BIG TREES SAVED – AND OTHER FEATS
The story of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society
Deanna Kawatski
Foreword by Joe Foy

Published by Shuswap Press

ISBN 978-0-9917873-7-1

123 pages, $20 plus $5 for shipping

Send a cheque to:

S.E.A.S.
#3 – 151 Beatty Ave. NW
Salmon Arm, B.C.
V1E 2W4

Foreword by
Joe Foy, National Campaign Director, Wilderness Committee
This book confirms my suspicions about human kind. Not everything that people do is about self-interest. Sometimes people really do devote themselves to the benefit of future generations.
The story of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society is an inspiring saga of regular people making a huge difference—such a huge difference in fact that you can not only read their story in this book, you can see it from outer space! I encourage you to go to Google Earth and have a look at the precious ancient forests that SEAS was able to gain protection for—and to contemplate the ocean of clear cuts that surround them. Think what would have happened if these few brave people had not stood up, spoken out, and held their ground.
I must confess that I especially enjoyed this book because I have worked for the Vancouver-based Wilderness Committee for many years. I know how hard it is to save old-growth trees in a province that has measured its success on how many million two-by-fours it can spew out in a year. It’s fascinating to read of the face-to-face confrontations between Shuswap area environmental activists and logging companies during the 1980s and ’90s, the so-called war in the woods period of BC history.
Contemplating a 1,000-year-old red cedar in a protected park may seem like a peaceful, restful experience these days. But I know that to get that tree protected it took years of tough work, a good number of sleepless nights, and likely some moments of sheer terror for the people that stood up to defend it. This was all done not for the profit in it; it was done because it was the right thing to do.
This book is an important record of what happened during those critical decades when so much of BC’s ancient landscapes were won for future generations—and so much lost to the bulldozer and chainsaw.
Back in the 1970s I had been inspired to become a wilderness activist by reading stories of the fight to protect the forests of the North Cascades that had occurred in Washington State in the ’60s.
Today we are blessed with an impressive number of inspiring books written about the fight to protect BC’s amazing wild forests. Big Trees Saved and Other Feats: The story of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society takes its place among these precious records. And though this book is about what has happened in the past—its real power is in its ability to influence what will happen in the future.
Standing up for nature is hard work. There will be setbacks and losses. There will never be enough information, people, or resources. Some battles will go on for many years. There will be no pay-off, except the comfort of the good fight well fought and the amazing solace of a piece of the wild earth saved.
Much has been accomplished in protecting BC’s natural environment. But so much more remains to be done. In this quest, future generations will need their heroes. This book is for them.

Excerpt:

Jim Cooperman offered the following insight: “Our efforts to secure a moratorium on logging the ancient Seymour rainforest were going nowhere in Salmon Arm, so I scheduled a meeting with Fred Baxter, the forest service regional manager in Kamloops. I knew Fred well from other meetings and my frequent visits to the Kamloops Forest Region offices to meet with staff, especially the ecologist who helped develop the plan for new park proposals. We began the meeting by presenting Fred with a framed 8” X 10” print of the famous photo of the Seymour Giant encircled by supporters. Fred understood the ecological value of the forest, but he was also keenly aware of the investment the company had made to survey the blocks and build roads and landings. Consequently we agreed with the compromise he proposed, to allow for the two blocks to the south to be logged and the heart of the park where the Seymour Giant still stands, to be saved. That was one great day and we will always be grateful to Fred for his good judgment.”

It was smoke from a nearby landfill that originally spurred Shuswap activist Jim Cooperman to speak out on behalf of the local environment.

It was the realization that the massive old-growth trees he was so in awe of were in grave danger of being destroyed through forestry practices of the day that led Cooperman and six others to form the Shuswap Environmental Action Society in 1989.

Twenty-five years later, SEAS is celebrating actions and accomplishments with a book penned by award-winning author Deanna Kawatski: Big Trees Saved And Other Feats – The story of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society.

“I’m very impressed. I think Deanna did an awesome job of telling the story and focusing on the key points, and making it interesting for the readers,” says Cooperman, who points out he wanted a book that would create a lasting legacy for SEAS so future generations will remember the work that went into creating a number of parks.

“Over the years, SEAS’s hard work and dedication has resulted in 25,000 hectares of new parks in the Shuswap, including the Upper Seymour River rainforest, and the magnificent Anstey Arm Hunakwa Lake wilderness area.”

Cooperman is also hoping the book will improve the public’s understanding that these parks exist, and that with greater public awareness more pressure will be put on the government to make it easier for people to access them.

“So few people are aware that they are there, and Anstey-Hunakwa Provincial Park is only accessible by boat,” he says, noting access is possible from the Beach Bay Access Road to Wright Lake. “We want to create a trail from Wright Lake to Hunakwa Lake and we were just up there recently to look at options to improve access.”

Cooperman says the gorgeous Upper Seymour River Provincial Park is 90 kilometres north of Seymour Arm.

“You get into big trees by mountain bike or an hour-long hike from parking,” he says. “Few people, if any, have hiked up to the glacier. It’s pretty incredible to think there is landscape like that in the Shuswap and almost nobody knows about it.”

Cooperman says there’s very little money in the budget for BC Parks.

“You have to get their attention and you’re up against all the other parks,” he says. “If there’s more public pressure, we might actually see more money. Basically zero dollars have been spent on many of the new parks in the northern part of the Shuswap.”

Referring again to the Upper Seymour, Cooperman says visitors have to fight their way through bush to get their canoes in the water. He maintains it  wouldn’t cost a lot of money to create a path.

“It’s critical to improve access; these are pristine areas that needed to be protected to help preserve biodiversity, give species a place to be and we need wild places on the planet,” he says, maintaining conservation has always been an important focus of many agencies. “Parks are key to what it means to be human; we need to spend time in nature. It’s all part of our health and emotional well-being.”

Cooperman laments that huge old-growth trees are not being preserved in many other places in the province.

“If we want to understand how ecosystems work, we have to have the natural forest available for study.”

Thanks to the efforts of SEAS, thousands of hectares of old-growth forest were set aside, and forest management was vastly improved, leading to better protection for non-timber forest values.

In 2008, SEAS rallied to stop a proposed marina and condominium development from being built at the mouth of the Adams River, one of the most significant sockeye salmon spawning rivers in the world.

Cooperman says SEAS changed the map of the Shuswap through the creation of the new parks, and in 2010, the society helped produce the first map of the Shuswap watershed in a poster format.

The book launch for Big Trees Saved and Other Feats – The story of the Shuswap Environmental Action Society is set for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15 in the hall at First United Church at 450 Okanagan Ave. SE.

The Big Trees Saved book launch will be a celebratory affair with live music, a multi-media presentation, speakers, refreshments, and books for sale.

The musical entertainment will be provided by singer/songwriter and recording artist Sylvain Vallee on keyboards. He will perform a number of songs with an environmental message, including Pipeline, the reggae protest song about the proposed Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline.

Kawatski will also be among the speakers and one who, in her author’s note, explains how she had expressed interest in writing the book only to later wonder what she had done.

“When Jim Cooperman backed his truck up and began to swing box after box – all overflowing with SEAS material – onto my front porch, I was ready to run out the back door. Who in their right mind would invite such chaos into their kitchen?”

But Kawatski sifted through the chaos to produce an interesting and highly readable history of a group that has done so much to protect the Shuswap for upcoming generations.

After the launch, Big Trees Saved will be on sale for $20 at the Observer office and in stores throughout the region. For more information, visit www. seas.shuswappassion.ca or phone 250-832-8569 or 250-679-3693.