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IN ORDER TO MAKE THE CASE to government for protecting a greater fraction of the Discovery Islands from clearcut logging, this project is undertaking a comprehensive survey of forests and logging on publicly owned land on the islands—and what is being lost. Can you help?
The Discovery Islands, lying at the intersection of eight different provincial ecosections, are a biodiversity hot spot. At the same time, the mild, moist climate is ideal for growing large trees that can live for several hundred years, relatively safe from fire, making this area ideal for a protected carbon reserve. The spectacular physical nature of rugged, mountainous islands and deep fiord-like channels also makes this place uniquely physically attractive to nature-focussed research and tourism.
This project will initially focus on gathering as much information about these attributes as possible. Some of the islands are quite remote and have few or no people living on them. So the period of time required to create an accurate physical survey will depend on how much volunteer help can be marshalled from the more populated islands.
Here’s a summary of some of what we are currently working on:
1. Using satellite imagery and drones to identify potential areas of primary forest (old growth)
2. Ground-truthing, photographing and measuring trees in these areas
3. Recording species of plants and animals
4. Photographing (including videography) scenic areas
5. Cataloguing existing and potential recreational resources
6. Cataloguing locally-used place names
7. Cataloguing salmonid-bearing streams
8. Surveying areas of mature and old forest where logging is planned
9. Photographing and cataloguing road-building and forest cover loss
10. Processing the above information and adding it to this website
11. Analyzing information from provincial government databases, spreadsheets and other documents relevant to this project
12. Perhaps you have some special skill that you know this project could use?
If you can help, we’d love to hear from you!