Three people, including a Burnaby university student, have ended their hunger strike to protest old-growth logging in B.C.
Brent Eichler, president of Unifor local 950, Zain Haq, a 20-year-old student at SFU and Evie Mandel, a 65-year-old retired CPA and former staff member at the World Health Organization had been on a hunger strike for seven days outside 401 Burrard St. in solidarity with people protesting logging in the Fairy Creek area on Vancouver Island. Those protests have seen hundreds of arrests.
They have been calling for a meeting with Premier John Horgan, Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development Katrine Conroy and federal Minister for Environment and Climate Change Jonathan Wilkinson.
“The purpose of the meeting was to have a respectful dialogue on the state of old-growth logging and establishing a citizens’ assembly to oversee the reduction of carbon emissions to net zero by 2025,” says a news release from Extinction Rebellion Vancouver.
The trio did not receive a call from the premier or the ministers, but did hear from Green Party Leader and MLA for Cowichan Valley, Sonia Fursteneau.
"I am genuinely horrified by the rigidity of the premier and the apathy of the NDP members and MLAs in our own ridings,” said Haq, in a statement. “It is clear to me now that the provincial government not only doesn't care about our old-growth trees, but isn't bothered about life in general.”
The B.C. government announced on June 9 that it has deferred old-growth logging in the Fairy Creek watershed for two years.
Premier John Horgan made the announcement during a press briefing, noting that logging will be halted in 884 hectares of old-growth forest in Fairy Creek, along with 1,150 hectares of old-growth in the nearby Central Walbran area. Both locations are in Southern Vancouver Island.
The move comes after the province deferred the logging of nearly 200,000 hectares of old-growth forest across B.C. back in September 2020.
Environmental groups want an outright end to this logging instead of deferring it.
- With files from the Canadian Press
