British Columbia

New fisheries minister wades into fish politics, cutting herring harvest in half

18/12/21

Author:

Rochelle Baker

Link:

Federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray is cutting the commercial herring fishing allocation to 10 per cent, down from 20 per cent last year, to protect the valuable forage fish and threatened salmon. Photo courtesy of Fisheries Ministry

Dec. 16, 2021

In her first major decision, new federal Fisheries Minister Joyce Murray has reduced the West Coast commercial herring fishery by half.

Wading into the thick of fish politics Thursday, Murray said the decision is based on an abundance of caution given herring are a critical food for endangered salmon stocks — further jeopardized by the double whammy of fire and floods in B.C. this year.

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Suzanne Simard sees the forest for the trees

18/12/21

Author:

Matt Simmons

Link:

National Observer

Suzanne Simard says returning now to the forests where she spent her childhood summers eating dirt is heartbreaking — because they’re gone. Photo by Brendan Ko

Dec. 17, 2021

Everything in an ecosystem is connected. A tiny sapling relies on a towering ancient tree, just like a newborn baby depends on its mother. And that forest giant needs the bugs in the dirt, the salmon carcass brought to its roots by wolves and bears and the death and decay of its peers. It thrives not in isolation, but because of dizzyingly complex connections with other trees and plants through vast but tiny fungal networks hidden below the forest floor.

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Reforming BC Timber Sales: How to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear

18/12/21

Author:

Saul Arbess

Link:

The Evergreen Alliance

With much of BC Timber Sales' old-growth logging on pause, the Province could direct the publicly-owned agency to focus its logging program on second-growth forests using ecosystem-based management.

Background

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Welcome to “Beautiful British Columbia”

17/12/21

Author:

Dogwood

Link:

You Tube

Dec 2, 2021

Here's a little tourist propaganda from the British Columbia Ministry of Greenwash. It celebrates the local results of increasing federal and provincial support for the fossil fuel industry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciwgpCrN1t4

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B.C. storms force Trans Mountain to tweak pipeline expansion route

15/12/21

Author:

Justin Hunter

Link:

The Globe and Mail

Material for the Trans Mountain Pipeline project sits in a storage lot outside of Abbotsford, B.C., on June 6. COLE BURSTON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Right! Tweaking! Will that be once a year or once every 6 months or.... How about when the pipeline is ruptured? Gene McGuckin

And the expansion is not to serve the Lower Mainland but for exporting oil! - Editor

Dec. 14, 2021

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Many NDP members upset at government's 'impossible balancing act' on gas pipeline

14/12/21

Author:

Vaughn Palmer

Link:

The Vancouver Sun

A notice to clear the road from RCMP sits in a tree fell across the road block access to Gidimt'en checkpoint near Houston, B.C., on Jan. 8, 2020. PHOTO BY JASON FRANSON /THE CANADIAN PRESS

Dec. 13, 2021

Party brass have worked behind the scenes to tamp down dissent, but some bubbled over in weekend convention

VICTORIA — The B.C. NDP convention on Sunday called for an independent investigation into allegations the RCMP used excessive force against protesters at the standoff over the Coastal GasLink pipeline.

The party accused the RCMP of setting back reconciliation with the Wet’suwet’en Indigenous people, whose hereditary leaders oppose construction of the natural gas pipeline through their traditional territory.

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Mother Nature is fighting back and winning

14/12/21

Author:

John Dorn

Link:

Penticton Herald

Dec. 14, 2021

First our warming climate caused the winters to be milder, and then the pine beetles were able to survive over the winter, and then the pine forests were overwhelmed by the beetles, and then the province let the foresters harvest the pine trees to salvage the crop, and then the wildfires came and burnt through the debris fuel, and then the atmospheric rivers dropped months’ worth of rain in a few hours, and then there were no trees to hold back the water, and then the creeks and rivers overflowed, and then the town of Merritt was evacuated to Kelowna and Kamloops.

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COVID Tested Canadian Media. They Failed, Says Nora Loreto

13/12/21

Author:

Sarah Krichel

Link:

The Tyee

Ambulances arrive at Surrey Memorial Hospital on April 2, 2020. Photo by Joshua Berson.

Dec. 9. 2021

Her new book finds pandemic coverage ignored critical issues. Now we’re paying the price.

You’ve likely read a news story that opens with an anecdote.

Like the Global News report on the death of Benito Quesada, a 51-year-old father of four and employee of meat company Cargill. Quesada moved from Mexico to High River, Alberta, with his wife Maria Mendoza-Padron and their kids. On May 12, Quesada died from COVID-19-related complications after spending a significant amount of time in a medically induced coma.

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Climate Disruption to Cost Billions for BC Highways

12/12/21

Author:

Vaughn Palmer

Link:

The Vancouver Sun

Road repairs are going around the clock at several sites, including these repairs to the Bottletop Bridge on Highway 5, the Coquihalla, where approaches at one end of the twin freeway bridge were wiped out by flooding caused by the Nov. 14-15 atmospheric river. PHOTO BY B.C. MINISTRY OF TRANSPORTATION /B.C. Ministry of Transportation

Nov. 11, 2021

Huge efforts underway to make temporary repairs to dozens of destroyed bridges and washouts, but designing and building better gets underway in earnest in 2022

VICTORIA — B.C. was still grappling with last month’s floods when the provincial government issued an invitation to construction and design firms to join in a plan to “build back better.”

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