Projects
Vancouver Island's west coast - Rising awareness for the true value of wild places.
Sander is currently working on an environmental project about the west coast of Vancouver Island, B.C., Canada with a focus on Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a region the size of Long Island with rugged Pacific coastline, forest covered mountains and steep fjords.
This project aims at documenting the ecosystems of this region as well as their destruction by the logging, mining and salmon farm industries. The closely interconnected marine and terrestrial habitats of the west coast with its coastal temperate rainforest are highly fragile, complex and very rare ecosystems. Although less than 1% of earth is covered in temperate rainforest and most of these forests have already been destroyed, the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest with their giant Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce and Western Red Cedar stands, with single trees being up to 2000 years old, continue getting cut down for short-term profit. About 75% of Vancouver Island’s ancient forests has already been logged and even in one of the last remaining areas of ancient temperate rainforest on the island, in Clayoquot Sound UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, the exploitation continues. Additionally, open-pit mining applications as well as intensive open-net-cage farming of Atlantic Salmon endanger the ecological health of this extraordinary area which not only boasts an amazing spectrum of wildlife including bears, wolves, cougars, bald eagles, different whale species and many other ocean mammals, Pacific salmon as the ecosystem’s key species, incredibly biodiverse intertidal zones, a vast number of bird species as well as rare mushroom, lichen and moss species but which has also been home to First Nations cultures for thousands of years.
Although Clayoquot Sound is a designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserve since the year 2000, its widely assumed protection is a big illusion. This status does not provide protection against resource extraction and therefore logging, mining and fish farming continue to endanger and destroy the ecological health of this unique region that became internationally famous for its environmental protests in the 1980s and early 1990s. About 25 years later, environmentalists still fight against the same threats and for the same goal which is saving an extraordinary region that still embodies the wild power of nature.
Beyond generating a portfolio of stunning images of Vancouver Island’s west coast ecosystems, the project also aims at producing photographs that will demonstrate the spiritual relationship between man and nature with the aim of making people remember the intrinsic value of nature as opposed to a mere materialistic estimation and appreciation of natural resources that our internationally dominating Western culture has restricted itself to and which has led to the global environmental and cultural downfall process which we find ourselves in right now.
Sander Jain, October 2011