The Al Jazeera film crew and AFA activists TJ Watt and Ken Wu visit Canada's largest spruce

Al Jazeera Covers Ancient Forest Alliance’s Campaign to Save British Columbia’s Endangered Old-Growth Forests and the Avatar Grove

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Victoria, Canada – Al Jazeera, one of the world’s largest international TV news networks, will be featuring a news story this Saturday about the Ancient Forest Alliance’s campaign to protect British Columbia’s endangered old-growth forests and the “Avatar Grove” on Vancouver Island. An Al-Jazeera news crew toured the endangered Avatar Grove, the San Juan Spruce (Canada’s largest spruce tree), and clearcuts near the town of Port Renfrew on southern Vancouver Island last week with Ancient Forest Alliance activists Ken Wu and TJ Watt, and subsequently interviewed BC’s Forests Minister Pat Bell. See Al-Jazeera’s website at: https://english.aljazeera.net/  The news clip is expected to be posted online on Saturday.

 

“This will definitely be the largest news hit we’ve had in many years – I think the last time was sometime in the 1990’s when the campaign to protect Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests was featured in the international TV news media,” stated Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance executive director. “International audiences will be astounded to see that British Columbia still has thousand year old trees with trunks as wide living rooms and that tower as tall as downtown skyscrapers – and horrified to know that our government still sanctions regularly cutting them down. We desperately need a government plan to save our endangered old-growth forests, to log second-growth forests sustainably, and to end the export of our raw, unprocessed logs to foreign mills in order to sustain Canadian forestry jobs.”

 

Al Jazeera English broadcasts to more than 220 million households in more than 100 countries, and is one of the largest and most esteemed international TV news networks, along with the BBC and CNN. It is the only international news network to have a permanent bureau in Canada in Toronto. The network’s North American viewership has dramatically grown in recent weeks due to its extensive coverage of the recent uprisings in Egypt, Libya,  and throughout the Middle East.

 

75% of Vancouver Island’s ancient forests have already been logged, including 90% of the largest trees that grow in the valley bottoms, according to satellite photos. See “before” and “after” maps at: https://16.52.162.165/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/

 

A couple weeks ago Minister of Forests, Mines, and Lands Pat Bell announced that the British Columbia (BC) government is looking into the possibility of protecting the endangered Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew, and is also looking at developing new legal tools to increase protection of exceptionally grand  heritage trees and groves. See the Minister’s comments in the Vancouver Sun at: [Original article no longer available]

 

“We commend the BC government for considering protection of the Avatar Grove and our province’s largest heritage trees – let’s hope they make good on this. However, much as we need to protect our largest trees, more importantly we need to protect our remaining old-growth forest ecosystems by saving what’s left of them across whole regions, such as on Vancouver Island, because so much has already been logged,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance photographer and campaigner. “This is particularly important if we’re going to sustain our wildlife, water quality, wild salmon, scenery, and wilderness tourism experiences, and to counteract climate change.”

 

The Avatar Grove is the most easily accessible, endangered monumental stand of ancient redcedars and Douglas firs in a wilderness setting on southern Vancouver Island. It also includes what is dubbed “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree”, a giant redcedar with a 3 meter wide burl growing out of its side. It can be accessed not far past the end of a paved road, on relatively gentle terrain, only a 15 minute drive from the town of Port Renfrew. It is home to cougars, wolves, bears, elk, and deer. Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer TJ Watt came across the Avatar Grove in December, 2009, while on an exploratory expedition in the Gordon River Valley. Support for protecting the Avatar Grove is extensive, and includes the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, the Sooke Regional Tourism Association, and local, elected political representatives at the federal, provincial, and regional levels. See a video clip about the Avatar Grove at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_uPkAWsvVw

 

The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC Liberal government to:

 

– Enact a Provincial Old-Growth Strategy to inventory old-growth forests across BC and to protect them where they have been severely depleted by logging, such as on Vancouver Island.

– Ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests (60 to 100 year old stands), rather than the dwindling old-growth stands (140 to 2000 years old trees)

– End the export of raw, unprocessed logs from BC to foreign mills in order to sustain the jobs of millworkers in BC. If we are going to leave more trees standing for conservation while sustaining forestry employment levels at the same time, we must do more with the second-growth trees that we log by processing them and creating jobs in the province rather than exporting them to foreign mills.

 

Old-growth forests are important for sustaining endangered species, tourism, the climate, clean water, and many First Nations cultures.  See SPECTACULAR photos of Canada’s largest trees and stumps at:

https://16.52.162.165/photos-media/

 

The Ancient Forest Alliance (www.ancientforestalliance.org) is a new grassroots environmental organization, based in Victoria, British Columbia, working to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and forestry jobs. The group, founded in January of 2010, now has 20,000 supporters on its supporters lists and Facebook pages. It organizes expeditions to document endangered forests with photography and video, public hiking and camping trips, petition drives (ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/), letter-writing campaigns, slideshows, and rallies to pressure the BC government to enact new sustainable policies.

 

“This is the first time in years that the BC government has considered developing new legal tools to protect old-growth forests, however limited. They’ve opened the door to expanding protections of our old-growth forests, while recognizing there is a strong public will to see them saved, and that’s good. Now we need a provincial plan to protect our old-growth forests in whole regions where they are endangered,” stated Ken Wu. “The rest of the industrialized world is logging second, third, and fourth-growth trees – very few jurisdictions still have the type of spectacular old-growth forests that we have in British Columbia, and fewer still consider it acceptable to log the last of them.”

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.

Click here to view the original article

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

original article

AFA Photographer TJ Watt relaxes in a giant redcedar the day he and a friend discovered the now endangered Avatar Grove.

Old-growth group helping push forest policy changes

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The increasingly famous Avatar Grove old-growth forest has gained some political backing.

Pat Bell, minister of forests, mines and lands, announced in early February that pockets of ancient B.C. forests need more protection.

Bell’s announcement came on the heels of a similar recommendation released by the Forest Practices Board, an independent advisory group for the B.C. government.

FPB recommended the government protect a section of trees in the Gordon River drainage area north of Port Renfrew. Environmental activists from Ancient Forests Alliance named the area Avatar Grove, after the popular 2009 sci-fi movie. The report issued by the FPB also references Avatar Grove in its document.

“This is just a recommendation,” said TJ Watt, AFA cofounder and Metchosin-based photographer. “Until concrete actions are taken there is still more work to be done.”

The recommendation is based upon the 60-hectare area the AFA has been heavily promoting for more than a year. Ken Wu, AFA cofounder, said his group’s work has certainly played a part in this.

“We’ve popularized it,” Wu said. The areas discussed in the report, Avatar Grove and a nearby cut block, have been main focus of the AFA.

After receiving a complaint from an individual, the FPB recommended “certain individual, or small groups, of exceptional trees” at Avatar Grove could be more valuable if they are spared from logging. Watt introduced the complainant to the area.

In the recommendation, the FPB wants government, forest professionals and licensees to find creative ways to save these trees.

“We want supporters to flood the government (offices with letters),” Wu said. “I am encouraged by Minister Pat Bell’s statements, let’s see if he does good on them.”

While the AFA approves of the recommendation its members think it still isn’t enough. “They need to go further, we have so little of the productive old growth forest on Vancouver Island left,” Watt said.

The report stated about 25 per cent of the area is already protected and the remaining land is available for logging.

“The overall feeling I’ve got is most everyone gets it,” Watt said. “Local businesses get it, tourist associations get it, various politicians are taking stances on it.

“On Vancouver Island 75 per cent of the productive old growth forest has been logged. When so little remains you need to protect that.”

Watt was exploring the Gordon River valley about a year ago to see what old growth remained, when he found what had been dubbed Avatar Grove.

“Unfortunately we found giant tree stumps instead of giant trees,” he said.

“We just started finding big tree after big tree. It boggled my mind that it was still there. Everything had been logged behind it, beside it and on all sides. I knew it had the potential to be the Cathedral Grove of Port Renfrew.”

On a return trip Watt and Wu noticed the area had been surveyed with flagging tape and spray paint markings on the trees.

Watt speculated trees at Avatar Grove are still standing due to the attention the forest has received.

“There is a high chance that if no one had discovered it, it wouldn’t be standing right now.”

AFA photographer TJ Watt shows a print of his photo of a man on a stump in the Gordon River valley that won first place in a Outdoor Photography Canada magazine photo contest.

Metchosin photographer earns national recognition

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A stunning photograph by Metchosin photographer TJ Watt has gained national recognition.

Watt earned first place in Outdoor Photography Canada magazine’s “human impact on the environment” photo contest.

The image is of a lone man standing on the stump of an ancient tree in the middle of a clear cut in Gordon River valley, near Port Renfrew.

“This shot I feel summed up the factual aspects of what’s happening and the emotional aspects,” Watt said. “It summarizes the whole impact in the photo.”

While shooting in the Gordon River valley, Watt said he’d come across stumps with circumferences of nearly 50 feet.

The photo was taken about a year ago after Watt discovered this area.

He uses his photography to spread word on environmental activism. Watt is a founding member of the Ancient Forest Alliance, a group that has highlighted the so-called Avatar Grove trees near Port Renfew.

“I think the main thing is these places are actually so close to us, but seem so remote. They are finally getting out to the world through photos,” Watt said.

Watt’s photo may be on the cover of an upcoming environmental documentary and possibly even in a museum exhibit. Both projects are still in the works, Watt said.

The same photo also earned Watt first place in the Metchosin Day photography contest.

“It’s also been in many different newspapers,” Watt said. “It’s been travelling around and I get many requests by e-mail for it. It’s not just about pretty pictures now. There is a higher cause to my photos.”

[Original article no longer available]

Loggers painted a sad face with its tongue sticking out making a mockery of the old-growth devastation in the background. Upper Walbran Valley

No Paradigm Shift in BC Government, But New Recognition of Public Mood for Protecting Avatar Grove and Expanding Old-Growth Protection

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Ancient Forest Alliance plans public hike to Avatar Grove on Sunday, February 27

Forest activists reacted with amusement at comments made by the BC government and a logging industry representative in a Times Colonist article “BC looking for new ways to protect ancient trees” on Tuesday.

In the article the Forests Minister Pat Bell states, “BC has more old-growth today than we’ve ever had,” and that “we are not running out of old-growth on Vancouver Island…”

 

“Somehow a century of industrial logging has actually increased the amount of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, according to the BC government. Maybe the Ancient Forest Alliance should take up logging to increase the amount of old-growth forests in BC!” joked Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) executive director. “The BC government still retains its old mindset about old forests, as they’re still into their silly spin-doctoring – clearly they haven’t experienced a paradigm shift about our old-growth forests. However, the fact is this government has always maintained such nonsense – the main difference now, the new thing here, is their acknowledgement that there is a real public mood in seeing greater protection levels for our old-growth forests, including the Avatar Grove and BC’s largest trees. Of course we welcome this acknowledgement on the need to expand old-growth forest protections.”

 

The Ancient Forest Alliance is planning another public hike to the Avatar Grove on Sunday, February 27. More details will be posted on its website www.ancientforestalliance.org next week.

 

Since the Avatar Grove was located in December of 2009 by Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt, the AFA has organized countless public hikes, slideshows, rallies, photography expeditions, letter-writing drives, and petition drives to get the area protected. There has been a torrent of local, provincial, and national media stories about the Avatar Grove, and support has snowballed to include the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, Sooke Region Tourism Association, and local elected representatives at the federal, provincial, and regional levels including Liberal MP Keith Martin, NDP MLA John Horgan, and Regional Director Mike Hicks, respectively. The Avatar Grove consists of numerous monumental ancient redcedars, some 14 feet (over 4 meters) in trunk diameter, giant Douglas firs, and a few large Sitka spruce, all of which are heavily targeted by the old-growth logging industry. “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree”, a huge redcedar with a 10 foot (3 meter) wide burl, is also found in the Avatar Grove. The area was surveyed and flagged with falling boundary and road location tape by Teal-Jones by February of 2010.  See Avatar Grove photos at: https://16.52.162.165/photos-media/

 

Almost 6000 people have now viewed the Ancient Forest Alliance’s new video clip (1 minute), “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree – Save the Avatar Grove” at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_uPkAWsvVw

 

“We’ll give thanks if Bell makes good to protect the Avatar Grove. Protecting our most impressive monumental trees and ancient groves is much needed, although most importantly we need to protect old-growth ecosystems on a larger scale. Saving the cherry on top while the voracious neighbour devours the rest of the cake will still deprive our children,” states Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance executive director. “The logging industry’s appetite has devoured 90% of our valley bottom ancient forests on Vancouver Island where the largest trees grow – they’ve had far more than their share. “

 

“There is an inevitable transition to logging only second-growth forests in southern BC as the old-growth stands run out – what we’re saying is let’s make the transition now while we still have some significant old-growth stands left,  for wildlife, tourism, the climate, and future generations. I think the majority of British Columbians would agree with that,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer.

 

In Tuesday’s Times Colonist article, Rick Jeffery, president of the Coast Forest Products Association, also spin-doctored various statistics, claiming that there are more protected areas than lands available for logging (reality check:  most park lands consist of alpine rock and ice, marginal subalpine forests, and coastal bog forests, and contain a minority fraction of productive forest lands of value for logging), that most monumental stands of ancient trees are already protected (reality check: 90% of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forests in the valley bottoms, where the monumental stands grow, have already been logged, and a significant amount of the remainder is unprotected), and that the threat against a stand like the Avatar Grove is an exception.

 

“The Avatar Grove is just one example of the thousands of ancient forest stands currently under threat in BC, literally hundreds of which get clearcut each year – that’s a simple, sad fact. The difference with the Avatar Grove is that it is easy to get to and grows on gentle terrain so that large numbers of people have now seen this place. Most other endangered ancient forests are remote and difficult for the average person to get to, and thus their destruction goes unseen,” states TJ Watt, AFA explorer and photographer.

 

On Vancouver Island, according to satellite photos, about 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow. See “before” and “after” maps at:

https://16.52.162.165/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/

 

AFA Campaign Director Ken Wu sits atop a massive

B.C. looking for new ways to protect ancient trees

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VICTORIA — The province is looking at new ways to safeguard ancient trees or groves of forest giants in response to the wishes of British Columbians, says Forest Minister Pat Bell.

In the wake of a report from the Forest Practices Board last week that said creative ways should be found to protect giant trees, Bell has asked the province’s chief forester to look into the matter.

Bell, who has previously emphasized that B.C. has ample protection for old-growth trees, said the change is driven by the public mood.

“For me, what has changed is not whether or not there’s protection for the 10 largest trees or for unique situations such as Avatar Grove. There’s just a public desire to see something stronger than what already exists,” he said.

Any tweaking of existing rules or new protection tools will be “surgical” in nature, allowing the ministry to protect unique individual trees or specific patches of forest around them, Bell said.

A complaint about giant trees cut adjacent to a stand of massive trees nicknamed Avatar Grove, near Port Renfrew, sparked the Forest Practices Board report. Bell said Avatar Grove could be considered a unique circumstance.

“It is certainly one of the areas which could fall within a measure of this sort,” he said.

However, realistically, there was little chance Avatar Grove would have been logged because of the quality of the wood, said Bell, who has been in contact with the Teal-Jones Group, which holds the cutting licence.

“I have had a chat with them and they are quite interested in working with us on it,” he said.

Rick Jeffery, Coast Forest Products Association president, said he is looking forward to hearing what rule changes might be proposed, but the vast majority of monumental trees and groves are already protected by existing regulations.

“Every once in awhile you run across something like Avatar Grove that hasn’t been captured by those rules and it brings all sort of controversy,” Jeffery said.

“But something like that is by far and away the exception, not the rule.”

Regulations for operating in B.C.’s forests are stringent and the 3.5 million hectares set aside for parks and conservancies contain old-growth and monumental trees, Jeffery said.

“The forest industry operates on only 2.5 million hectares and, in any given year, we are cutting about one per cent of that,” he said.

Bell’s apparent change of heart has surprised Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance, who has campaigned for protection of old-growth ecosystems.

“I have to admit this was an unexpected surprise considering the rocky relationship the B.C. government has had with our campaign for so long,” Wu said.

“If this is genuine, minister Bell should be commended for taking the first steps toward positive change here. Let’s see if this pans out.”

He argued there is an urgent need to protect old-growth ecosystems on a larger scale.

But Bell said any new protection for special trees will not include a ban on logging old-growth or a new old-growth strategy.

“B.C. has more old-growth today than we ever have had,” Bell said.

“We are not running out of old growth on Vancouver Island or in B.C. They are maturing at a level that exceeds any harvest that is taking place.”

Click here to view original article

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

Grove Saved?

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Speaking of those pesky environmental issues, Port Renfrew’s beloved Avatar Grove may have made some exciting headway with the BC Liberals this past week, when Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands Pat Bell announced that he is considering protecting the endangered area.

“Certainly we have been hearing the message . . . that we should be considering some tools, perhaps new tools that we could use when particularly unique trees are identified. They may be individual trees or small areas like the Avatar Grove that provide incremental value over and above the timber resource value,” Bell told media.

Ken Wu, long-time environmental and grove advocate with the Ancient Forest Alliance, says that credit must be given to Bell’s advancements, but that B.C. still has a long way to go yet.

“There’s the real possibility of policy change right now with B.C. being leaderless,” Wu says. “Bell is saying he may open some doors, but we’re going to have to wait and see.”

Wu says the province is still in need of protection on three levels: individual trees, groups (like Avatar Grove) and large forested areas.

“We did bust our asses on this campaign, but the grove speaks for itself . . . when you get business affiliates — like the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce — calling for its support, that’s when you see the BC Liberals listen.”

Click here to view original article

A large group of hikers crowd around the massive redcedar dubbed "Canada's Gnarliest Tree" during an Ancient Forest Alliance led public hike to the Avatar Grove in summer 2010.

BREAKING NEWS: AVATAR GROVE might get SAVED – Please WRITE a LETTER now!!

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Yesterday BC’s Forests Minister Pat Bell announced that he is considering protecting the endangered Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew, and is also looking at developing new legal tools to increase protection of exceptional ancient trees and old-growth stands in BC. This would be an important step forward!

Click here for the Vancouver Sun article. [Original article no longer available]

The Avatar Grove is a truly exceptional and easy to access stand of ancient trees which the Ancient Forest Alliance has been campaigning hard to protect for over a year – and we may get there soon if you SPEAK UP NOW!
See our new Youtube clip (1 minute) on the Avatar Grove at:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_uPkAWsvVw

We need progress for saving endangered ancient forests at all spatial scales – monumental trees, whole stands (like the Avatar Grove), and landscape level old-growth protections like valleys and regions. Starting with trees and stands is certainly a welcome beginning. Let’s make this happen!!

This will take just 5 MINUTES! Your letter counts!

PLEASE WRITE to Pat Bell, Minister of Forests, Lands, and Mines at pat.bell.mla@leg.bc.ca

Let him know that you:

– Support him moving forward to protect the Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew. Let him know if you have visited the area.
– Support the protection of monumental ancient trees and stands of ancient trees.
– Want all old-growth protections to be legally-binding, not voluntary.
– Encourage him to also undertake a much larger Provincial Old-Growth Strategy to protect endangered old-growth forests across regions where they are scarce, such as on Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, southern Interior, etc. and to ensure sustainable second-growth forestry instead.

Be sure to include your home mailing address so he knows you are a real person!

Also please SIGN our PETITION and get as many of your friends and family to as well at:
https://16.52.162.165/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition//index.php#sign

***MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Forests Minister Pat Bell’s statements comes on the heels of a new Forest Practices Board (FPB) report released on Thursday that calls on the BC government and industry to seek “creative ways” to save ancient trees, that the land-use policy framework exists for the BC government to readily protect the Avatar Grove, and that there is a “strong public interest in seeing more ancient trees and forest stands preserved to live out their natural lives and functions, and managed as a social, economic and ecological asset to the public and surrounding communities.” See the report at: https://www.fpb.gov.bc.ca/IRC174_NEWS_RELEASE_Complaint_highlights_public_value_of_ancient_trees.htm
and recent news articles about the FPB report on our website at:  https://16.52.162.165/

The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC government to undertake a Provincial Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory and protect old-growth forests in regions where they are scarce, such as on Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland, southern Interior, etc.  The AFA is also calling for the sustainable logging of second-growth forests (which now constitute most of the forests in southern BC) and for a ban on raw log exports to foreign mills.

An effective BC Old-Growth Strategy would necessarily entail legally-binding (not voluntary) old-growth protections at various spatial scales, including on the level of individual trees, stands, and landscapes:

Individual Trees – This is particularly important in regions where scattered “veteran” old-growth trees left behind by the original logging now constitute much of the remaining old-growth remnants, such as in the Coastal Douglas Fir zone on eastern Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast, and around some of the Lower Mainland. This would also be important for saving ancient trees of exceptional size and importance for environmental, tourism, historic, and cultural purposes. Individual old-growth trees also provide sources of lichens and arthropods to colonize surrounding second-growth stands and are often “wildlife trees” for birds, bats, salamanders, bears, small mammals, and invertebrates as they age and die. Protected old-growth veterans should have a significant buffer of protected trees around them.

Stands – Much of southern Vancouver Island consists of scattered “pockets” of old-growth stands dozens to hundreds of hectares in size in the sea of surrounding clearcuts and second-growth tree plantations, such as the 50 hectare Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew. Old-growth stands are important as refugia for both small and larger wildlife (eg. deer wintering range), and can provide high quality nature experiences for tourists and for environmental education and research initiatives. The Cathedral Grove near Port Alberni is perhaps the most famous old-growth stand of high tourism and ecological value in North America.

Landscapes – Protecting the larger and more contiguous tracts of old-growth forests is the most important priority from an ecological perspective. Larger old-growth tracts, such as whole valleys and clusters of valleys, where they still exist are better able to sustain species over time (especially wider ranging creatures like wolves and cougars), store large amounts of carbon, provide clean water for fisheries and as drinking watersheds, provide wilderness tourism experiences, and have greater resilience in the face of climate change. The Upper Walbran Valley, Nahmint Valley, East Creek Valley, and Clayoqout Sound with its scores of intact valleys and islands are examples of larger tracts of ancient forests that need protection on Vancouver Island.

Old-growth forests are important to sustain endangered species, the climate, tourism, clean water, and First Nations cultures. 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged on Vancouver Island, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow and most biodiversity resides. See “before and after” maps at: https://16.52.162.165/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/

The Avatar Grove is the most easily accessible, monumental stand of endangered ancient redcedars and Douglas firs on southern Vancouver Island. Most of the route to the Avatar Grove is paved, it exists on relatively gentle terrain, and is only a 15 minute drive from Port Renfrew. Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer TJ Watt came across the Avatar Grove in December, 2009, while on an exploratory expedition in the Gordon River Valley. Support for protecting the Avatar Grove includes the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, the Sooke Region Tourism Association, and elected political representatives at three levels, including federal Liberal MP Keith Martin, provincial NDP MLA John Horgan, and Regional Director Mike Hicks. See spectacular photos at:  https://16.52.162.165/photos-media/
See the new Youtube clip “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree – Save the Avatar Grove” at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_uPkAWsvVw

 

Ancient Forest Alliance

Forest Practices Board Report – BC’s Ancient Forests Need More Protection

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(direct link to video: https://youtu.be/CLbVbn2iIc0 )

In response to a complaint filed about ancient redcedars up to 16ft in diameter being logged near Port Renfrew, BC, the Forest Practices Board, a third party government-appointed watchdog, has concluded that there is ‘strong public interest’ in seeing giant trees and unique stands of old-growth forest protected and that the BC government has the tools to do so.

The report also states in regards to the endangered Avatar Grove (see photo gallery here: https://16.52.162.165/… 75% of which is open for logging (25% is protected within Old-Growth Management Areas or “OGMA’s”), that “current options to protect the unprotected part of the area include creation of a new park or other reserve, or expansion of the existing OGMAs” and that “If further protection is warranted for Avatar Grove, government has available policy and procedures to guide potential amendment of its land-use objective” to protect the area.

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Please SIGN the PETITION at https://16.52.162.165/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/ to help SAVE BC’s ANCIENT FORESTS!