Protect the xwesam (Roberts) Creek Headwaters

Help Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) take on BC Timber Sales in its latest campaign to protect the forests and fish of the Roberts Creek Watershed on the Sunshine Coast of B.C. It will be a hard-fought battle for this small band of tireless forest activists as they attempt to stop excessive logging planned by BCTS that threatens the watershed’s hydrological functions, its intricate web of life, the connection between its forests and salmon and the many life sustaining gifts nature provides that our community holds dear.

B.C. Timber Sales has 6 large ecologically devastating clearcuts planned for 2024-2025, high in the xwesam (Roberts) Creek headwaters. So, ELF needs your help right now to build momentum to stop this ill-advised plan. We have one chance to get this right. We ask you to contribute so we can run an effective campaign to achieve the result of full protection for this sensitive ecosystem in the depleted coastal western hemlock forest zone.

All funds will go towards developing science-based evidence by hiring a professional biologist and forest ecologist. We will build public pressure through a media campaign in the local newspaper, online and through printed material to raise awareness. Additionally, we will conduct ground-truthing, and hire a trail boss to build a new trail to get the public into the forest to see what could be lost.

The xwesam (“fat fish“ in shíshálh) watershed is within the shared lands of the Squamish and shíshálh Nations. According to hiwus Craigan, a shishalh hereditary Chief and knowledge-keeper, the creek is renowned by aboriginal peoples as producing salmon with a high oil content, thus fat in oil, and according to legend was traded with other tribes.

Clearcut logging increases impacts to creeks like this, causing more frequent and intense floods and droughts that climate change is amplifying. Those floods silt up the salmon’s spawning beds, and the droughts reduce flows for their migration upstream. In other words, clearcutting watersheds wrecks salmon habitat.

So, please help us meet the $20,000 target so we can proceed with this important forest protection campaign. We want you to be able to look back someday and say, “I helped get this area protected.” ELF has a decent track record in protecting critical forests here on the lower Sunshine Coast and looks forward to getting started through your generous donation.

Check us out at loggingfocus.org