent in Mother Earth."
It defines Mother Earth as "a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings." The law promotes "harmony" and "peace" and "the elimination of all nuclear, chemical, biological" weapons. Read More:
Read: 24/7 LESS PEACE IN THE PEACE, Recent photos and commentary of Tallisman Energy Inc.'s Fracking Operations north of Hudson's Hope, BC, Photos and Text by Will Koop, B.C. Tap Water Alliance.
For inquiries to join Landwatch, a listserve focusing on ecology and environment and British Columbia please provide a brief resume on action and email to Landwatch Listserve Manager
New: BCEN ENGO Membership Application Download
-Robert Hunter
Warriors of the Rainbow
34 YEAR FEDERAL PARTNERSHIP WITH CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK TERMINATED
The Network demands to know why it is being shut out of communications with Environment Canada regarding the promised funding for fiscal year 2011-2012. Neither Environment Minister Peter Kent nor his departmental officials have explained why they are not delivering on their promise of continued core funding for the Network, which comprises its key environmental constituency across Canada.
“The Canadian Environmental Network received a letter from Environment Canada in May this year stating their intent to continue core funding in the amount of $547,000 for the current fiscal year. In keeping with our over three-decades-long partnership, we ask that EC honour this letter,” said Olivier Kolmel, Chair of the RCEN.
“The RCEN consists of over 640 highly diverse large and small, rural and urban organisations from coast to coast to coast. The Network forms an invaluable and irreplaceable grid of communication among environmentally concerned Canadians and the Government of Canada. A huge part of our understanding of environmental issues, and traditional indigenous, community, and scientific knowledge and experience has reached Canadians’ kitchen tables largely due to the existence of the Canadian Environmental Network,” said Larry McDermott, Aboriginal Representative and Board member of RCEN, and Executive Director of Plenty Canada.
“For the past nearly 34 years, the RCEN has functioned as the formalised mechanism through which Canadians contribute to policy, legislation, and environmental management in this country. Without the RCEN, this important community-based knowledge coming from every part of Canada will be lost. The fate of our environment will be jeopardised by cutting this important voice for Canadians,” said Maggie Paquet, RCEN Board member representing British Columbia.
“The RCEN is the epitome of what democracy in this country has always strived to achieve. The Network allows small and large organisations alike the opportunity to stand side-by-side and be part of the Government of Canada’s decision-making. The loss of the Network would be a tragic loss for democracy and for all Canadians,” said Stephen Hazell, former Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and of the Canadian Parks & Wilderness Society.
The Canadian Environmental Network is urging every Canadian to speak up for democracy and the rights of Canadians to have an effective means of communicating and understanding environmental issues and sharing the knowledge and expertise. We urge Environment Canada to renew its partnership with the Canadian Environmental Network and save this critically important Canadian institution.
The collaborative and democratic partnership model that EC and the RCEN have created is the envy of countries worldwide. The RCEN is considered widely as the best environmental network in the world. It is essential that this remarkable network be acknowledge and supported for the health and wellbeing of our country and all Canadians.
Pamela Anderson - Oily beaches? No Tanks!
:
“Smart” Meters Are Coming And Many People Don't Want Them
Smart meters are a tax-payer rip-off and pose serious health threats to British Columbians, a crowd gathered at BC Hydro's Vancouver headquarters heard from the spokespeople of an number of organizations opposed to the provincial government-mandated program. (2 min) See Video by Damian Gillis, of Common Sense Canadian:
Smart Meters Effects. Click for Video
Why no public debate. Concerned citizens demonstrated opposition to the BC Hydro plan at the B.C. Legislature.Smart meters fail on economic grounds and add to wireless radiation burden on human health.
To Send Letter to BC Hydro Download here:
Tests Confirm ISA Virus in Wild BC Sockeye
Now it threatens both wild salmon and herring, say biologist Alexandra Morton and Simon Fraser University professor Rick Routledge, whose laboratory led to the discovery of ISA in B.C. salmon smolts.
Morton is calling for removal of Atlantic salmon from B.C. salmon farms. “Loosing a virus as lethal and contagious as ISA into the North Pacific is a cataclysmic biological threat to life,” said Morton. “The European strain of ISA virus can only have come from the Atlantic salmon farms. European strain ISA infected Chile via Atlantic salmon eggs in 2007.”
Morton says ISA was first found in Norway in 1984. “Since then, there have been lethal outbreaks in every important salmon-farming region around the globe, with the exception – or so we thought – of B.C. Now we know for sure that it has hit B.C.
“The Cohen Inquiry revealed ISA symptoms have been reported in farm salmon in B.C. since 2006. The Fisheries Ministers have written me repeatedly that B.C. is safe from ISA. Clearly they are not in control of the situation.
“If there is any hope, we have to turn off the source: Atlantic salmon have to be immediately removed.”
The virus was found in two of 48 sockeye smolts collected as part of a long-term study, led by Routledge, on the collapse of Rivers Inlet sockeye populations.
Dr. Fred Kibenge of the ISA reference laboratory at the Atlantic Veterinary College in P.E.I. made the diagnosis and notified the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) of the positive results for the European strain of ISA virus.
Says Routledge: “ISA is a deadly exotic disease which could have devastating impacts on wild salmon and the many species that depend on them throughout much of British Columbia and beyond. “The combined impacts of this influenza-like virus and the recently identified parvovirus that can suppress the immune system could be particularly deadly.”
Morton adds: “The New York Times reported from Chile that the Chilean aquaculture industry suffered more than $2 billion in losses, saw its production of Atlantic salmon fall by half, and jobs were lost.” “A scientific study concluded that salmon eggs shipped from Norway to Chile are the ‘likely reason’ for the outbreak of the virus in Chile in 2007. And nearly 40 million Atlantic salmon eggs have been imported into B.C. since 1986.” “This is devastating news and something I worked hard to prevent. This has international implications throughout the North Pacific.”
Routledge concurs that the only plausible source for the European strain of ISA virus that he found on B.C.’s Central Coast is the Atlantic salmon farms. Rivers Inlet is on the B.C. Central Coast in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest – 100km north of a cluster of Norwegian-owned Atlantic salmon feedlots off Port Hardy and 140km south of Marine Harvest’s feedlots near Klemtu.
“The potential impact of ISA cannot be taken lightly,” said Routledge. “There must be an immediate response to assess the extent of the outbreak, determine its source, and to eliminate all controllable sources of the virus – even though no country has ever eradicated it once it has arrived.”
Routledge is a fish-population statistician who was a founding member of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council. Morton received an honorary degree from SFU for her work linking sea lice infestation in wild salmon to fish farming in the Broughton Archipelago, which has sparked international attention.
The two researchers said that the federal Cohen Commission on the decline of sockeye salmon runs in the Fraser River was told that more than 1,000 cases of ISA-type lesions have been reported on B.C. salmon farms since 2006 – yet no suspect cases or diagnoses of ISA were reported to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, or to the World Organization for Animal Health (known as OiE, from its former name of Office International des Epizooties).
Morton, who long ago urged the federal government to close the border to Atlantic salmon eggs as the virus spread in fish farms around the world, says the fact that ISA was found in smolts suggests it has been loose in the Pacific for several years.
“Government and industry are clearly not testing effectively. There needs to be an international volunteer epidemiological team formed right now. No one party can own the data. We have to use everything we know to try and contain this.”
The researchers say if there is any hope of controlling this disease it must be addressed at the source. The virus is also prone to mutating into increasingly virulent forms.
In 1992, the salmon farms were placed on the Fraser sockeye migration route, and the Fraser sockeye went into steep decline.
Build Food Security for British Columbia, Not Dams
"The Lower Peace River and its associated ecosystems support a diverse range of wildlife, including threatened populations of bull trout, grizzly bears, wolverines, and countless other plants and animals. Because of its fertile soils, moderate climate, and accessible terrain, the bottomlands along its banks and gentle valley slopes have supported farming families for more than a century. These farmers grow forage, cereal, and oilseed crops, as well as raise cattle and growing market gardens.
To First Nations and other local people whose traditional lands and farms were flooded and livelihoods destroyed by the W.A.C. Bennett Dam in the 1960s, the prospect of yet another dam that will flood long sections of the Peace River Valley, destroying farms and forest, is unacceptable." Protecting the Peace: David Suzuki on B.C.'s Site C project
Read: PVEA Letter to Minister of Environment, Peter Kent: The purpose of this communication is to convey the concerns of thousands of people in Northwest Canada who are troubled by the proposed construction of a third dam on the Peace River in Northeast British Columbia. While the proposed project, known as Site C, will soon be entering the Environmental Assessment stage, there are good reasons to believe that the process has already been tainted.
The Peace River Valley
Habitat for biodiversity and food security for British Columbia. The Peace River Valley has a priceless role to play in ecologic resiliency to climate change
The Story of the Peace River and the Threat of the Site C Dam
The Treaty 8 First Nations, the Wilderness Committee and the Peace Valley Environment Association are on a province-wide speaking tour to talk about the threats to the beautiful and the ecologically important Peace River Valley.
The beautiful Peace River Valley is under threat. Come learn about the consequences of the Site C project and hear first hand from some of the people most directly impacted by the project. If you care about climate change, food security, indigenous rights and wilderness areas, or are curious about energy demands in the province, this is a must attend event.
Our province is full of beautiful places, but there are few places with both the spectacular beauty and the ecological importance to match the Peace River Valley.
Nestled in the northeast corner of British Columbia, the Peace River flows from the Rocky Mountains towards the Arctic Ocean. The valley is home to Treaty 8 First Nations' hunting, fishing, and trapping grounds, fertile agricultural lands and farms, old-growth boreal forests, and is one of the most important wildlife corridors in the Yellowstone to Yukon migration corridor chain.
In an area already fractured by oil and gas development, and on a river already choked by two existing dams, the government of BC wants to build the $8 billion Site C Dam. The proposed 60 meter high Site C mega-dam would flood over 100 kilometres of river valley, drowning a land area equal to 14 Stanley Parks, and causing landslides as the banks of the reservoir erode over time.
The cost of the proposed Site C Dam continues to skyrocket and it’s going to hit the pocketbooks of all BC citizens. In 2006, the estimated cost of the 60 metre high dam was less than $3 billion. In 2008, the cost jumped to $6.6 billion. Currently, BC Hydro’s revised estimate for the mega-hydro project is almost $8 billion. This astronomical amount, in addition to a budgeted $6 billion dollars for maintenance on existing dams, is bound to increase residential rates well over BC Hydro’s estimate of 50% in the next 5 years.
The BC Peace River Valley and Climate Change: Report
No Coal Mine Disaster for the Comox Valley
Company unable to answer questions about how much water it would take to wash metallurgical coal, or where the company plans to get the water.
Home of world famous Fanny Bay oysters
Military Spending Leaves Environment Defenseless
Before the Election, the Harper Government planned a $222-million or 20% reduction in spending at Environment Canada.
This was to include a $141 million cut to climate change and clean air initiatives, as well as a $19.5-million cut to a federal action plan dealing with contaminated federal sites, and about $3-million in reductions for compliance promotion and enforcement for wildlife and pollution.
Meanwhile, in 2010 to 2011, Environment Canada’s program activities amount to just over one billion dollars while National Defence spending is over twenty billion.
The price tag for F-35 Fighter Jets will approach $30-billion, budget watchdog warns. This is equivalent to $1,000 for every man, woman and child in Canada, and equals the entire federal government’s annual spending on health care.”
Send an email to:The legislators in your riding and national party leaders
Militarism’s Massive Contribution to the Climate Crisis
Joan Russow, Global Compliance Research Project
Distributed at the COP16 Climate Change Conference at Cancun
Militarism is likely the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet, yet the IPCC does not indicate in a separate category the extent of military contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.
Militarism is the largest source of toxic chemical and radioactive poisoning of peoples and environment around the globe, and plays a major role in promoting false solutions that only worsen the problems (biofuels, nuclear technologies, climate geoengineering etc.)
We will not accept the death spiral of militarism, war and climate change. It is time to break the cycle! In Cancun and beyond, we Demand:
1. The renouncing of war. Including the end to oil and resource wars. Reinstatement of diplomacy and respect over use of force in all foreign relations.
2. End all occupations. Close all foreign military bases and convert national bases.
3. Redirection of the vast majority of military funding to fund human services, ensure decent quality of life, payment of ecological and climate debt, and compensation to countries and peoples damaged by militarism.
4. Dismantling of the military-industrial complex, and military based organizations including NATO.
The Impact of Militarism on the Environment by Abjeer Majeed, Physicians for Global Survival
Acoustic Pollution Harms Whales
Watch Pacific Wild's latest video release -- a beautiful short animation focusing on the whales of the Great Bear Rainforest. Produced by Picture Cloud film & animation of Victoria B.C. this visually stunning and thought provoking animation explores the dire threats facing whales by acoustic ship pollution. The return of Humpback and other species of cetaceans to the waters of the Great Bear Rainforest is a welcome event since the dark days when whale killing ships travelled our waters. But this may be short lived if oil tankers begin moving Alberta tar sands crude through the Great Bears fragile waters.
Sea Shepherd Signs Historic Agreement to Safeguard World's First Shark Sanctuary
Sea Shepherd Partners with the Republic of Palau to Control
Poaching
Thursday, March 31, 2011: After a successful victory driving the whalers out of the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has turned its sights from defending whales to protecting sharks. A Memorandum of Agreement was signed earlier this month between the direct action marine wildlife conservation organization and the Republic of Palau. This historic agreement authorizes Sea Shepherd to collaborate directly with Palau’s Division of Marine Law Enforcement (DMLE) to patrol and safeguard a unique marine protected area designated as the world’s first shark sanctuary. During a recent visit to Palau, Captain Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd’s Chief Executive Officer Steve Roest met with His Excellency, President Johnson Toribiong of Palau, and the 16-member traditional Council of Chiefs who serve as his advisors, to sign the agreement.
Sea Shepherd has a long history of working in direct collaboration with national governments to oppose poaching operations; its first such agreement was in the Galapagos Islands, where Sea Shepherd is now in its 11th year of working in partnership with the Galapagos National Park and the Ecuadorian Environmental Police to protect the waters of the Galapagos Marine Reserve.
The Rights of Mother Earth
VANDANA SHIVA: "We don’t give rights to nature. Nature has rights. And more often than not, nature’s rights and people’s rights are allied as one in most places of the world, where, in places like Jaitapur or places like the POSCO area, people are saying, "This land is our mother." This is not an esoteric idea. It’s the most relevant, potent, democratic idea of our times."
Bolivia's first article of the Law of Mother Earth says that every human activity has to "achieve dynamic balance with the cycles and processes inherent in Mother Earth."
It defines Mother Earth as "a unique, indivisible, self-regulating community of interrelated beings that sustains, contains and reproduces all beings." The law promotes "harmony" and "peace" and "the elimination of all nuclear, chemical, biological" weapons. Read More:
BCEN Call for Ban on Sour Gas and Unconventional Natural Gas Extraction
British Columbia Environmental Network Proposed Resolution
“WHEREAS extensive environmental and health damages are being caused to the Residents of Peace River Area, their animals, their water and their livelihoods by sour gas wells, pipeline malfunctions, and leaks due to the sour gas industry,
“WHEREAS extensive environmental and health damages are caused by horizontal drilling and high pressure hydrofracturing gas extraction techniques due to the contamination of water, soil and air by the toxic chemicals used in drilling and fracturing, and the naturally occurring toxic chemicals brought to the surface from deep in the ground,
“WHEREAS these environmental and human and animal health damages will have damaging economic consequences on agricultural and residential property use and value, and on farming, tourism, forestry, schools and ecological and recreational businesses,
“WHEREAS the infrastructure costs of building and repairing roads, water treatment facilities, and other public services would far exceed any economic benefit to local communities, and
“WHEREAS it is yet to be proven that the green house effects of the production and use of natural gas produced by horizontal drilling and hydrofracturing are any less than those of the production and use of coal when the life cycle emissions of natural gas production and the higher impact of methane as a green house gas are taken into account.
“Be It Resolved that the British Columbia Environmental Network calls on the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia to enact a ban on permitting sour gas wells on Peace River Farmland and on unconventional gas extraction that uses horizontal drilling and hydro-fracturing to explore, mine, or extract gas in the Province of British Columbia."
New: BCEN ENGO Membership Application Download