Friends of Davie Bay

My boyfriend spent his summers in Texada growing up, a small town in the Gulf Islands of BC. A small mining town of 1,100 residents that boasts a spectacular and diverse environment.

Upon arriving in Texada the first sight you will see is an enormous gravel pit from the island's Limestone mine.

Getting past that it's almost impossible not to spot eagles, deers, hawks, and vultures as you drive across the island. It's a pretty pristine place that feels like it's yet to be discovered.

There have been certain benefits from the mining industry, including an old gravel pit that has been filled with water and is now a stunning water hole to swim in:



I've been lucky enough to go to Texada a number of times now and I can see how it would be difficult for residents to balance mining activity while trying to perserve the ecological gem that it is.

It's a balance that not everyone agrees on. Lehigh Cement Company has applied to the Integrated Land Management Bureau to build a barge facility in Davie Bay in Texada.

Having visited Davie Bay myself I can say that it is easily one of the most beautiful, clean, and environmentally diverse areas of the entire island. Which is why the island is divided as to whether mining should be allowed in the area, which would likely devestate the ecosystems there.

A map of the proposed plans can be found here.

As the facebook group 'Davie Bay Think Tank...I think they should leave it alone' describes it:

'They will be loading the raw material near the forestry road at the land formerly known as terrace park. there will be a conveyor bringing the material over the cliff at the south end of the bay, just past the spit where the cabin* was.'

*The cabin can be found on the map.

The site also goes on to point out that the area is a Rockfish Conservation Area and that it's home to the rare prickly pear cactus.

The residents of Texada and opponents of the plan are even more concerned about the project since the BC Government decided not to have an environmental review of the area.

Why? Projects that are only considered 'large' are subject to review. In this case it means more than 250,000 tonnes per year. The proposed plan is for 240,000 tonnes a year. But the proposed infrastructure is capable of supporting a much larger mine...

Luckily there is some hope as the 'Friends of Davie Bay' non profit organization was formed to halt the project and West Coast Environmental Law have taken up the cause. On July 26 a petition was filed challenging the BC government’s failure to conduct an environmental assessment.

For more information on Friends of Davie Bay, check out their facebook page. For more information on the effects of the project and West Coast Environmental Law's case, click here.

The FODB are a David challenging a Goliath and welcome any financial contributions, whcih can be done here.

Stay tuned for more...

Environmentalists Need to Give Up

Really interesting article on how environmentalists need to give up hope and doing so is the only way we will be successful.

Check it out here.

Whale tries to escape Aquarium

Not really a whole lot to say:

Today's Fishing Technologies Pt ll

I think the best description I've heard of long line fishing (and I might have said it before) is that it would be equivalent of putting a string of traps in the woods that was miles and miles long to catch bears. You would catch some bears but you would also catch fox, wolves, rabbits, moose, deer, dogs, and the occasional human. Incredible wasteful and ridiculous right?

Welcome to longline fishing!

Longlining is a technique where hooks are placed on a very long line with bait, spread over miles of ocean. The Wake Project Society describes it as:

The practice of long lining includes laying a line of baited hooks ranging in length from 150m to 100km.1 It is a massively indiscriminate way of fishing, catching not just the targeted fish but all manner of sea creatures

You can find a really great illustration of how it works on their website here.

Despite recent improvements in regulation and sustainability, the technique is wasteful and
have been proven to be extremely harmful to particular species like sharks and Albetross. According to the Human Society over two billion hooks are put in the water with long lines each year.

Major countries that still use long lining include the US, China, Japan, and the European Union, although there are many more smaller nations using the technique.

Here's a video on long line fishing with fun music while fish are caught on hooks and try desperately to get away!:



PS. More scientific proof that fish feel pain.

BP Oil Spill in Photos

Check out this link for some amazing and sad photos of some victims of the oil spill.

BP: The Next Generation

Since the BP spill has yet to be contained, I have this visual of their offices being absolute chaos: paper flying out of printers, someone in the fetal position by the water cooler, a sweaty CEO loosening his tie while he continues to answer the same questions over and over to reporters, and all the blinds are closed so the staff can try to ignore the eggs and tomatoes being thrown from the public.

A little dramatic yes, but it's what we all hope the mood of Beyond Petrolium's offices are.

Apparently they are looking toward the future...

BP Oil is currently working on plans to drill in the arctic and it's called the Liberty Project. That's right, as more than 50% of Americans feel that BP Oil should be criminally prosecuted the company is proposing to drill in one of the two Polar Bear Seas, where half of America's polar bears currently live.

The NRDC who is suing BP for it's current spill has a letter you can fill out to express your feelings toward the new project here (only if you're American). The NRDC also states that like in the Gulf, BP is allowed to conduct its own environmental assesment and emergency response plan.

We all know how well that worked:

The Soy Scam

I've been getting asked a lot lately how I feel about the detrimental effects of soy and to be honest I hadn't really heard anything about it. I do know about rainforests being cleared in the amazon however the majority of that is used to feed livestock for human consumption.

However I wasn't surprised when I found this article that argues that the dairy industry funds lobby 'anti-soy' groups. Does this mean that the 'Got Milk?' ads aren't selling enough pus filled dairy?

Capturing the Meat Industry in Photos

It can be difficult for me to explain how strongly I feel about the meat industry and the ridiculously inhumane methods used.

However I'm blown away by these photos that seem to perfectly capture exactly what I feel so strongly about. Check them out here.

Tommaso Ausili's award winning photographs captured in an Italian meat factory:

Today's Fishing Technologies Pt l

Despite what I have claimed in the past, I now believe the biggest threat to the environment right now is today's common fishing practices.

Technologies developed in the past 30 years are far too destructive, wasteful, and unselective.

Because I don't want to overwhelm you my dear readers (all two of you), I've broken this up into an exciting 3 part series.

Today's subject is bottom trawling, a fishing technique which involves dragging a fishing net across the sea floor. To be able to give you an idea of just how ridiculous this common technique is, the equivalent would be to bulldoze an entire rainforest in the search for meat. Yes, you would catch some deer, moose, and bear... but you would have entire forests, swamps, and rivers decimated in the process.

Greenpeace has a really great video demonstrating how bottom trawling works:




Greenpeace International describes bottom trawling on their website:

"Bottom trawling involves dragging huge, heavy nets along the sea floor. Large metal plates and rubber wheels attached to these nets move along the bottom and crush nearly everything in their path. All evidence indicates that deep water life forms are very slow to recover from such damage, taking decades to hundreds of years - if they recover at all."

In addition to being disastrous to the ecosystems and fish populations, the Gulf Coast Preservation Society estimates that up to 50% of what is caught from bycatch is thrown back into the waters. This has resulted in the decline of many species who end up caught in fishing nets....for example up to 90% of sharks are caught as bycatch from tuna nets.

The good news is that some countries are moving towards banning bottom trawling, the bad news is that countries like Spain, Russia, and Iceland continue to bottom trawl. And those are the countries we know about. The Wake Project Society explains why its hard to know who's really doing what in international waters here.

The reasons for these fishing techniques and lack of regulation aren't definite, some believe that it's simply ignorance, others use the 'economic' argument (the fishing industry employees millions of people), and some believe that many fishing companies owe their governments millions of dollars for their boats and equipment that they have no choice but to pillage the seas.

But that's not really the point, because the result is going to be the same and none of those reasons hold any water (pun intended).

As mentioned before, the real crisis with our oceans is that we really don't know that much about them. We obtain up to 70% of our oxygen supply from our oceans and it's really anyone's guess as to what will happen if we completely empty our waters (which is slated to happen soon). Well, it isn't really anyone's guess... there are differing theories but ultimately no consensus.