Jennifer Houghton from Grand Forks tells us about the Forest Summit Convergence (boundaryforest.org) coming up October 26 and 27th in Nelson.
The red fish are also spawning along the shores of Kootenay Lake. Joanne Siderius chief naturalist at the Kokanee Creek Nature Centre tells us what to watch for, and how to protect the redds..
Jamie Hunter from Fridays for Future Nelson tells us about plans for September 18 School Strike for Climate, with candidates. There is a federal election happening, we’ll be talking about that too.
Environment News Oct 15 2019
The Extinction Rebellion global movement reached a tremendous moment in history this last week: thousands of arrests, many tens of thousands undertaking civil disobedience in countries all around the world. The Rebel Daily update says: We have proven to the world that this rebellion is a truly global movement, growing rapidly within and between nations, and comprised of people with the selflessness, the creativity and the courage to resist the madness of this ecocidal system.
There has been no slowing down of global actions in for example, Berlin, London, Australia, Turkey and many more
Mass arrests took place in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and most of all in Belgium. Well over 700 arrests took place 435 in Brussels alone. There as extraordinary courage shown by rebels in the face of some of the most appalling treatment the movement has yet faced tear gas, water hoses and police violence.
XR says: Whether it’s teargas in Brussels or Paris, injuries from excessive force in Prague, police discrimination in London, undemocratic new laws in Australia, or state repression in any other nation, our answer is always the same: compassionate, powerful nonviolence.
Every peaceful protester mistreated by the police means ten more in their place tomorrow; every video of state violence in a ‘democratic’ state is paid for with that government’s legitimacy.
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Almost 400 scientists have come out and show support for civil disobedience campaign aimed at forcing governments to take rapid action on the climate crisis.
The scientists say that failure could inflict “incalculable human suffering.”
In a joint declaration, the climate scientists, physicists, biologists, and engineers from some 20 countries abandoned academic neutrality and caution and came out supporting peaceful protesters who are risking arrest in bold Extinction Rebellion actions around the world.
Last Saturday some 20 scientists in their white laboratory coats to symbolize their research credentials, read out the text supporting the rebellion outside London’s century-old Science Museum in the city’s upmarket Kensington district.
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A logging company on Haida Gwaii has won a court ruling allowing it to continue to cut down trees in a forest that the Haida Nation is vitally important.
O’Brien and Fuerst Logging won an injunction in court against Haida Gwaii protesters who had been trying to halt cutting activity in the Tlaga Gaawtlaas Blue Jackets area near Masset.
The decision came down at B.C. Supreme Court Thursday morning under the direction of Justice Ronald A. Skolrood.
“The logging of the Bluejacket area would be a blatant act of disrespect and disregard of Haida title, sovereignty and jurisdiction, as well as a violation of provincial legislation,” Gaagwiis Jason Alsop, president of the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN), said.
The area contains a large supply of cedar trees, an invaluable resource for Haida carvers who use the wood for carvings and other art work.
Haida artist Robert Davidson, who carved the first totem pole to be raised in more than 100 years in 1969 from a tree found in the area, had filed an affidavit — a written statement confirmed by oath which is used for evidence — in B.C. Supreme Court hoping to stop the cutting.
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In Fortune Bay, Newfoundland workers have been cleaning up the decomposing remains of as many as 1.8 million farmed salmon that died in massive open water cages. Northern Harvest Sea Farms blamed on high water temperatures for the disaster and die off.
The calamity and the very messy cleanup, are fuelling debate around Newfoundlands rapidly growing salmon farming industry.
Fisheries unions say they’re worried about the impact on the local wild stock of millions of pounds of decomposed fish, which is being processed on land and dumped back at sea.
And they argue the aquaculture industry needs to adapt to the realities of climate change if it wants to avoid similar die-offs in the future.
One of the conservationists closely watching the cleanup said the layer of rotten fish sludge sitting on the bottom of Fortune Bay was more than 15 metres thick in some areas. The weight of the dead fish was so great it pulled some of the cages underwater, allowing surviving fish to escape, he said.
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Greta Thunberg is going to Alberta sometime soon. Recently she also visited Standing Rock in North Dakota, the cite of the huge standoff over a pipeline for many months.
Greta Said:
“It’s been very educational I must say, because you get so much experience from meeting all of these different cultures. The basic problem is the same everywhere. It is greed, ignorance, and unawareness — and basically, nothing is being done to protect our common future. Nothing is being done to save the planet. We as teenagers shouldn’t be the ones taking the responsibility, it should be those who are in power… and also it is because you here at Standing Rock, you are on the front line. You are the true warriors. You are the ones standing up for everyone else’s future and I have so much respect for you and I am so grateful that you have taken this fight. Just so you know, we look up to you a lot.”
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More than 80 Olive Ridley baby turtles have been spotted on the sand of Versova Beach in Mumbai the Guardian reports.
It had been decades since the turtles were last seen on the beach. Their return continues a migratory journey that has been going on for centuries.
The return of the turtles marks a huge victory for local Mumbai conservationists.
Two years ago, Versova Beach was covered in garbage, literally knee deep in plastic and waste.
Today, they say you can sunbathe on the sand.
Hundreds of volunteers spent nearly two years picking up 11,684,500 pounds of trash, clearing upstream rivers, putting systems in place to prevent future trash from accumulating, and teaching locals about sustainable waste management.
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A proposed constitutional amendment in Sweden seeks to enshrine the rights of Nature.
The change is aimed to protect the natural world from exploitation and abuse by giving it legal status previously reserved only for humans and select animals.
The new law was introduced by Swedish MP Rebecka Le Moine with the backing of a coalition of national and international groups—including Rights of Nature Sweden, Lodyn, and the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund’s International Center for the Rights of Nature. If it passes the change to the Swedish constitution follows similar changes like in Bolivia. But it would be a first in Europe.
Le Moine says “Economic growth has been the real goal, not a healthy environment. I’m tired of this era, where our arrogant worldview has driven us far beyond the planetary boundaries.”
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The Coldwater Indian Band is one of the First Nations challenging the TransMountain bitumen pipeline expansion in court.
Last June, the Coldwater Band got an email offer from a federal negotiator on the pipeline. They had three days to respond, and just 11 days after they got the offer, the federal government announced it was re-approving the pipeline. The government had to go through the process again after courts said the first round of consultation with First Nations on the pipeline was inadequate.
Now after what the Coldwater band calls “Canada’s Friday Night Proposal,” they are going to the Court of Appeal, again.
They say the Trans Mountain has abused the rights of the Coldwater band repeatedly,— not least of which is that the existing pipeline actually trespasses on Coldwater’s reserve, and, in their view, has been operating illegally for years/
Coldwater has a reserve population of a little more than 300 people and a band membership of about 850.
The Friday night proposal was only that the government would take a new approach to deciding where the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX) pipeline would be routed in relation to the Coldwater reserve, whose people are determined to protect the freshwater aquifer upon which they depend.
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Some indigenous governments from Southeast Alaska, Washington state and British Columbia have declared a “salmon emergency.”
Rob Sanderson Jr., fourth vice president of the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska said that “In the areas around British Columbia and Southeast Alaska, we’re getting low returns,”“There are some rivers that are not even getting salmon in British Columbia.”
The meeting of the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission was held in Ferndale Washington made the emergency declaration last week.
In A press release they blamed human activity for the decline in salmon, which they say sustains their communities.
“Neither the U.S. or Canada has addressed these issues, so the Indigenous Nations committed to come together and act on their shared concerns and use their collective ancestral knowledge,” the release said.
Declining salmon numbers have been recorded in the Pacific Northwest since the Environmental Protection Agency starting tracking the data in the 1980s.
One of the goals they discussed was that indigenous people to “have a seat at the table” when it comes to the decision-making process concerning mines and other issues that affect water quality.
https://www.peninsulaclarion.com/news/indigenous-meeting-declares-salmon-emergency/
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The magazine, Business in Vancouver reported last week, that B.C. salmon farming corporations were shocked with announcement by the federal Liberals of a pledge to work with the B.C. government to phase out open-net salmon farms by 2025.
Like the Liberal government’s moratorium on oil tanker traffic, the pledge applies to B.C. only. It does not include the Atlantic coast.
https://biv.com/article/2019/10/liberals-pledge-phase-out-open-net-salmon-farms
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