For over 14,000 years, the Haíɫzaqv (Heiltsuk) Nation has thrived on the abundance of the lands and waters in what is now known as the central coast of British Columbia.
Environmental Law Alert Blog
Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:
- proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
- stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
- emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.
If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.
As 2018 comes to a close, the West Coast team wanted to share our victories and milestones with our “Year in Review”
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results…"
Stronger laws for MPAs mean better protection for marine mammals
Facing the towering pile of debris collected at the Denman Island market, I paused as an uneasy feeling of déjà vu stirred from my visit to the community shoreline clean-up one year ago.
7:29am, Thursday, August 30th, 2018:
We’re in a boardroom high above downtown Vancouver, not far from Robson Street where I’m told there used to be a great hunting path. I’m on the Federal Court of Appeal’s website, refreshing my web browser obsessively.
Each summer at West Coast brings a new cohort of law students from across the country, eager to learn and gain experience in environmental and Indigenous law.
Cooperative actions to explore and protect the deep sea
Perhaps the best-known examples of cooperative marine governance agreements in Canada are in Haida territories on the north Pacific coast, where the exciting deep sea Northeast Pacific Seamounts Expedition just concluded.
Seawater temperatures rise. Ocean pollution intensifies. New pollution sources multiply. Underwater noise escalates. Plastics accumulate in the deep seas and on beaches everywhere. Coastal development sprawls. Overfishing is rampant. New ocean uses proliferate.
Offshore oil and gas activity – Tales from three coasts