While the Ministry of Environment says our parks, protected areas, and conservation lands are a public trust, the minister was all too willing to hand over this public trust to private enterprise. I believe that people living in British Columbia understand public trust to mean that parks belong to the public, not to a particular government or business.

I feel strongly that as non-indigenous people living here in what we now call North America that we all have a lot to learn from those that were here long before we were. Working together, we need to find ways to heal from the history of colonialism and find new ways to work together to make healthy alternatives to dangerous tar sands oil, a reality. There are very real energy, housing and transportation solutions already readily available.

I am from Germany and moved to British Columbia with my wife and daughter in 2006. Our original plan was to stay for two years but we fell in love with the spectacular natural beauty of this province. No wild places like the B.C. coast remain in Germany. The idea of losing the wholeness of this landscape, First Nations cultures, the salmon, bears and whales to a catastrophic tanker or pipeline accident is heartbreaking.

"Perhaps the most important part of our "Draft Management Plan For Humans In British Columbia" is to minimize the threat to wolf safety caused by humans. Whereas wolves pose a very limited threat to humans, the opposite is certainly not true. For instance, the B.C. government says that approximately 1,200 of us wolves were killed deliberately in 2010 by hunters and trappers for sport, trophy or profit."

Despite rhetoric about conservation, the main thrust of B.C.'s wolf management plan is clearly killing predators with the goal of reducing predator impacts on huntable species like moose, elk and deer, plus contributing to a presumed reduction in livestock conflicts on public lands. Any rational review of the impact of wolves on B.C.'s hunting opportunities, as well as livestock industry, would demonstrate that there is no "problem" in need of solving. Rationality, however, long ago ceased to be the currency of wildlife management policy in B.C.

The proposed Northern Gateway pipeline carrying raw bitumen to the B.C. coast is a bad idea, but it's ultimately the wrong fight. Let's assume the momentum of bringing Enbridge to its knees leads to a mass protest across Canada and all the proposed pipelines are stopped. Oil companies still have other options.