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Posted by Joan Russow
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Friday, 11 December 2020 10:11 |
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A group of forest activists have created a new blockade along Bugaboo Creek, near Port Renfrew, where logging company Teal Jones Group is working to clear cut another section of old-growth trees on the southern part of Vancouver Island. (Facebook/Fairy Creek Blockade)
Protesters add new blockade to stop old-growth logging near Port Renfrew
Bugaboo Creek protesters demands B.C. to immediately stop old-growth logging on Island
A group of old-growth logging protesters near Port Renfrew have added a new blockade at a nearby site.
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Earth News
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Tuesday, 08 September 2020 21:23 |
BCEN
BC Environmental Network
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Sept 8, 2020
by the BC Environmental Network
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Dam cost/benefit and foundation on shaky ground. BC Environmental Network calls for immediate stop work Peace River diversion plan.
For 45 years, the Site C Dam has been promoted by various BC Governments as being needed for a wide range of purposes. Not one of those predictions of necessity has come true. During that same time, the economics of building large hydro dams have literally tanked while the socio/environmental impacts have become increasingly unacceptable. This is true for all three large hydro dams currently under construction in Canada.
In the case of Site C, the 26,000 page 2014 Environmental Impact Statement clearly described the anticipated harmful impacts. However, even with a record setting number of “significant harms that cannot be mitigated” as identified by the Joint Review Panel, the Harper Conservatives and Christy Clark Liberals pushed this project through, with follow-up help from the Trudeau Liberals. It did not stop there. Despite the need for billions more dollars at the time and the findings of the 2017 BCUC Review saying that alternatives to Site C would be the same or lower cost, the new Horgan NDP Government made the fateful decision to proceed. As bad news continues to emerge from Site C, this cluster of past political decisions is coming home to roost.
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Last Updated on Sunday, 13 September 2020 11:04 |
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Earth News
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Posted by admin
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Wednesday, 25 March 2020 12:34 |
The cases span all B.C. health regions: Vancouver Coastal (330), Fraser Health (194), Island Health (44), Interior Health (41) and Northern Health (8).
• 13 people have died, 59 are in hospital (23 of which are in intensive care), and 173 have recovered.
• Of the 13 deaths, 10 have been linked to the outbreak at North Vancouver’s Lynn Valley Care Centre, one to Vancouver’s Haro Park Centre and two are residents in the Fraser Health region.
Reported from Vanncouver Sun |
Earth News
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Thursday, 13 June 2019 07:22 |
1.The Lubicon Cree: Ongoing human rights violations

The Lubicon Cree: Ongoing human rights violations
The Lubicon Cree: A case study in ongoing human rights violations exerpts from article by Amnesty International
he Lubicon Cree: A case study in ongoing human rights violations. ...
Territory that the Lubicon have relied on to hunt, fish and trap is now crisscrossed by more than 2400 km of oil and gas pipelines.
That's more than five wells for every Lubicon person.“..
.the basic health and resistance to infection of community members has deteriorated dramatically.
The lack of running water and sanitary facilities in the community, needed to replace
the traditional systems of water and sanitary management...is leading to the development of diseases associated
with poverty and poor sanitary and healthconditions.” Lubicon complaint upheld by the United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1990
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Last Updated on Thursday, 13 February 2020 08:49 |
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Earth News
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Thursday, 30 May 2019 18:35 |
by oak bay news
n
Students from Janet Langston’s Grade 3 and 4 class at Margaret Jenkins elementary celebrate the school’s efforts to remove invasive species from Trafalgar Park (below King George Terrace). The park was covered in gorse and blackberry and wild flowers and roses are now thriving. (Travis Paterson/News Staff)
Elementary students restore, reclaim neighbourhood park
Margaret Jenkins students 2.5 years into restoration
The reclamation of Trafalgar Park continues but to anyone who has visited in the past three years, the removal of invasive species has revealed a landscape unseen for decades.
And the work has been done by a pair of Margarets.
Well known Uplands Park advocate and volunteer Margaret Lidkea helped lead a program for nearby Margaret Jenkins elementary school students. Lidkea provides the know-how and the students provide the muscle.
The park was covered with rows of entrenched blackberry and gorse.
The students prove their knowledge by munching on a piece of Miner’s lettuce growing next to the six-feet-tall wild roses in Trafalgar.
“We gave them clippers, saws, and shears, and they’ve done the work,” Lidkea said. “It’s amazing,”
READ MORE: Student work sessions clear Trafalgar Park
Vice-principal Janet Langston’s Grade 3-4 class is one of the classes that makes regular trips to Trafalgar to remove invasives.
Last year Langston took it to the next level as the school received a grant from the TD Friends of the Environment, to purchase over $2,000 worth of native plants. The native species were planted in the fall to help prevent invasvies from returning and restore the pre-colonial ecosystem.
“Students have also been removing English ivy especially along the lower trail and under the native crabapple trees,” Lidkea said. “The camas responded with many purple-blue blooms.”
(Inset photo: Margaret Jenkins students swarm Trafalgar Park in 2017 to remove the invasive gorse.)
They also planted grasses on the upper slopes to prevent erosion now that the heavily invasive Himalayan blackberry and gorse have been removed.
READ ALSO: Friends of Uplands Park leader honoured at Government House
Granted, the stubborn invasives still crop up, which is why Margaret Jenkins students will continue to be relied upon to remove gorse blossoms and other plants which crop up due to a remaining seed bank of invasives embedded on the Trafalgar slopes.
Last year Margaret Jenkins also earned one of the Staple’s top 10 Superpower Your School awards for their ecological efforts.
Staples gave the school $20,000 in new technology and the Trafalgar Park work was a major project that contributed to the win, Lidkea said.
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Earth News
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Sunday, 24 February 2019 10:05 |
by Joan Russow
Global Compliance Research Project

from Sooke Mirror
In 1992, when there was a NDP Government, I received the following from Freedom of information;
In a document obtained through the Freedom of information Act there was evidence of the Provincial cabinet endorsement for the ratification of the Biodiversity and Climate Change Conventions:
..."The Province endorsed the ratification. We agreed with Canada to ratify it. There was provincial endorsement. The move to endorse the Conventions was made by John Cashore, the then B.C. Minister of Environment" Cashore then went to Cabinet, sought their support and endorsement of the ratification and then stated that the Cabinet had approved the Conventions to the CCME meeting
Through the endorsement, the BCT NDP government agreed to the precautionary principle as expressed in the UN Framework convention on Climate change and the convention on Biological Diversity. (obtained through freedom of information ,1992)
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Last Updated on Sunday, 24 February 2019 10:30 |
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Monday, 04 February 2019 14:35 |
Ratepayers better off if dams are cancelled, replaced with natural gas, wind, study says
By Nelson Bennett | January 17, 2019, 4:12pm
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/WhctKJVJfqMQHLxqMwgNWxPppgvLMXKXHsMWPxKhMqlGcvlRqRrDjfChJMRWCLGdGmdwtBg
A powerhouse buttress at Site C dam. | BC Hydro
Cancelling multi-billion dollar hydro-electric dam projects like Site C in B.C. and Muskrat Falls in Labrador and providing power with natural gas and wind power would still be cheaper in the long-run, even with billions in sunk costs that governments and ratepayers would have to absorb.
That’s the conclusion of a study released January 17 for the C.D. Howe Institute.
Author A.J. Goulding says in his report that cost overruns at three large-scale Canadian hydro-electric dam projects should prompt governments to consider halting the projects, or at least stand as a lesson for other governments contemplating future large-scale hydro projects.
Goulding’s analysis finds the levelized costs of the $10.7 billion Site C dam and the $8.7 billion Keeysak project in Manitoba may exceed the cost of power that could be provided through combined cycle natural gas turbine (CCGT) power plants, even with the sunk costs of cancelling the projects, and even with a $50 per tonne carbon tax.
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Sunday, 27 January 2019 17:28 |
'There are certain places that are so biologically rare and important'
Matt Humphrey · CBC News · Posted: Jun 28, 2018 8:00 AM PT | Last Updated: June 28, 2018
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/rain-forest-gone-1.4724448
B.C. is known for its towering trees and temperate rain forests, but an international group of scientists is warning that without urgent protection, those forests are at risk of disappearing.
A total of 223 scientists from nine countries have signed a letter urging the provincial government to take immediate action to protect B.C.'s remaining temperate rain forests.
"There are certain places that are so biologically rare and important," said Dominick DellaSala, the chief scientist at the Geos Institute in Oregon who helped organize the letter.
"The B.C. rainforests are among those rare places."
NDP blamed for failing to save Vancouver Island old-growth giants from logging
DellaSala said both the province's coastal rainforests and rainforests further inland are dissimilar to anywhere else on the planet. Both play important roles in the preservation of biodiversity and the battle against climate change, he said.
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Sunday, 18 November 2018 21:02 |
Provincial rules require spraying of fire-resistant aspen trees to make way for valuable conifers
PLEASE SIGN PETITION
https://www.change.org/p/government-of-british-columbia-stop-spraying-bc-forests-with-herbicide-to-kill-trees-like-poplar-that-wildlife-need?recruiter=728416211&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=share_petition
Bethany Lindsay · CBC News · Posted: Nov 17, 2018 8:00 AM PT | Last Updated: November 17
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/it-blows-my-mind-how-b-c-destroys-a-key-natural-wildfire-defence-every-year-1.4907358
Aspen trees naturally flourish after a wildfire, but they're also less vulnerable to flames than coniferous trees. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
Last year, 12,812 hectares of B.C. forest was sprayed with the herbicide glyphosate. It's an annual event — a mass extermination of broadleaf trees mandated by the province.
The eradication of trees like aspen and birch on regenerating forest stands is meant to make room for more commercially valuable conifer species like pine and Douglas fir.
But experts say it also removes one of the best natural defences we have against wildfire, at a time when our warming climate is helping make large, destructive fires more and more common.
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Last Updated on Thursday, 22 November 2018 09:11 |
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Earth News
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Posted by Joan Russow
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Wednesday, 17 October 2018 08:23 |
B.C. lands ministry is asking for voluntary reductions in water use so fracking can continue.
The Canadian Press · Posted: Oct 10, 2018 10:35 AM PT | Last Updated: October 10
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 November 2018 23:00 |
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