A wilderness advocate has promised the B.C. Liberals a "fight like you've never seen" if they fail to end logging immediately in endangered areas on Vancouver Island and southwestern B.C.

Ken Wu, coordinator of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, told the Straight this is just part of a campaign demanding that the provincial government "end old-growth logging, period, on Vancouver Island and the southwest Mainland [of B.C.]." Wu, a Victoria resident, said WCWC wants a gradual phase-out across Vancouver Island by 2015. He is pressuring the provincial government to enact tough legislation this fall when provincial lawmakers unveil the coastal old-growth strategy.

"This is their chance to do it right this fall," Wu said by phone from Sooke. "If they fumble this one, then I swear [they will get] a fight like you've never seen around old growth heading into the next electoral period and after, because the public is big on environment now."

Rich Coleman, minister of forests and range, did not return Straight messages by deadline. However, in 2006 Coleman's ministry released a 194-page report, The State of British Columbia's Forests . It predicted "deteriorating" ecosystem dynamics, noting that "fire suppression, timber harvests and climate change are changing ecosystem dynamics across the province". The report stated that their combined effects are "not easy to anticipate".

Wu said WCWC obtained 2004 satellite photos of Vancouver Island that show that "three-quarters of the original productive old-growth forest has already been cut down, including 90 percent of the valley bottoms, where the biggest trees are".