War in the Woods 2.0 — The fight to save B.C.’s last remaining Old Growth forests
In 2017, the B.C. NDP government swept to power, aided in part by its strong election promises to protect the province’s old growth forests, and the last remaining valleys and watersheds that are home to the west coasts giant, living room-sized trees. But by August 2020, after years of foot dragging on the very promises that many environmentalists felt got them elected, the provincial NDP were faced with a groundswell of opposition to continued logging in fragile, vanishingly rare ecosystems. Activists blockaded logging roads across a vast swath of southern Vancouver Island, from Fairy Creek to the Caycuse watershed and beyond. Echoing the original 1993 ‘War-in-the-Woods’, which saw 1,000 people arrested and ultimately lead to the protection of the Clayoquot Sounds old growth forests, the 2021 reboot ultimately became Canada’s largest act of civil disobedience, with more than 1,200 people arrested by summer’s end.
You can read full coverage at The Guardian.com, the Narwhal.ca and The Globe and Mail.
