THE OUTSIDE BLOG

Keystone XL isn’t the only pipeline in the works that will send oil from Alberta oil sands to far-off lands. Canadian pipeline builder Enbridge wants to build a new pipe to connect Edmonton with the port of Kitimat in northern British Columbia, where oil would be loaded onto tankers and shipped through the Douglas Channel, headed to Asia and California…The Raincoast Conservation Foundation is fighting the pipeline and appealed to gear-maker Patagoniato get the word out. Patagonia turned to filmmaker and surf ambassador Chris Malloy, who, along with a team of B.C. surfers and Raincoast’s Chris Darimont, sailed along the coast on a surf safari/reconnaissance mission to see the proposed tanker shipping lanes. The result is Groundswell, a short film that Malloy is currently editing for release this fall.

To read the full article please visit the Outside Online website.

Dozens of parks and protected areas in B.C. would be at risk of oil contamination if there was a spill from the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, says a peer-reviewed paper to be published later this year in Natural Areas Journal.

The paper, written by a team of scientists from Raincoast Conservation Foundation, the University of Victoria and the University of Calgary, found that a spill could affect parks hundreds of kilometres away from the pipeline.

To read the rest of the article please visit the Victoria Times Colonist website.

By Adam Pez  April 24, 2012

A Canadian-based team of scientists have produced the first peer-reviewed study on the threat Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline poses to B.C. parks and protected areas, finding 34 spots under threat of spills downstream of the pipeline.

Dr. Paul Paquet, the senior scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation who oversaw the academic work on the paper, said researchers undertook the study because of perceived problems with Enbridge’s pipeline proposal.

“The information [Enbridge] did provide was using a model that was proprietary,” he said. “They wouldn’t provide it to us. So that presented some obvious difficulties in assessing their own assessment.”

Even so, the group found holes in the parts of the Enbridge proposal they could access, said Paquet.

To read the full article please visit The Tyee website.

By Arnold Lim

After 35 years, Brian Falconer still loves navigating B.C.’s coastlines.

Unfortunately he finds himself navigating the political landscape, as often as the geological one, and wishes for a day that is no longer the case.

“Earth Day is a day we really contemplate the incredible blessings we have on this coast,” said the coordinator of marine operations for Raincoast Conservation. “It is a day to contemplate what makes our lives really rich and a day to contemplate what we could do to protect that.”

To read the full article please visit the Peninsula News Review website.

April 20, 2012

By Misty MacDuffee, Chris Darimont and Chris Genovali

As Earth Day approaches on Sunday our thoughts turn to two of the most iconic species in British Columbia, wild salmon and grizzly bears, as well as their intertwined relationship and how the choices we make are inextricably linked to their fates.

Despite the knowledge that many species depend on salmon, humans have never managed fisheries with wildlife in mind. A salmon can enter a fishing net or the mouth of a grizzly bear, but can we manage for the interests of both?

To read the full article please visit the Vancouver Sun website.

A new study published in the journal PLoS Biology by scientists at Raincoast and the University of California-Santa Cruz has found that providing more spawning salmon to grizzlies also benefits salmon, the ecosystem and in several cases even fisheries yields.  

The density, number of cubs and even the size of grizzlies is strongly coupled to salmon abundance.  The more salmon that are available to grizzlies, the less of each fish a bear eats, and the more carcass remains go to the ecosystem and other wildlife.  Conversely, when salmon abundance is low, bears will have fewer cubs (or none at all), more of each fish gets eaten by the bear and less salmon goes to the ecosystem and other species.

While this makes sense, we found that letting more salmon past the nets and hooks of fisherman also contributed to more salmon abundance in the long term.  Ultimately the study uses grizzlies as surrogates for salmon ecosystem function and evaluates trade-offs between grizzlies, salmon and fisheries.  Only in the Fraser River watershed, where grizzly populations are highly threatened, was there a cost to fishery yields to help recover grizzlies.  

Download the PLoS Journal paper 

Download the press release 

 Sat April 21 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

Mary Winspear Centre, Sidney, BC

with Saanich-Gulf Islands MP Elizabeth May & Emcee Arthur Black

Raincoast is an official intervener in the National Energy Board hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project and have submitted several volumes of evidence about the potential ecological impacts, risks and hazards of this project.

The show is presented by Raincoast’s Director of Marine Operations Brian Falconer, a licensed maritime captain whose 35+ years of exploring the B.C. and Alaskan coasts make him uniquely qualified to address and discuss the threats.  Enbridge has consistently minimized the oil spill risks by their selective omissions, under representations, and misleading claim that the chance of a major spill occurring on the coast from these giant oil tankers would be “once in 15,000 years”

                   at Pender Island Community Hall

Raincoast is an official intervener in the National Energy Board hearings on the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project and have submitted several volumes of evidence about the potential ecological impacts, risks and hazards of this project.

The show is presented by Raincoast’s Director of Marine Operations Brian Falconer, a licensed maritime captain whose 35+ years of exploring the B.C. and Alaskan coasts make him uniquely qualified to address and discuss the threats. Enbridge has consistently minimized the oil spill risks by their selective omissions, under representations, and misleading claim that the chance of a major spill occurring on the coast from these giant oil tankers would be “once in 15,00 years”

By Chris Genovali

The recent anniversary of the Exxon Valdez disaster casts a long shadow over impending Earth Day events in British Columbia, as two controversial pipeline projects propose to deliver what has become known as “the world’s dirtiest oil” from Alberta’s tar sands to the Pacific coast, posing a major hazard to BC’s wildlife.

The Northern Gateway and Trans Mountain pipelines also threaten to deliver habitat destruction and direct killing of wildlife by introducing the risk of chronic and catastrophic oil spills in terrestrial and marine environments that host rare, endangered, vulnerable, and ecologically valuable species and ecosystems.

To read the full article please visit the Victoria News website.

View the Global BC News Hour coverage on the hunt here, which includes interviews with photographer Andrew Wright and Raincoast science director Dr. Chris Darimont.

The Grizzly Bear Hunt started April 1st, and groups such as the David Suzuki Foundation want the annual legal trophy hunt to be stopped.

In a report posted on their website, the Suzuki Foundation said “381 grizzly bears were killed in B.C. last year, the majority of which were shot by hunters in the annual legal trophy hunt across the province.”

They are concerned that the hunt, coupled with ongoing industrial development in the area, means more and more bears will be killed each year.

“The continued legal killing of grizzlies for sport here in B.C. is happening at a time when the ‘great bear’ has perhaps never been more at risk from mega-projects that threaten to degrade and destroy its sensitive habitat,” said Dr. Faisal Moola, director of terrestrial conservation at the Foundation.

“Projects such as the proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline that will penetrate into the Great Bear Rainforest, and the recently approved Jumbo Glacier Resort in southeastern B.C. will further threaten the survival of grizzlies,” Moola added. “These populations are already under enormous pressure from trophy hunting, increasing conflicts with humans as towns, resorts, and other recreation areas expand into bear habitat, and climate change.”

The Raincoast Conservation Foundation said they would like to see large areas of the bears’ habitat off-limits to trophy hunting, and to see the area protected to ensure the bears have a future.

The David Suzuki Foundation said there was a 20 per cent increase in grizzly bear deaths from 2010 to 2011, and 87 per cent of these deaths are attributable to the legal trophy hunt.

The David Suzuki Foundation is calling on the provincial government to work with First Nations and others to implement a network of Grizzly Bear Management Areas (GBMAs), bear parks, where the species can roam, feed and breed without the threat of trophy hunting and further degradation of their sensitive habitat from development activities, such as mining, oil and gas production and transport and new resorts.

A petition has been started to ask the government to stop the trophy hunt every year.

So far it has more than 16,000 signatures.