Video: ACTION ALERT - Demand protection for the last wild spotted owls
Joe Foy, Protected Areas Campaigner
There are only three known spotted owls remaining in the wild. That heartbreaking detail makes the news I have to share with you all the more shocking and urgent.
Two of these — a confirmed breeding pair that recently had chicks — resides in the Spuzzum Valley, located in southwest BC’s Fraser Canyon area, the backyard of the Nlaka'pamux community of Spuzzum First Nation.
I’ve just returned from documenting active clearcut logging of their old-growth forest habitat. It’s devastating to witness the process of extinction and degradation brought about by out-of-control industrial logging.
he BC government's own logging agency, BC Timber Sales, is responsible for clearcutting in Spuzzum Valley. Rather than protecting the old-growth forest habitat the spotted owls need to survive, the BC government has captured chicks and taken them to an owl breeding facility in Langley.
Under the federal Species at Risk Act, the federal government must step in and take emergency action when the province fails to do so. That's why Wilderness Committee and our lawyers at Ecojustice just sent a petition to the federal Minister of Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson, demanding he recommend the government issue an emergency order and halt all logging in Spuzzum Valley.
The last breeding pair of spotted owl — and this entire species in Canada — doesn’t have a fighting chance to live and produce offspring without this order. If the minister fails to act, we will be forced to head to court.
If you’re able to chip in to support the campaign right now, that would mean a lot. Any amount today means we can continue on-the-ground monitoring of the habitat and push the federal government to put an immediate halt to logging.
Will you join me in this push? Take a few moments to use our letter-writing tool and send a note to Canada’s environment minister urging him to take fast action and stop this terrible clearcut destruction in the Spuzzum Valley.
The action you take today could tip the balance in favour of survival for the spotted owl and the many wondrous creatures of the old-growth forests.
