• Selinger needs to keep road out of Grass River Park: release

Letter issued Oct. 27 as a final appeal

Photo courtesy of Tim Lutz.

Today, Manitoba Wildlands and the Wilderness Committee are sending their final appeals of the recent environment license that bisects Grass River Provincial Park with a logging road. The license was issued to Tolko Industries mere months after logging was supposedly banned in Grass River Park. The earlier formal appeals, filed in September, were denied by Conservation Minister Stan Struthers without explanation. The two environmental organizations are appealing to Premier Selinger to review this decision, and decide whether a logging road is a logging development, and whether the woodland caribou in this park deserve protection.

Read the full press release here.

• Grass River logging road appeal is denied

Dickstone South Road retains Environment Act licence, despite appeal

A logging road that contravenes the 2008 decision to ban logging activity in provincial parks will go ahead, after the Wilderness Committee's appeal was denied.

The appeal questioned how a new logging road could be authorized for an area where all logging activity is banned. As of April 1, 2009, logging is illegal in all provincial parks except Duck Mountain. However, one condition of the approved licence is that the road will utilized exclusively for logging trucks.

On Oct. 16, the Government of Manitoba announced that the road would be built, denying the appeal by citing a section of the Environmental Act that gives the Conservation Minister the right to dismiss appeals (section 27 [2] [d]).

More updates will follow as we continue this fight to protect our parks.

• Grass River Provincial park logging road license appealed

Wilderness Committee files formal appeal after environmental license issued to build a logging road across Grass River Provincial Park

The Wilderness Committee, Canada's largest environmental citizen group, filed a formal appeal of the environmental license issued to build a logging road across Grass River Provincial Park in northwestern Manitoba.

You can see details of the news conference by clicking here.

Image courtesy of Manitoba Wildlands. Download a large image from this link.