New Denver Flats

In 1997 I was arrested at New Denver Flats a year after the then NDP government designated the farm below the Flats a heritage site. As I explained to the Supreme Court Justice at my trial for contempt of court I had written to both the Minister of Forests, Dave Zirnhelt and the President of Slocan Products, Ike Barber, and asked them to agree to mediation but neither bothered to respond to my letter. So I was the third youngest person of eight to get arrested trying to save the domestic and agricultural water supply for that farm. Twenty two years later and we still do not have any mechanism in BC to mediate between bio-diversity values, recreation values and water values and industrial logging. Simply stopping logging, other than applying a moratorium, is not enough we need comprehensive legislation that ensures logging and pulp values are measured against maintaining and rebuilding in tact ecosystems, and we need to figure out how natural ecosystems can regenerate old growth forests as that is part of the natural cycle of life in the forest, just like birth and death is for humans. For the Earth Andy Shadrack North-Kootenay Lake