PEOPLE HOPING TO KEEP THE JUAN DE FUCA ELECTORAL AREA WEST OF SOOKE RURAL AND UNDEVELOPED ARE GATHERING IN SHIRLEY TODAY. THE DOGWOOD INITIATIVE IS HOSTING A TRAIL WALK AND INFORMATION SESSION TO UPDATE PEOPLE ON THE WESTERN FOREST PRODUCTS SUBDIVISION APPLICATION, THE RECENT SALE OF LANDS NEAR THE JUAN DE FUCA TRAIL TO DEVELOPER ENDER ILKAY AND THE COURT CHALLENGE TO THE CRD'S DOWNZONING BYLAWS.

Developer Ender Ilkay has quietly completed a deal to buy one of the controversial parcels of former tree farm licence land put up for sale by Western Forest Products last year.

Developer Ender Ilkay has closed a deal with Western Forest Products to buy 600 acres west of Jordan River on Vancouver Island.

When Arnie Campbell thinks of what the Juan de Fuca electoral area has lost due to removal of private land from tree farm licences, he gets hopping mad.

Vancouver Islanders were reminded this week of how terribly the provincial government betrayed them in allowing vast tracts of land to be removed from tree farm licences.

Former forests minister Rich Coleman has been cleared of a conflict-of-interest allegation in his handling of the Western Forests Products file. That's fair. It isn't fair, however, to suggest that he and the B.C. Liberal government were not at fault in allowing the forest company to remove land from its tree farm licences on Vancouver Island in the first place.

The provincial government launched a new plan Monday to reduce the millions of cubic metres of wood left to rot after logging by changing the way it values timber.

Lawyers for the Capital Regional District were in B.C. Supreme Court in Victoria this week defending a down zoning on lands west of the city against a challenge from the Association of B.C. Landowners and Western Forest Products.

Provincial government mismanagement created a development crisis in this region, undermining years of regional planning and threatening green space, waterfront and park buffer zones on land between Sooke and Port Renfrew.

In the wake of an impromptu public meeting at Shirley Community Hall Tuesday evening, the future of waterfront land around Jordan River, Muir Creek, Shirley and Otter Point remains in the hands of the Highways Ministry approving officer and a solution to local concerns is no closer.

An open house organized by Western Forest Products was hijacked by frustrated opponents of the forest company's development plans last night.

VANCOUVER — Leaving British Columbia's old-growth forests standing may make more economic sense than cutting them down for timber, especially as the province looks to strategies to cut global warming, a new B.C. study suggests.

An open house is no substitute for a public hearing, say opponents of Western Forest Products' plans to subdivide land around Jordan River, Shirley and Otter Point.

After years of doom and gloom, some B.C. forest company executives have suddenly seen a light at the end of the tunnel, a light so bright they think they're in heaven. What could possibly break their mood of doom and gloom? Log exports.

VANCOUVER -- A standoff over the future of a vast swath of forest on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, estimated to be worth about $150-million, is heating up as a regional government contemplates taking a forestry company to court to block its plans to subdivide the area and sell it for development.

Re: "CRD, WFP tangle over forest roads," Aug. 7. The situation has gone beyond enraging and has become ridiculous. How can a Western Forest Products official openly state that the company is clearing roads for subdivision development, and then state that it doesn't have to provide development permits to the Capital Regional District because the land is under forestry use?

Something is seriously wrong when Western Forest Products can argue that it has the right to build roads for subdivisions -- because it's doing the development work on land set aside for forestry.

BC environmental groups are applauding the latest recommendations from the province's Climate Action Team, a blue ribbon panel created by Premier Campbell to provide, ìthe most credible, aggressive and economically viable targets,î for the province's fight against Climate Change.

Western Forest Products is pushing ahead with building roads meant for a housing subdivision, even though the Capital Regional District insists the company doesn’t have the right to do so. In late July, the CRD sent the company a letter demanding it stop building roads on forest land around Jordan River and Shirley. The CRD says the work contravenes development permit rules. However, Western has replied that it does not need a development permit for road building as the land is still private managed forest land and comes under provincial regulations, not CRD rules.

After taking over the forestry portfolio a month ago, Prince George-North MLA and Forest and Range Minister Pat Bell has developed a four-point strategy.