A Ban on Parks Logging in Manitoba

A Ban on Logging in Parks

By David Nickarz

The Province of Manitoba has decided to ban logging from all provincial parks (except Duck Mountain) by April 1 of 2009. This is good news.

It’s about time that our Provincial Parks were saved from logging. People have been working for 18 years to accomplish this goal. It’s a credit to people such as Pat and Russ Popp, Eric Reder and Billy Granger of the Wilderness Committee, Ron Thiessen of CPAWS and numerous park users who spoke out successfully for our Wilderness.

The late Alice Chambers worked for years to preserve our parks before anyone thought of even asking for logging to be removed from parks.

I’ve been working on this issue since about 1990. Tembec (Then Abitibi-Price), the newsprint mill in Pine Falls, Manitoba was renewing their logging licence and had successfully lobbied the provincial government to allow them to log in parks. They raised the spectre of job losses due to the mere 5% of their wood sources that came from parks.

In 1993 the Parks Act was amended to allow logging in parks all over Manitoba. By 1997 parks had been carved up into land use categories, allowing for resource extraction in the oldest stands of trees. The older trees (meaning more volume of wood for the mill) in parks were targeted first—perhaps in an effort to avoid any new conservation measure that would get logging out of the parks.

The once lush forests near Bird Lake, Cat Lake and Long Lake have been permanently degraded for their private profits. Tembec’s legacy is marked by clear cuts, degraded soils and displaced wildlife. If you look at a ‘forest inventory’ (what an awful term for a living ecosystem) map of Nopiming Park, you see that most of the areas off limits for logging are recent burn sites, which have younger trees not suitable for the mill. The other places are too close to cabins and campgrounds.

The province will pay Tembec more than three million dollars to get out of Nopiming Park. This is as a ransom for our public heritage. Tembec has profited off the destruction and degradation of Nopiming ever since it was a park established in the late 1960’s. They’ve roaded it, clear cut it and left it a shell of its former self. Over the years, they have also been charged for violating numerous conservation laws.

They’ve made their clear cuts too big, logged right up to rivers and streams, logged too close to bald eagle’s nests, clear cut in threatened Woodland Caribou habitat and spray toxic pesticides. They spill oil in the forest, leave garbage behind and lie about it all through their front man Vince Keenan.

Tembec should be held accountable for these crimes against nature. They should be paying three million dollars to start reforestation work in the park. Their assets need to be seized and the mill needs to shut down. They pollute the mouth of the Winnipeg River to the tune of thirty million gallons per day. They burn coal to fuel their mill and don’t even use recycled paper anymore.

The mill buildings should be torn down and the land reforested. The name of the town should be changed to Pine Stands, Manitoba.

Does this all sound too unrealistic to you? So did asking for a parks logging ban 18 years ago.

Listeriosis

I imagine the best way not to get Listeriosis is to stop eating pre-packaged, pre-cut sandwich meat. That stuff is really not good for you in the first place, and now can kill you. I haven't eaten meat or any animal products for 16 years. Do I know that it has done me any good? Yes. I don't have Listeriosis.

I Need to Start Writing Again

By David Nickarz

I haven’t written anything in my blog for a while. I want to update you on what I’m up to and what I’m about to do.

I just spent a week at the Youth Activist Retreat in Clearwater, Manitoba. The retreat is for youth between the ages of 16 and 18 to learn and share stories about activism. I ran a workshop about Direct Action which covered quite a bit of ground.

There was some theory about non-violence, civil disobedience, media work and the dangers of activism. I used many of the actions that I’ve participated in as working examples of the theory. I offered the same workshop for three days and after the third one we did a mock action.

I thoroughly enjoyed the work and also helped with dishes and cleaning up.

There was one workshop that needs mentioning. It was the Sustainable Action workshop ran by Lindsay. Ironically, it was rushed because it started late and the bus was waiting for us, so it was cut short. It was also the workshop that the organizers and mentors needed the most. Activists are the most self-destructive folk out there—sad to say.

Next year I want to make an effort to incorporate this theme in all the workshops, maybe culminating in a final talk that ties it all together.

Operation Musashi

In June the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society officially announced plans to return to the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary to once again oppose illegal Japanese whaling activities. This will be the Sea Shepherd's fifth campaign to Antarctic waters, my third, and will be called Operation Musashi. Miyamoto Musashi is the legendary Japanese strategist who wrote the Book of Five Rings. For more information on this campaign, please go to www.seashepherd.org.

This could be the most important campaign for the whales. For the last two years, we have been able to prevent hundreds of whales from being slaughtered. This might be the year that we shut it down for good.

I’m heading to Australia in November to meet the ship. I will be meeting with several veteran crew members and then spending several weeks in a metal box, out on the ocean with cameras in our face the whole time to film the drama.

I think Animal Planet will be filming the action again.

As you may have guessed, life on the ship can be extreme—joy and pain at the same time. Nothing compares to the beauty of the Antarctic waters, the wildlife and the remoteness of that wilderness. I’m looking forward to it.