Merve Wilkinson

A very emotionally rich week! First, I have to say that I feel sorry for the millions of Canadians who lost tons of money and saw their retirement plan melt like ice cream on a patio… However, there are positive things with this economic storm: Harper’s team is loosing steam and Obama is on the rise! That means a lot for meaningful action on climate change in the future. It is still very, very important to vote strategically on October 14th, so please check one of those websites if you care about the issue.
www.voteforclimate.ca
http://www.voteenvironment2008.ca/
http://www.avaaz.ca/ca/stop_harper_pledge/?cl=135350169&v=2254

I would like to start a ‘hero’ series. We sometime have the chance to meet amazing and inspiring people. That happened to me in August, while I was attending the Youth Action Gathering, organized by SYC and the BCCCN. The event was held at the Wildwood EcoForest, near Nanaimo, where I met an extraordinary person, Merve Wilkinson.

In 1938, Merve Wilkinson bought 137 acres of land in a hope to start an agro business. The soil was too poor and Merve decided in 1945 to do forestry instead. Decades before the concept of “sustainability” was emerging, Merve applied the principles on his land. He developed sustainable logging practices, observing and preserving the ecosystem; logging a little bit less than the measured forest growth rate, keeping his forest “multiage, multiheight and multispecies”.

The next paragraph is extracted from: http://managingwholes.com/merve.htm
“In 1993, the MacMillan Bloedel company, a major licensee operating on crown land, refused to abandon its plans to clearcut a significant portion of Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In August 1993, Merve and his wife Anne took part in a protest blockade of the access road. Merve convinced many of the demonstrators to protest clearcutting rather than timber harvest per se. (Merve thought that since he was able to change the position of environementalists, but not the logging company’s, he decided to stand with the protesters and get arrested.) Merve and Anne were arrested (along with 850 others) for ignoring the British Columbia Supreme Court injunction against interference with MacMillan Bloedel’s plans. During the trial, Merve told the judge, “My Lord, it is not necessary to destroy the forest to extract timber. It is a matter of method.”“

The Clayoquot Sound resistance got a lot of media attention and was a major step towards changing logging practices in BC.

Merve is now 95 years old, I believed, and still live in a wooden house on his land and will welcome any visitors. I can guaranty that a visit there will be legendary.