Mission



For over 30 years BC Spaces for Nature has campaigned to protect parks and wilderness throughout British Columbia. BC Spaces for Nature has evolved through many phases, including its past incarnation as the Tatshenshini Wild organization, which headed up the highly successful international campaign to create the 2.3 million acre Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Park. This exceptionally beautiful and important park forms the heartland of world`s largest complex of World Heritage Sites, including Wrangell St. Elias, Glacier Bay and Kluane National Parks.



BC Spaces currently focuses on a number of issues integral to wilderness preservation. We continue to work to defend BC`s Great Wild Spaces, including such outstanding places as the Chilcotin region and the Stikine River. Our Jobs and Environment Program promotes the protection of wilderness while addressing the fears of job loss in rural BC. Most recently BC Spaces for Nature has become involved in delivering the Wilderness Education Program, which focuses on inspiring students and teachers alike to make caring for Wild Nature part of their lives.



Campaigns



BC`s Wilderness Protection Program



BC Spaces for Nature Wilderness Protection Program focuses on preserving BC`s Great Wild Spaces.



Often achieved by linking together a complex of protected areas, Great Wild Spaces are vast natural areas which have global conservation significance and which are large enough to ensure that entire ecosystems, and especially large predator-prey wildlife populations, will survive over time.



Great Wild Spaces have the potential to serve over the long term as earth`s premier sanctuaries for biodiversity, wildlife, and wilderness. Great Wild Spaces are world preserves for Nature, and include such sites as Africa`s Serengeti and the U.S. National Parks of the Colorado Plateau.



Great Wild Spaces at Risk



The calibre of wilderness remaining in British Columbia still offers the chance to bequest a number of globally significant Great Wild Spaces to future generations.



Great Wild Spaces in our province of particular interest to BC Spaces for Nature include:



* The Tatshenshini

* The Chilcotin

* The Stikine Watershed



Wilderness: British Columbia`s legacy



British Columbia offers one of the premier opportunities remaining on the continent to preserve wilderness, old growth forests, wildlife and biodiversity. With the largest range of ecologic variety of any jurisdiction in North America, BC incorporates almost all the landscapes found in Alaska, Alberta, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. In fact, this one province encompasses 14 biogeoclimatic zones-or ecosystems-ranging from coastal beaches to 15,000 foot high glacial peaks; and from Canada`s only desert [in the south Okanagan] to temperate rainforests.



The Threat: The Irreversible Loss of Nature



Parks are biological lifeboats. And since wilderness landscapes are the places in the world where the genetic record of Nature remains the most complete, they serve as modern day Arks. This being so, completing the BC parks system is of the highest environmental priority.



Unfortunately, over the decades BC`s natural environment has been extensively impacted by forestry, mining, commercial fishing, power development, and roading. Today World Wildlife Fund-Canada research indicates that 60% of BC`s land base-80% in the southern half of the province-is either already developed or committed to resource and industrial use. For example:



* By 1990, two thirds of Vancouver Island`s ancient forests had been cut, with half of this logging taking place since 1954.

* In the vast Cariboo-Chilcotin Forest Region of interior BC [which encompasses about 15% of the provincial land area], half of all the regions` trees were cut in just eight years: from 1988 to 1996.