BREAKING: Fairy Creek blockade breached; logging machinery moving toward headwaters

Rainforest Flying Squad statement: ‘Come to Fairy Creek, the time is now’

Unceded Pacheedaht and Ditidaht Territories (Fairy Creek and Caycuse Watersheds, Vancouver Island, BC) — The Rainforest Flying Squad issued a statement early today, Friday, June 4, that the RCMP has breached a key Fairy Creek blockade at Waterfall Camp and that logging company Teal Jones has dispatched grading equipment in an attempt to complete a road toward a site in the Fairy Creek headwaters with some of the largest old-growth yellow cedars.

Below is the statement from Rainforest Flying Squad:

Waterfall Camp at Fairy Creek has been breached!
Two-thousand year-old yellow cedar trees are at immediate risk.
A grader is moving up the road at this moment.
Teal Jones is attempting to complete the road over the ridge into the Fairy Creek headwaters, where the largest 2000—year-old cedars stand.
This is the road-building that was stopped last August 10, when Rainforest Flying Squad built the first blockade.
This morning at about 4:30 a.m., 10 plainclothes RCMP backpackers moved into the camp.
If ever there was a time to get to Fairy Creek, the time is now!
This week, all week. Please come!
Ridge Camp GPS: 48.6416269, -124.3619269

Follow the Rainforest Flying Squad on Facebook and Instagram for more information.

In response, Stand.earth International Program Director Tzeporah Berman, who was arrested May 22 at the Waterfall Camp at Fairy Creek, issued the following statement:

“My heart is breaking right now. If they breach the ridge, the chainsaws are heading toward the largest ancient yellow cedars, trees up to 2,000 years old. Premier Horgan needs to act now to put in place a stop work order so that these issues can be resolved before these giants are gone forever.”

Premier Horgan and his NDP government made a commitment to implement all 14 recommendations from an independent, expert panel on old growth; including to immediately defer logging in at-risk old growth forests. On May 19, 2021, a team of independent scientists released new mapping and analysis identifying the areas that meet the panel’s criteria for deferral, including parts of Ditidaht and Pacheedaht Territories like Caycuse and Fairy Creek.

Despite the province’s pledge to defer logging on old growth and chart a paradigm shift for forestry in B.C., over the last year the provincial NDP government oversaw a 43% increase in old growth logging approvals.

Stand.earth is calling for Premier John Horgan and Forests Minister Katrine Conroy to act immediately to put in place logging deferrals in the 1.3M hectares of remaining at risk old growth in British Columbia — that the expert panel and independent scientists have identified to reduce tensions and the threat of violence or injury in Fairy Creek and keep old growth forests standing — while the province undertakes a paradigm shift for forestry rooted in Indigenous rights and consent, ecological values, and community stability.

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Media contact: Tzeporah Berman, International Programs Director, tzeporah@stand.earth, +1 604 313 4713 (Pacific Time)

Photo caption (also available on Twitter): Tzeporah Berman of Stand.earth (second from right) stands with other forest protectors around one of the old-growth trees in the Fairy Creek headwaters on Friday, May 21, 2021.

Additional photo available on Twitter: A photo of the biggest old-growth yellow cedars in the Fairy Creek headwaters taken by Tzeporah Berman of Stand.earth on Friday, May 21, 2021.