Avatar Grove

Al Jazeera to report from front lines of B.C.’s old-growth logging issue

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B.C.’s old-growth logging issues, which have long been the focus of North American and European media, are about to reach a far broader audience.

A film crew from the Toronto office of Al Jazeera visited southwestern Vancouver Island recently to report on old-growth logging issues for the English version of the Arabic news network.

 “This will be the biggest international news hit for the old-growth campaign in a long time,” Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance said Thursday. “There is a strong international market for environmental issues, particularly one that is very charismatic.”

The Al Jazeera crew recently visited the so-called Avatar Grove, a stand of about 100 old-growth cedars and Douglas firs near Port Renfrew named after Canadian James Cameron’s blockbuster movie. They also visited nearby the San Juan Spruce — largest of its species in Canada — and clearcut stumps.

“They were blown away,” Wu said. “International audiences will be stunned to see not just trees with trunks as wide as living rooms … but that the government endorses logging of these endangered stands.”

One particularly gnarly cedar at Avatar Grove measures 11 metres in circumference near the base of its trunk, its distorted look attributed to a non-lethal fungal infection.

Forests minister Pat Bell has asked the province’s chief forester to review existing regulations for protecting trees that, because of their age, have values that make them worth preserving.

The alliance is fighting to save not just the grove, but remaining old-growth stands on Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland region. “This is one of the few jurisdictions where it’s still the norm to cut down centuries-old trees.” said Wu, noting the Al Jazeera report will broadcast on Saturday.

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A waterfall cascades through the old-growth redcedars in the endagered Avatar Grove.

Avatar Grove to be featured on Al Jazeera News Network

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A Vancouver Island ecological landmark will be featured on Al Jazeera, a major Arabic and English language news network

 The Ancient Forest Alliance says Al Jazeera film crews came to the island last week, to get shots of the Avatar Grove, an area of old growth forest near Port Renfrew which has been flagged for logging

Speaking on CFAX 1070 with Dave Dickson Thursday, the Alliance’s spokesperson Ken Wu explains how the network found out about Avatar Grove

“it was their Qatar-based headquarters that noticed there was a torrent of articles coming out in Canada about the Avatar Grove. That was about 2 weeks ago, you might remember there was a flurry of articles when the minister of forests Pat Bell said ‘ok we are going to look into saving this Avatar Grove place possibly, and protecting our biggest trees’ and that, you know triggered a whole series of articles in Canada and they noticed it, so they told their crew to come and check it out and do a story as part of the international news pieces”

Wu says the piece will be aired on the network this weekend.

The Alliance is hoping to save Avatar Grove from logging. They say while some of the trees in the grove have been flagged for logging, no cutting permits have been issued yet by the Ministry of Forests

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