Our municipal election could determine the future of the North Cowichan forests. Or at least for the next few hundred years while evolution sets a new course.
For four years, public consultation about the future of the Six Mountain Forest has unfolded as the North Cowichan Forest Review. Where Do We Stand (WDWS) has just released Voice of the Unexpected, a video about the community forests, to remind citizens to get out to vote, to protect the forest ecosystems that are our backyard— the place where change in the world begins.
Unexpected tells the story of the past four years of the forest campaign and review, not as a forest documentary, more like a forest fairytale, allegorical, metaphoric, and also literal.
But it is not the whole story — so many things that have happened since February 2019 when Council declared a pause of logging of the community forests for public consultation about their highest good. The story is too big to be covered in four little videos.
For those how are new to the story, WDWS is a public platform advocating for the protection of the Six Mountain Forest, as our group calls the North Cowichan Forest Reserve. In December 2018, WDWS released its first video, Legacy, to alert citizens about logging coming over the tops of six mountains. It touched thousands of residents and so began the grassroots forest campaign.
Legacy tells the history of what we believe is our greatest gift as a community — the right to protect 5000 hectares of forest— for our community owns the six mountains. Four years ago few people in North Cowichan knew this. Now thousands do.
Like our second video, Owl and Hummingbird, a story for children of all ages, there is a First Nations feel to Unexpected, but the videos are not about tribes and nations— they are about individuals and communities coming together. Our group happens to be of diverse backgrounds, cultures, genders — the differences are superficial. What is real is the love we share for nature, forests, children. What is real is the power of our community, including people of all ancestors, to come together to enact profound change as no other community on the continent. Together, we have a remarkable opportunity to commence a reconciliation with nature. Perhaps by doing this we may reconcile deeply within and between ourselves.
We can all trace our roots back to ancestors who revered nature as all powerful, beyond human possession and succession. There is an international movement to establish the legal personhood and inviolable rights of ecosystems. We have the legal right to proclaim the personhood and sovereignty of six mountains of rare, endangered forest ecosystems.
We do not need to argue over who should own them. We do not need to negotiate over who should profit from them. Carbon credits are a means to pay for all that must be done to allow the forests to become old growth. Much of the six mountains, second-growth, naturally regenerated forests, is already functioning as old growth— it is the story of Dobell’s fourth video, New Old Growth: Voice of Promise— soon to be released.
So what do we do now, as citizens of North Cowichan? Will voting make a difference?
Enormous resources have gone into the forest review. There have been public workshops, surveys, many meetings. Staff, council, consultants and citizens have invested thousands of hours into the consultation process. We are nearly done— could be done by end of 2022. To not finish the review would be shameful.
People have asked us, “If we want to protect the forests who do we vote for.” To be fair, we arrived at two simple questions we put forward to all North Cowichan candidates. To answer the questions does not require knowing all the complexities of the forest review:
If elected will they commit to finish the forest review? And until the review is completed, will they commit to continue the moratorium on logging?
The candidates’ answers are posted on WhereDoWeStand.ca. Those who did not respond have done so eloquently—for what we do not say, may say everything.
In North Cowichan we live in a paradise. We have the right to vote to protect it. Great gifts come with responsibility. It is a responsibility to vote.
Legacy and Voice of the Unexpected are on WhereDoWeStand.ca