Climate activists plan to continue with road blockages today (January 31) to protest continued old-growth logging in B.C.

A new group called Save Old Growth is planning a morning rush-hour action on the Trans-Canada Highway at the Ironworkers Memorial Second Narrows Bridge.

Another demonstration will take place on the part of the highway leading to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal.

And they're promising to use super glue to make it more difficult for police to end these blockades.

“We are faced with the collapse of society and the systems that support our lives in the next few decades, within our lifetime," one of the organizers, Brent Eichler, said in a news release. "We have already seen the disruption and sadly the loss of life from floods, fires and the heat dome in the last year. Unless we take immediate action now, people will continue to lose their lives and livelihood."

It's the final action in the first phase of a campaign that has led to 40 arrests at different locations in B.C.

Save Old Growth members believe that peaceful civil disobedience is the most effective method for bringing about societal change. It's been inspired by Insulate Britain, which has been blocking major roads around London to push for the insulation of homes to alleviate the climate crisis.

Provincial government statistics show that there are about 20.3 million hectares of land in the timber-harvesting base. About three million hectares are old-growth forests.

Last year, B.C.'s old-growth technical advisory panel pointed out that 2.6 million hectares of old-growth forest must receive immediate deferrals from being logged due to the risk of irreversible loss of biodiversity.

But this month, the environmental group Stand.earth declared that despite the government's commitment to stop harvesting in these areas, logging was still continuing.

“Temporary logging deferrals have always been a first step to prevent irreversible loss of old growth forests while the much bigger work is done to overhaul forest management in this province,” Stand.earth's forest campaigner, Tegan Hansen, said in a January 19 news release. “Instead, the B.C. NDP government is delaying action and leaving the most vulnerable forests open to logging. It is incredibly frustrating to watch this government drag its feet again and again, while communities face the very real impacts of losing the last old growth forests forever.”

Stand.earth has also created a guide to advise its members on how to speak about this issue to their MLA. Vancouver-Hastings NDP MLA is the former senior oil and gas campaigner with Stand.earth.

From 2014 to 2018, about 200,000 hectares of forest land was harvested per year, according to the B.C. government.

Update

Six were arrested in the highway blockades. See drone footage here.