For many travelling to Walbran this Saturday, it is your first time to this valley, perhaps even your first time to ancient forest wilderness of such an expanse that you can walk into it for a whole day without emerging out the other side.  You will spend much of your journey getting there passing industrial logging operations until finally arriving at Walbran, a shocking contrast.  Try to imagine, on the way home, what you would have seen in relatively recent years when those valleys were entirely ancient forest.

Here are a couple of quotations I found very thought-provoking and inspiring:

Hear the roaring vastness of a great valley, or the sigh of wind in the treetops, or the eternal thunder of breakers on the shore. Then go back and speak to the world from your heart.  Randy Stoltmann (1962-1994), Written by the Wind

…what the forest industry calls a forest is not a forest at all.  It is simply an illusion that a grotesquely simplified collection of commercially useful tress planted like a field of tomatoes can be regarded as a forest.  There is so much that we don’t know about all the factors that comprise a forest – the soil, water, air, plants, soil microorganisms, insects and so on.  Only nature and time have grown a forest in the fullest sense, and the forest industry’s claims that it can grow high-quality trees as crops with “rotation cycles” of seventy or eighty years are either fantastic hallucinations or deliberate deceptions.  David Suzuki, Rainforest, Ancient Realm of the Pacific Northwest

It’s beginning to look like it will be a very fun day in the Walbran Valley on August 22nd, and quite a number of people have already signed up to join the expedition.  If you would like to take part in the organized transportation and haven’t already requested to be put onto the list of participants, please let us know; we will be communicating more details back to you all through an email.  You can reach the Friends at friendsofcarmanahwalbran@gmail.com, or use the links on our contact page.  Of course you are very welcome to simply make your own way to the valley on Aug 22nd, but if you can drop us a line to let us know you are doing so, you would be welcome to join us for snacks and all organized activities.  We would also love it if you could participate in the carpool – we are always in need of more drivers.

Thank you to everybody who came out to last night’s community forum at the Fernwood Community Centre!  It was a great success and we were so happy to see so many people passionately opposed to the logging plans in the central Walbran valley.

An immediate action you can take is to write to the government using the Wilderness Committee’s handy letter writing tool.  Tell the BC Premier and MLAs why you are opposed to the logging plans and ask them to deny Teal Jones their logging permit application!

New driving instructions have been posted for using the Bugaboo Main to access Walbran.  You need a 4×4 in a few places, but it cuts approximately 1 hours off your driving time.

Walbran is under immediate threat of logging and needs your help!  Please please take the opportunity to write a letter to the BC government telling them that this rare, valuable piece of forest needs to be protected for future generations!

Look: the Wilderness Committee even has a handy letter-writing tool!

A new noticeboard for visitor information was built this weekend!  All that is left is a little roof before it rains. It has the Wilderness Committee map and some of their cards and also some our flyers. There was a group of hikers who came later on Sunday who took cards and flyers, it works!!! Weather was so hot and buggy but with so many flowers, Tiger Lilys, Arnica, Columbine, Canterbury Bells and many more blooming along the river.

Thanks to our wonderful and dedicated volunteers who have been improving the boardwalk and raising awareness about this precious area.