Thirty years after the “War in the Woods”, Stephanie Kwetásel’wet Wood and David Suzuki travel to Clayoquot Sound to question the legacy of the historic logging protests, and why battles are still happening today to protect old growth forests.
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For many Canadians, their introduction to clearcut logging came from news reports about the Clayoquot Sound protests back in 1993, known as the War in the Woods, when some 12,000 people showed up on the remote west coast of Vancouver Island to join the blockades. While much of the area was spared, elsewhere in British Columbia, clearcutting remained the status quo, and old growth forests have continued to fall. Today, precious little old growth remains, and First Nations and environmentalists are again taking a stand.
For the Tla-o-qui-aht and other central Nuu-Chah-Nulth nations, standing up to protect their forests didn’t begin in 1993. The War in the Woods followed a successful fight to protect Meares Island in 1984, and before that, thousands of years of stewardship rooted in a worldview that sees the human and non-human worlds as interconnected. Today, they are exploring new land use visions and models of Indigenous-led conservation, including phasing out old growth logging altogether. But as communities struggle to balance environmental stewardship with meeting their economic needs, the hurdles to protecting these ancient forests have grown ever more complicated.
With an industry that prioritizes profits over the health of the forests, and precious time left to save these intact ecosystems, the stakes in today’s War for the Woods could not be higher.
1 X 44min, CBC Docs ‘The Nature of Things’, Makwa Creative / Antica Productions (2023)