Katherine Engqvist
Special to the Gazette
The Sierra Club hosts an evening stroll through the local rainforest on Wednesday (June 24) that will include the opportunity to enjoy some of B.C.’s finest old-growth trees and learn how climate change is effecting the ecosystem that goes along with them.
Jens Wieting, forest and climate campaigner of the Sierra Club B.C., and Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), invite the public to join them on a guided walk this evening (June 24) from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Goldstream Provincial Park to discuss old-growth, carbon, and climate change.
“If we increase forest protection and increase forest management…we can actually restore the ability of our forest to reduce carbon,” said Wieting.
A portion of his discussion will be on the shift forests have made to emitting carbon instead of storing them. Forests used to absorb more carbon than they lost but now the opposite is happening, the result of things like logging and poor forest management said Wieting.
“We have to work very hard to control these carbon emissions,” he said.
Carbon emissions will not be the only subject discussed on the tour. Wieting will also explain the progress made in protecting the Great Bear Rainforest and Clayoquot Sound and what still needs to be done.
He said raising awareness and public input are some of the reasons for these guided walks.
Wieting said that the B.C. government is expected to release an updated Climate Action Plan and along with it a logging proposal for the Great Bear Rainforest for public input.
Wieting said that they want to see “approximately 70 per cent off-limits to logging in the Great Bear Rainforest,” which “allows enough habitat for species like bears and salmon.”
Participants in the walk are asked to meet in Goldstream Provincial Park’s first main parking lot off of Highway 1 and that dogs remain on leash for the duration of the walk.
For more information go to the ancientforestalliance.org.