MacLean's magazine has featured a photo by the AFA's TJ Watt. This shot of Big Lonely Doug was captured during the tree climb and featured in the July 2015 'Guide to Being an Awesome Canadian'! Can you spot tree climbers Matthew Beatty (near the bottom) and Will Koomjian (near the top)?
Please note that our downtown office is now closed until August 18th for Summer Holidays. Thank you for your understanding 🙂
Here are some fantastic images from part of the endangered Central Walbran Ancient Forest shot in early July by AFA's TJ Watt. The pictures were taken in the '4403' cutblock proposed by Teal-Jones (see map in gallery) just a few hundred metres from where people camp. This section of forest contains some absolutely incredible old-growth redcedar trees as well as some sensitive limestone karst features. Volunteers from the Friends of Carmanah Walbran have flagged a Witness Route into this area marked with yellow flagging tape making it easier to access now.
Please take 30 seconds to send a letter to the BC government asking them to protect the endangered Central Walbran and Edinburgh Mt Ancient Forests here: www.BCForestMovement.com Thank you!!
PHOTOGALLERY at:
https://www.facebook.com/
Surrey-based forestry company, the Teal-Jones Group, is aggressively moving forward with plans to log and build roads into Canada’s two most magnificent old-growth forests, the Central Walbran Ancient Forest (about 500 hectares) and the Edinburgh Mountain Ancient Forest (about 1500 hectares) on southern Vancouver Island. The company is planning eight new cutblocks (clearcuts) and a new road in the Central Walbran, and two new cutblocks and a new road on Edinburgh Mountain. The Walbran Valley is home to perhaps Canada’s finest stand of old-growth redcedars, the Castle Grove, while Edinburgh Mountain is where “Big Lonely Doug” (discovered last year by Ancient Forest Alliance activists to be Canada’s 2nd largest Douglas-fir tree – alas, completely surrounded by a 2012 clearcut) still stands and where the threatened “Christy Clark Grove” (ie. Lower Edinburgh Grove) is located in the Gordon River Valley.
Here are some photos and maps by the AFA's TJ Watt, from a recent July 2015 visit to these areas:
https://www.facebook.com/
At the end of a logging road, past expanses of clear-cut land, is the entrance to one of the largest contiguous tracts of old-growth rainforest on Vancouver Island.
The Central Walbran Valley near Port Renfrew is not protected parkland, but has incalculable ecological value, environmentalists say.
“You come to this area of pristine old growth and everything changes. Your mood changes. It’s — how do I put it — it gives you a feeling of well-being,” said environmentalist Saul Arbess.
“An undisturbed ancient forest like that is extraordinary.”
Arbess is one of many environmentalists mobilizing to protect a portion of the valley around Castle Grove known as “The Bite” for its bite-shaped exclusion from neighbouring Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park. The ancient western red cedars, sitka spruce and hemlock forests are home to species such as the threatened marbled murrelet.
Tonight at 7 p.m., environmentalists plan to gather at the Fernwood Community Centre to discuss next steps in their campaign to stop Surrey-based Teal-Jones Group from carrying out plans to log eight cutblocks in the 486-hectare area.
It’s a familiar battle for Arbess, with a familiar foe in the forestry industry. In the early 1990s, Arbess took part in a lengthy blockade of logging trucks in the Walbran Valley, as part of an ongoing “war in the woods” that included the massive Clayoquot Sound protests in 1993.
The conflict ended with Teal Jones surrendering 7,035 hectares of its licence to form Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park. But multiple flare-ups since then suggest negotiators didn’t quite get it right.
“We live with the mistakes of history, there’s no question about it,” Arbess said.
For representatives from Teal Jones, which employs more than 1,000 people, enough compromises have been made already.
Chief financial officer Hanif Karmally said the company has 59,884 hectares within its tree-farm licence, but almost 30 per cent is protected from harvest because of ecological considerations such as wildlife habitats or riparian areas.
Seventy-four per cent of the remaining timber-harvest land base is immature, leaving 11,080 hectares available to harvest.
“When the Carmanah-Walbran park was created, there was a conscious decision to allow old-growth logging outside of the park boundaries and Teal wishes to pursue this,” Karmally said.
“Further reductions would be extremely detrimental to Teal’s logging and sawmilling operations.”
Teal Jones had applied to begin logging one of its eight cutblocks on July 13, but all harvesting is on hold for the fire season, Karmally said.
A spokesman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations said the province is evaluating Teal Jones’s application.
But Teal Jones is within its legal rights to log the area, another spokesman said, with a province-approved forest-stewardship plan in place.
Torrance Coste, Vancouver Island campaigner for the Wilderness Committee environmental group, said second-growth forests can’t be considered adequate replacements for old-growth ones.
“If a tree is 1,200 or 1,400 years old, then the ecosystem around it has developed for that long, too. You can’t just replicate that when you log and replant,” he said.
Old-growth forests also serve as an important carbon sink for mitigating the effects of climate change, Coste said.
Peter Cressey, a member of Friends of Carmanah/Walbran, said he believes the best strategy for protecting the forest is bringing people to see it. Although he participated in blockades during the war in the woods, he doesn’t believe that will be necessary this time.
“Back in the ’90s, it was a small group of people labelled as treehuggers. Now it’s become more mainstream,” he said.
The Friends are creating a “witness trail” for people to take a 1.5-hour hike into the woods.
“We like the idea that you have to witness something before making a decision.”
Environmental advocates are calling on the province to extend the protected areas in southern Vancouver Island to two ancient forest sites threatened by logging.
The Surrey-based Teal-Jones Group has been moving forward to log and build roads into the central Walbran forest and the Edinburgh Mountain forest, which in turn will sell the pulp, paper and solid wood products from the trees.
Teal-Jones has so far applied for one of eight cutblocks in the area, and if the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations approves it, the company can begin work as early as July 13, according to TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner.
“We’re simply looking at the government, asking them to ensure the ecological values, basically protecting the forest in the central Walbran,” he said. “Hopefully it doesn’t get to the protest point.
“Hopefully it doesn’t get anywhere to the extent it was in the ’90s, with the civil disobedience.”
The two forests are a few kilometres away from the West Coast Trail and Pacific Rim National Park Reserve and located on Crown land.
That’s why the alliance, along with other groups such as the Wilderness Committee, are trying to pressure the government into expanding the protected forests to cover the threatened area, according to Watt.
“It’s one of the finest forests in Canada, if not the Earth,” he said. “If there’s any place that it makes sense, the borders already exist for the protected area already — that seems like a no brainer for including this within the protected area,” she said.
In an email from the ministry, approval times generally take 30 to 40 days and Teal- Jones is within its legal rights to log in the area environmental activists are concerned about.
“They have a government-approved forest stewardship plan in place,” the email states. “As part of the approval process, the company needed to show how public comments were incorporated in the plan.”
On Vancouver Island, only 46% of Crown forest is old growth — more than 860,000 hectares — and it’s estimated around 520,000 hectares will never be harvested, according to the province.
What will happen with the other 300,000 was not explained.
Read more: https://vancouver.24hrs.ca/2015/07/09/add-ancient-forests-to-protected-lands-activists
Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance spoke with Aaron McArthur on BC1 about the threat of logging of old growth forests on Southern Vancouver Island.
[Video not currently available.]
