TOGETHER
Pacific Wild works for the protection of wildlife and their habitats (terrestrial and marine) along Canada's wild Pacific Coast through powerful and authentic visual storytelling. Leveraging our many partnerships, using film, photography, evidence-based reporting, wildlife monitoring, legal action and community-led initiatives, Pacific Wild influences policy, public opinion, and legislative change to more urgently support healthy and protected eco-systems that can sustain optimal biodiversity throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Current wildlife and habitat conservation projects include:
#SaveBCBearsIn the summer of 2023 the B.C. government released the Draft Grizzly Bear Stewardship Framework. Despite a policy ban against trophy/sport hunting of grizzly bears in place since 2017, the language in the framework described the ban as not science-driven but instead a response to public opinion. This paves a way forward for a reopening of the hunt, especially with intense pressure from hunting and guide outfitting organizations. The framework also recommended management of grizzlies be moved from provincial ministry to regional committees, committees with different goals, makeup of participants, and First Nations territorial discussions. These committees tend to be heavily weighted to vested interests: hunters, logging companies, oil & gas, motorized recreation groups and large scale recreational operations and do not represent the majority of British Columbians. Our poll found 84% of B.C. residents supported the grizzly hunting ban and 77% want it legislated. Wildlife is held in trust for ALL British Columbians, and Pacific Wild is at the forefront of this fight.
The fight to end the horrific aerial helicopter gunning of wolves in B.C.'s interior, a scapegoating tactic to save endangered caribou herds, while the province continues to log, mine, frack, and pipeline its way through the critical habitat caribou need to survive. Multi-year, multimedia campaign where your gifts power legal and public advocacy actions holding both provincial and federal governments accountable in 'Beautiful B.C.'
Both of these wild fish species play a huge ecosystems-wide role in British Columbia. Herring feed bears, wolves, raptors, shorebirds, marine mammals, and of course, the wild salmon that feed endangered orcas and other cetaceans and creatures from mink to sea lions. They also are critical to Indigenous ways of life, both as food source and part of 10,000+ year old cultures. Through your gifts, Pacific Wild has pushed for ending open net salmon farms throughout B.C., a moratorium on fishing the declining Salish Sea herring population (the last functioning population in B.C.), and Indigenous stewardship - including an accurate count of salmon populations in central coast streams - of these precious communities of biodiversity.
Bottom trawling is the most harmful of all industrial fishing methods, destroying the ocean floor, resulting in massive amounts of bycatch of often protected, non-targeted fish species, and can be responsible for human rights violations against at-sea fisheries observers working on behalf of the public to ensure accountability of companies to meet Department of Fisheries regulations.
#MarineProtectedArea #30x30
Did you know that if Canada protected all of the proposed areas in the Marine Protected Area Network proposed in the Great Bear Sea, that our country will have met and will likely exceed our climate change commitments known as '30x30'? Canada agreed to the goal to protect 30% of our oceans by 2030 as part of the United Nations push on limiting the effects of climate change, and British Columbia has some of the most biodiverse waters in the country in the region encompassing from the north end of Vancouver Island to Alaska.
Meaningful protections - that is meeting the minimums set by the Government for each type of protected area, for example, not allowing anchoring on protected glass sponge reefs - have the power to keep safe incredibly wild places that are home to killer and humpback whales, Stellar sea lions, puffins, sea otters, salmon, herring, and stunningly populated undersea worlds. By supporting this work, you help inform the circle of planning happening between the federal government, First Nations, and involved non-profits like Pacific Wild. Our future is tied to a healthy and beautiful marine environment.
YOUR IMPACT BEGINS TODAY
Thank you for helping Pacific Wild protect wildlife and their habitat along Canada's Pacific Coast. Your support is what makes our conservation achievements possible in one of the last remaining coastal temperate rainforests on the planet.
TO LEARN MORE:
Please visit us at: www.pacificwild.org
Phone our Victoria, BC office: 250-380-0547
Email us at: donations@pacificwild.org