I have just returned from sunny and hot California where Wilderness Committee Manitoba staff member Robin Bryan won an international award for his successful efforts to protect Manitoba Parks from government-sanctioned clearcut logging.

Thanks to Robin’s work an area equivalent to 1.5 million soccer fields are now protected from logging in Manitoba provincial parks. Two provincial parks, Duck Mountain and Grass River, are still on the chopping block but Robin and his supervisor Eric Reder are optimistic they can put a halt to park logging, once and for all. A new film documenting Robin’s work is available here.

Also on our agenda in California was attending Bioneers – the largest “Eco-Conference” on earth. The Wilderness Committee was invited to attend Bioneers to distribute information to conference participants on the East-Shore Wilderness in Manitoba and Ontario. The East-Shore is the largest remaining intact, road-less forest in North America and supports 62 First Nation Communities, a billion songbirds, thousands of lakes and rivers and abundant caribou. But logging and mining operations penetrate deeper into this wilderness every day, so the rush is on to protect it. On a positive note, the outgoing premier of Manitoba Gary Doer just announced $10 million toward having part of the East-Shore designated as a United Nations World Heritage Site. And the Ontario government recently committed to protect half of the forests of Ontario. The Wilderness Committee wants them to start by protecting important areas like the East-Shore Wilderness. Write a letter to the Manitoba and Ontario Premiers and give them your opinion on protecting boreal forest like the East-Shore Wilderness. 

A final note – as our team of Canucks was departing sunny California we got a call informing us that we had won yet another park battle in Manitoba! Due in large part to Wilderness Committee efforts including rallies, protests and a wilderness research camp, the Manitoba government and Tim Horton’s abandoned their unpopular attempt to build a lodge on the isolated, wilderness shores of Meditation Lake in Whiteshell Provincial Park. The sweet taste of victory abounds!

By Andy Miller and Eric Reder