Blog Archive Layout

Avatar Grove: Seeing the forest for the ancient trees

Jul 17 2013/in News Coverage

From the logging road just outside Port Renfrew, on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, there is no obvious sign that you are in the presence of megaflora.

But a small sign announcing the Avatar Grove trailhead and a few vehicles pulled over onto the dusty margin of the road make it clear this is the place to encounter ancient life.

The forest, with its thousand different shades of green, doesn’t look any different from others anywhere else on the West Coast – except for the grey spires you can see poking above the canopy. These are what are known as candelabra tops and they signify the presence of really old cedars.

It was those weathered tips that caught the attention of T.J. Watt, a member of the Ancient Forest Alliance, a few years ago as he was ending a search for old trees. He had been crisscrossing Vancouver Island without much luck – and didn’t expect to find it so close to a logging town.

“I didn’t think there could possibly be big trees that close to Port Renfrew,” he recalled.

But he pulled over to explore anyway, stopping pretty much in the same place that thousands of tourists now do. He didn’t go far off the road before he was forced to a halt, tilt back his head and say: “Wow.”

Along the Gordon River, in moist, hilly terrain, is a cluster of giant old fir and cedar trees that somehow escaped the woodsman’s axe during the past century of logging.

Shortly after that discovery, Mr. Watt and Ken Wu, the director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, started a campaign to save the trees, branding it Avatar Grove after the James Cameron science fiction movie, Avatar, that was then drawing huge crowds and which features a massive “Hometree” on the planet Pandora.

After a brief, intense campaign the environmental activists persuaded the provincial government to set the area aside from logging – and not long after that the first tree tourists started to arrive.

Mr. Wu said so many people have come that his group, together with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, has now started to build a boardwalk system to protect the tree roots and make hiking around the trees easier.

“There’s a steady stream of tourists going in there,” said a delighted Mr. Wu recently. “Actually a lot of them are coming from around the world now … It’s become the second Cathedral Grove of British Columbia,” he said.

Cathedral Grove, on the road to Port Alberni, was made into a park in 1944, at a time when there were still substantial amounts of old-growth forest left on the island.

By the time Mr. Watt laid eyes on Avatar Grove, about 90 per cent of Vancouver Island’s old growth had been logged.

Mr. Wu said he’s not surprised the increasingly rare old-growth trees have become a major tourist attraction for Port Renfrew.

“There’s so little of this lowland, monumental forest left,” said Mr. Wu. “Luckily, as a result of massive public pressure, this area was saved. It’s one of the finest groves of old growth in B.C. … and it is generating hundreds of thousands of dollars for the local economy each year.”

Jon Cash, a director of Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and owner of Soule Creek Lodge, said the economic impact of the trees isn’t something environmentalists have dreamed up.

“It’s definitely boosted tourism,” he said. “There’s been thousands and thousands of people going there.”

Mr. Cash said Port Renfrew is a tough town to market because it is a long way off the beaten tourism path that runs through Victoria.

But he said word of Avatar Grove has spread around the world.

“I’ve probably realized tens of thousands of dollars of overnight stays just from people coming up to see the trees,” he said.

A rough trail winds through the grove and although it is a short walk, it probably should be rated as an “intermediate” rather than an easy hike.

But it’s worth it – if you want to be in a grove of trees that was standing there long before Captain Cook sailed along what is now the coast of B.C.

Globe and Mail online article: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/avatar-grove-seeing-the-forest-for-the-ancient-trees/article13214516/

AFA's Ken Wu with a giant old-growth Douglas-fir tree in Stanley Park.

Stanley Park Old-Growth Forest Walk and Fundraiser! July 25th, 7:00-8:30pm

Jul 16 2013/in Announcements

Join the Ancient Forest Alliance's Ken Wu, TJ Watt, and Hannah Carpendale for a guided nature walk to some of the largest old-growth redcedars, Douglas-firs, grand firs, and bigleaf maples left in the Lower Mainland! Learn about the ecology, plants, and animals that inhabit this forest.

Date: July 25th
Time: 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Location: Stanley Park – North Lagoon Drive at Tatlow Walk (trail) see map at https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/Stanley-Park-Map-Guide-2012.pdf
Difficutly Level: Easy
Facebook Event Page: www.facebook.com/events/675339812482564/

Many people don't realize that within Stanley Park are some of the finest remnant old-growth stands and trees on the southern mainland coast of BC, with diameters of some redcedars exceeding 13 feet and a bigleaf maple over 10 feet wide. While partly disturbed by invasive species and human activity, most of the native plant species still survive in the park, and the park is also home to many species of wildlife.

This hike is a fundraiser for the Ancient Forest Alliance, which is working to build a boardwalk in the Avatar Grove on Vancouver Island and is working to achieve comprehensive provincial legislation to protect the endangered old-growth forests across BC.

Find out how you can help our public education and mobilization campaigns to protect ancient forests and ensure sustainable second-growth forestry jobs!

Suggested donation $10 to $100

Activists decry planned logging of old-growth forest on Vancouver Island

Jul 9 2013/in News Coverage

A Vancouver Island company is preparing to log a chunk of old-growth forest near Port Alberni that was once protected as winter range for deer, according to conservation groups.

Island Timberlands, based in Nanaimo, recently began building a road into the area and is moving “full-throttle” to log the site, says the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance.

The contested area, covering about 20 hectares, is about a one-hour drive from Port Alberni in an area some conservationists refer to as Juniper Ridge.

“It’s not a big deal except when you’re talking about the last of that type of area,” Jane Morden, a spokeswoman for Watershed Forest Alliance, said Monday. The two groups are working together on conservation issues.

The area contains Douglas Fir, lichen-covered outcrops and juniper shrubs growing on thin soils that would take centuries to recover after logging. It is part of a group of sites that had previously been protected as a winter feeding range for species including deer and elk, Ms. Morden said.

Representatives from Island Timberlands did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Headquartered in Nanaimo, the privately held company controls about 254,000 hectares of forest lands, making it one of the major players in the industry on Vancouver Island.

The area now in question is part of a bigger patchwork of lands – about 2,400 hectares – that were protected as wildlife range until the province removed a total of 74,000 hectares from Tree Farm Licence 44 in 2004, Ms. Morden said.

A TFL is one way the B.C. government grants forestry operators rights to harvest timber on Crown land. Removing land from a TFL makes it subject to less onerous regulations and can free it up for sale or development.

A follow-up deal between the government and the former licence holder was supposed to extend protection for the 2,400 hectares that had been previously set aside but that agreement did not come about, Ms. Morden said. Since 2004, about 1,500 of the 2,400 protected hectares have been logged.

Conservation groups now want the government to buy or protect the 2,400 hectares, which are among lands now operated by Island Timberlands.

“The government removed the environmental protections on these lands – now they need to protect them,” Ms. Morden said.

In an e-mail, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Forests said the province has “no plans to buy these private lands.”
Wildlife management plans are part of certification standards implemented by Island Timberlands, the spokeswoman said, adding that there are about 10,000 hectares designated as winter feeding ranges on public forest land on southern Vancouver Island.

Watershed Forest Alliance and other conservation groups have proposed a $40-million-a-year, 10-year Parks Acquisition Fund, saying such a fund is needed to buy old-growth forests and other lands that are at risk of logging or development.