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Ancient Forest Alliance

Canada’s Largest Tree – The Cheewhat Giant!

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Direct link to video: https://youtu.be/Xw2Im8nSOdg

Please SIGN our PETITION here: https://16.52.162.165/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/

Seen here is Canada’s largest tree, a western redcedar named the Cheewhat Giant growing in a remote location near Cheewhat Lake within Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on southerwestern Vancouver Island. The tree measures over 6 meters (20 feet) in trunk diameter, 56 meters (182 feet) in height, and 450 cubic meters in timber volume (or 450 regular telephone poles worth of wood). Luckily the tree, discovered in 1988, is within the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, which was created in 1971.

The video clip also shows new clearcuts and giant stumps of redcedar trees, some over 4 meters (14 feet) in diameter in the Klanawa Valley adjacent to Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and also near the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, a short distance to the south.

Satellite photos show that about 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests on Vancouver Island have been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow and most biodiversity is found. On southern Vancouver Island, south of Barkley Sound, about 87% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged.

See “before” and “after” old-growth forest maps at: https://16.52.162.165/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/

Visit the Ancient Forest Alliance website at https://16.52.162.165/
to see more videos, photo galleries, new stories, and to find out how to can help!

Filmed and edited by TJ Watt

Ancient Forest Alliance

CHEK News: The Fight For Our Ancient Forests, BC Parks, and the Carmanah Valley

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Click here for a direct link to the video

Local news station CHEK TV’s Island 30 featured environmentalist Vicky Husband and Ancient Forest Alliance’s Ken Wu speaking on the state of BC’s parks during their 100 year anniversary.

The story focuses on the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park and highlights the need to increase parks funding and maintenence in these spectacular places as well as the need to expand protected areas to include the remaining endangered old-growth forests on Vancouver Island and southern BC and shift instead to logging second-growth forests sustainably.

Article by Dr. Keith Martin

Saving Our Forest Giants

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Saving our Forest Giants

 

Port Renfrew is the furthest outpost of my riding. It is a land of extraordinary beauty with mountains that hug a rugged coastline, rivers that run through deep valleys, and a land that harbours significant biodiversity. This area also contains some of the oldest and most majestic living things on our planet. In the area of the Gordon River Valley and further north in the upper Walbran Valley are some of the largest trees on the planet. A few weeks ago, I went into this remote area with a small team from the Ancient Forest Alliance to document these giant Western Red Cedars, Sitka Spruce and Douglas Fir that jut out of the surrounding valley floors like spires from cathedrals.

These trees are very important as they harbour a wide variety of plants and animals when alive, and when they fall, they also provide homes for everything from black bear to fungi. As standing behemoths or fallen giants, they are integral parts of their ecosystems.

However, my trip was also a race against time. For as you read this article, these giants of the forest are being cut down. As I stood in the middle of a clear-cut, I could hear the sharp crack as another tree was being cut down. Less than one kilometer away, I could see the top of a mountain being clearcut. In this clear-cut I stood atop a stump of a recently fallen tree that was at least 6 metres in diameter. Looking at the tightly packed rings of the tree showed that it was more than a thousand years old, yet it would have taken only minutes to cut it down.

Beyond the obvious loss of these magnificent giants is the tragedy that we can do better; cutting down these trees provides a short term benefit and a much larger,

long term loss. We can save these trees and in fact get more money from them alive than dead. Ecotourism walks to see these giants and their habitats with informed guides can provide much more revenue and jobs than cutting these trees for lumber and paper. Secondary growth could still be harvested. This would provide employment in an area that has had chronically high unemployment and low incomes. In many communities,

aboriginal and non aboriginal people have created businesses to guide people through the beautiful areas they live in. It is especially valuable when ethnocultural tours are provided. The region from Sooke to Port Renfrew is an ideal area for ethno-cultural tourism. Only two and a half hours from Victoria, it is a much shorter drive than to go to

Cathedral Grove up island, and is much more impressive.

Let’s work to stop the clear-cutting of old growth trees on South Vancouver Island. If we do this then we will provide long term economic opportunities and save these giants forever. These trees are more valuable to tourism and to the ecosystem than as lumber.

by Dr. Keith Martin, MP

MP Keith Martin stands in front of "Canada's Gnarliest Tree" in the endangered Upper Avatar Grove.

MP Keith Martin wants to expand Pacific Rim park

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The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) is supporting Member of Parliament (Esquimalt- Juan de Fuca) Keith Martin’s proposal to extend Pacific Rim National Park Reserve’s boundaries to protect adjacent endangered forests, including the grandest stands of old-growth trees in Canada.

Recently Martin joined Ancient Forest Alliance activists TJ Watt and Brendan Harry on a guided tour through the spectacular Avatar Grove and a nearby clearcut filled with giant stumps near the national park reserve.

Last fall, Martin proposed to expand Pacific Rim National Park Reserve to protect threatened forest lands along the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, in part to protect former Western Forest Products lands by Jordan River and the Juan de Fuca Trail that were threatened by development due to their removal from Tree Farm License 25. While the Capital Regional District has recently purchased the lands by Jordan River and the Sooke Potholes, other forested areas with high conservation and recreation values remain threatened in the region, particularly old-growth forests on Crown lands near Port Renfrew and Crown and private lands adjacent to the Juan de Fuca Marine Trail Provincial Park. Martin has expressed an interest in including such areas in his proposal, which he intends to introduce as a private members bill in the House of Commons at a future legislative session.

“These trees are some of the oldest living creatures on our planet. Cutting them down provides a short term benefit and a much larger long term loss. Ethno-tourism and eco-tours would provide for long term jobs and economic security in this area that has suffered from chronically high unemployment. We are in a race against time to save these forest giants. I am asking the provincial and federal governments to work with the forestry companies to stop this destruction of our old growth forests in the Gordon River Valley, Upper Walbran and surrounding areas,” said Dr. Martin.

Located on unprotected Crown Lands less than a 15 minute drive from Port Renfrew, Avatar Grove is home to dozens of some of the South Island’s largest redcedars and Douglas firs, including several trees with trunks reaching over 12 feet in diameter.

Liberal MP Keith Martin stands on top of a massive

MP Martin Continues Push To Expand Park

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A federal Liberal member of Parliament is continuing his drive to expand the boundaries of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve.

Dr. Keith Martin, MP for Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca, toured a section of old-growth forest and some clear cuts near Port Renfrew last week with members of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“These trees are some of the oldest living creatures on our planet,” said Martin, in a press release. “Cutting them down provides a short term benefit and a much larger long term loss.”

Martin also called for an end to old-growth logging in the Gordon River Valley, Upper Walbran and surrounding areas.

In the fall of 2009, Martin proposed expanding the park’s boundaries.

The park currently covers three sections: the Long Beach Unit, the Broken Group Islands Unit and the West Coast Trail Unit.

The Ancient Forest Alliance is a Victoria-based environmental organization dedicated to protecting old-growth forests.

Environmental group: Protect rare forest giants marked for logging near Port Renfrew

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Some of the giants stretch straight to the sky for 80 metres, while others are bulbous and misshapen, the knots and gnarls betraying their age.

The old-growth Douglas firs and red cedars have stood in the valley beside the Gordon River for centuries, but now, in the almost undisturbed grove, the end is spelled out in spray paint and logging tape.

The approximately 10-hectare stand of trees on Crown land, 15 minutes outside Port Renfrew, is marked for logging, although a Forests Ministry spokeswoman says no cutting permit has yet been issued.

If the newly formed environmental group Ancient Forest Alliance has its way, logging plans for the area would be scrapped.

“This area is just about the most accessible and finest stand of ancient trees left in a wilderness setting on the south Island,” said co-founder Ken Wu. “This is potentially a first-rate ecotourism gem and it’s so close to Port Renfrew.”

The stand, nicknamed Avatar Grove after the movie because of the twisted shapes, giant sword ferns and hanging mosses, was located by self-styled big-tree hunter TJ Watt in November. But when he and Wu returned this month, the biggest trees were surrounded by falling-boundary logging tape and marked with blue spray paint.

What make the grove different from other fragments of south Island old growth is the relatively flat terrain, nearby areas of protected old-growth such as the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, and its proximity to Port Renfrew, a community attempting to attract eco-tourists.

“All other unprotected old-growth stands near Victoria are either on steep, rugged terrain, far along bumpy logging roads or are small isolated stands surrounded by clearcuts and second-growth and near human settlements,” Wu said. “This is one of the last of the old-growth valley bottoms.”

On Monday, the Ancient Forest Alliance will deliver a letter to Forests Minister Pat Bell asking that the stand be protected immediately by a Land Use Order, similar to the process being used to protect areas of Haida Gwaii and 1,600 hectares of coastal Douglas fir zones on the east side of Vancouver Island.

Watt is desperately hoping the province will step in.

“This is my passion. This is what gets me excited,” he said, staring at the crazily twisted trees. “You can’t help but develop a natural attachment to this area when you see it.”

Getting up close and personal with the Avatar Grove is not a walk in the park. There is no defined trail, massive rotting trees litter the ground and unexpected holes are covered by moss.

But it’s worth it, said Watt, hoisting himself up onto a giant burl.

“It would be a huge tragedy to lose something like this,” he said.

“Tourists come from all over the world to visit the ancient forests of B.C. and Avatar Grove stands out as a first-rate potential destination if the B.C. Liberals don’t let it fall.”

Bell could not be contacted yesterday afternoon and there is uncertainty about which company is planning to log the area.

Surrey-based Teal-Jones Group is cutting in the area and Forests Ministry spokeswoman Vivian Thomas said the Pacheedaht First Nation has a licence to remove wind-throw nearby.

“But we haven’t received a cutting-permit application in that area and you need an approved cutting permit before you can start logging,” she said.


T.J. Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance stands by a stand of old growth forest just outside of Port Renfrew that is designated for logging
Photograph by: Debra Brash, Times Colonist