Clayoquot Sound
Clayoquot Sound ( / ˈklækwɑt / pronounced) is the name of a rugged coastal area in the west of Vancouver Island , Canada of about 2,700 km². It extends from the Esowista Peninsula on Barkley Sound in the south to the Hesquiaht Peninsula on Nootka Sound in the north and includes the actual bay and the adjacent slopes up to the summit chain.
The bay is bordered by primeval forests of the temperate rainforest ecosystem , rivers, lakes and beaches. Part of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve , Strathcona Provincial Park, and several other protected areas are located in this area. The only larger towns are Tofino and Ucluelet (each about 1500 inhabitants), both on the largest headland in the south of the area. In the 1990s, the area was a focal point of the international conservation movement as a symbol of the conflict between conservation and forestry.
The word Clayoquot is the English description of the self-designation of the local Indian people, the Tla-o-qui-aht . Until 1861 the sound was called Wickaninnish Sound after its chief Wickaninnish and was named so in 1787 by the English captain Charles Barkley . It was initially mapped under this name, also on the maps drawn during George Vancouver's travels in 1792.
Geography and climate
The character of the area is shaped by the deeply cut rivers and bays, in which there are 210 islands of various sizes. At a distance of about 80 km between the endpoints of the area, a coastline of 922 km in length is created. In the coastal areas and hills are five complete river basins , including the Clayoquot and Kennedy Rivers and 194 lakes, including Kennedy Lake as the largest in the south.
The protected bays are characterized by a particularly mild climate . In the north of the area is Estevan Point, the weather station with the fewest frost days in all of Canada. Moisture- saturated sea winds from westerly directions are forced to ascend the mountains, which triggers frequent downhill rain . The long-term mean precipitation in Clayoquot Sound is 3295 mm.
nature
The amount of precipitation qualifies the forests on the slopes as rainforests of temperate latitudes . They are mainly composed of the giant tree of life and the Canadian hemlock .
In the hills of Clayoquot Sound live among other wolves , black bears , cougars , sea and river otter and elk . Gray whales , orcas , common porpoises and white flanked porpoises , several species of dolphins and seals and Steller sea lions live in the Pacific Ocean . Notable among the bird species in the area are the bald eagle and golden eagle , osprey , marmelalk and spotted owl . The rivers are home to salmon and trout .
history
A first settlement can be proven in the Neolithic . The oldest finds date from the 6th millennium BC. Today three peoples reside here: the Hesquiaht in the north, the Ahousaht in the middle and the Tla-o-qui-aht in the south. Traditionally the Indians live mainly from fishing , since the 1990s tourism has been an important source of income.
In 1774, Spanish seafarers were the first Europeans to reach the waters around Vancouver Island, four years later James Cook made the first systematic records of the region and its inhabitants. From around 1785 to 1805 the region was at the center of the Pacific triangular trade between Northwest America, China and Europe, with sea otter pelts and beaver pelts being the main focus. After 1825, Russian and British fur hunters only sporadically passed Clayoquot Sound.
In 1955 the provincial government granted logging rights for a little more than half of the Clayoquot Sound to the forest company MacMillan Bloedel (taken over in 1999 by competitor Weyerhaeuser ). In the following year the rights for almost the entire rest of the area were given to British Columbia Forest Products - the license was later sold and has been with International Forest Products - Interfor - since 1992 . The then Minister of Forestry was later sentenced to imprisonment for corruption in connection with the issuing of logging licenses.
In the 1960s, the companies began using the forests by clear cutting , sometimes three times faster than allowed by the license. The affected areas were initially small-scale, but because they were being cut down to the banks of the river, rainfall washed earth into the watercourses; the silting caused local fish stocks to collapse. In 1979, residents of Tofino founded the Friends of Clayoquot Sound to collect and document the damage caused by forestry.
In 1981 the Native American First Nations of the region (who belong to the Nuu-chah-nulth ) united to protest against the destruction of their homeland by the timber industry. The following year, a court recognized the side effects of the deforestation on the fishing rights of the Indians, but did not award them any injunctive relief because of the supposedly minor damage. Also in 1982, by decision of the provincial government, an expert commission was set up to examine the methods of forestry in the area and make recommendations.
In 1984 the peoples unilaterally proclaimed the island of Meares , which was threatened by deforestation, as a tribal park and demanded protection in recognition of its cultural autonomy. Later that year, the provincial government ignored the Commission's Green Forestry Guidelines and upheld logging rights for 95% of the disputed area, prompting Indians for the first time with roadblocks and other acts of civil disobedience to industry. In 1985, the Supreme Provincial Court issued an interim order on the deforestation of Meares Island pending a decision on the lawsuits (the proceedings are still not formally closed in 2007). In 1988 McMillian Bloedel built an illegal forest road into an area that was not yet approved for use and sparked massive protests. In the following year, a new task force was convened, in which nature conservation associations and representatives of the tourism association are represented for the first time. Because the deforestation continued unabated in the study area, the critics broke off their participation in the working group in 1991.
Around 75% of the virgin forests on Vancouver Island have now been cleared. In Clayoquot Sound, because of its remoteness, the largest contiguous areas are in a natural state.
Tourism in Ucluelet and Tofino has increased significantly since the 1990s , in particular ecotourism such as whale watching and hikes in the rainforests have opened up a source of income for the population beyond fishing and forestry. At the same time, the area is attracting the attention of conservationists across North America and as far as Europe.
In the course of 1992, global environmental organizations with the participation of Greenpeace planned a boycott against wood and wood products from Canada. In early 1993, the Provincial Government of British Columbia declared that Clayoquot Sound would not be included in a new program to scientifically review land use rights and practices, but instead decided that the smallest and most remote part of the Megin Valley area was under protection and the remainder should be cleared. The conflicts escalated and Clayoquot Sound became the main focus of the conservation movement in North America, with worldwide influence. Conservationists from all over Canada, the USA and representatives from Europe traveled to and gathered in a protest camp. Up to 4000 participants took part at the same time, they learned about the natural environment and the culture of the First Nations and took part in blockades of the forest roads around Kennedy Lake, during which over 900 people were provisionally arrested during the summer, including Thilo Bode , Chairman of Greenpeace International . Artists like Midnight Oil took part in the protests. At the same time, negotiations began with the First Nations on a preliminary agreement on the formal participation of the Indians.
In 1994, the provincial government agreed with the Indian peoples on a provisional right of veto. In further negotiations, conditions were drawn up on how the use of wood can be made more environmentally friendly. This includes protection zones on watercourses and roads and the avoidance of clear-cutting over a size that depends on the slope of the slope. An autonomy statute for the First Nations has been discussed in Canada since 1995, and the effects on existing land use contracts are among the points of contention.
In 2000, UNESCO named Clayoquot Sound, with a protected area of 349,947 hectares, a biosphere reserve .
In 2001 the Pacific Rim National Park was expanded to include the Long Beach Unit in Clayoquot Sound between Ucluelet and Tofino, as well as the Broken Island Group , a group of islands south of the Sound. Since then, several small protected areas in the form of provincial parks have been established and a joint working group of the provincial government and the Nuu-chah-nulth has drawn up usage plans for all parts of the Clayoquot Sound until 2005, in which a goal of 40% protected primeval forests is specified. The logging licenses are formally still in force, negotiations are ongoing about the implementation of the usage plans.
Current situation
In 2007 the groups involved began to reposition themselves. In the meantime, some of the unions that represent the workers in the sawmills and pulp mills are campaigning for the preservation of the old forests. This has to do with the fact that raw wood exports are now bypassing the Canadian mills and thus endangering jobs on Vancouver Island. In 2007, the second large timber company in the Interfor area ( International Forest Products Ltd ) sold its logging license in the main Clayoquot Sound area to a forest company owned by the First Nations, but still holds a previously unused license for the remote northern part.
In 2008, local groups began to fight against a copper mine. 13 km from Tofino, on Catface Mountain, which is in direct view of the village and towering over the harbor, in the traditional territory of the Ahousaht, an open-cast mining project is to be built, the Catface copper mine . The deposit comprises copper, molybdenum and small amounts of silver and gold, it has been known since the first explorations in the 1960s, but its development only became profitable after the year 2000 because of the increasing raw material prices. Upon completion, the mine would take up an area of 4,000 hectares, plus an appropriate infrastructure. The backfilling of rivers and bays with overburden and the pollution of soils and surface waters with acidic wastewater from the extraction of the metals from the ore are considered threats to the region. The mining company Imperial Metals took over the lead in November 2009 when they did the original Prospectors and owners of the claims bought Selkirk Metals . Around a third of the mountain would disappear with the mine.
Mainstream Canada , one of the largest aquaculture operators , has been planning to raise salmon on 56 hectares since 2011. The planned area is around Plover Point on the east side of Meares Island . Experience with Atlantic salmon in other locations shows that this is at the expense of the natural Pacific salmon stocks and other populations such as herring. The existing cormorant farm is to be sold to the Ahousaht Indians , who are under pressure from high unemployment.
The protection status of the biosphere reserve is being reduced step by step by means of government permits in Victoria, which environmental organizations are resisting.
The Swarm by Frank Schätzing
In the thriller “ The Swarm ” by Frank Schätzing , the clayoquot sound is a main location of the novel and home of the Indian whale researcher Leon Anawak. The book addresses, among other things, the conflict between the timber industry and nature conservationists.
See also
Web links
- Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve (official site)
- Friends of Clayoquot Sound
- Weyerhaeuser has been the owner of the logging rights in most of the area since 1999
- Western Canada Wilderness Committee : Clayoquot Sound Projects
Individual evidence
- ^ Andrew Scott: The Encyclopedia Of Raincoast Place Names. Harbor Publishing, Madeira Park, BC, 2009
- ↑ UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. Clayoquot Sound. In: Ecological Sciences for Sustainable Development. UNESCO , accessed April 11, 2013 .
- ↑ WCWC press release on cooperation ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. dated March 12, 2008
- ↑ Port Alberni Authority: Review of the Port Alberni Forest Industry April 30, 2007, p. 14 (footnote 8)
- ↑ Friends of Calyoquot Sound: Overview of Logging in Clayoquot Sound (2005-2009) , as of April 2010, p. 17
- ↑ Friends of Clayoquot Sound: Fact sheet about potential open-pit mining of Catface Mountain , June 2010
- ↑ Positive experience at Port Alberni open house ( Memento of the original from December 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Mainstream Canada website.
Coordinates: 49 ° 12 ′ N , 126 ° 6 ′ W