VICTORIA — The prospect of logging in an old-growth rainforest on southern Vancouver Island has generated calls for civil disobedience in the woods.
The Wilderness Committee says centuries-old cedar trees in the Walbran Valley near Lake Cowichan are part of the logging plans of forest company Teal Jones.
The Carmanah and Walbran valleys were the sites of anti-logging protests in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and they became part of what was called the War in the Woods on Vancouver Island, with hundreds of arrests.
The B.C. government established the 16,000-hectare Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park in 1991, but pristine forests close to the park were not protected.
Wilderness Committee spokesman Torrance Coste says Teal Jones has been marking zones where it wants to cut, but he warns that environmental groups will stage protests to prevent logging.
Officials from Teal Jones or the government, which grants logging permits, could not be immediately reached for comment.
