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The Week – We’ve Still Got Wood

Jul 21 2011/in News Coverage

Exciting news for eco lovers and the Ancient Forest Alliance this week: Vancouver Island is still home to Canada’s largest tree — at least for now.

To celebrate Parks Day this past week, the AFA captured a YouTube video of Canada’s largest tree, a western red cedar named the Cheewhat Giant, growing in a remote location near Cheewhat Lake, north of Port Renfrew and west of Lake Cowichan. The tree remains the country’s biggest with a trunk diametre over six metres (20 feet), a height of 56 metres (182 feet) and listing 450 cubic metres in timber volume — or 450 regular telephone poles worth of wood. The tree remains preserved within the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, which was created in 1971. Not all of B.C.’s flora has as successful a story, however. The video clip features new clear cuts and giant stumps of red cedar trees, some adjacent to the reserve that were logged as recently as this year.

“Future generations will look back at the majority of B.C.’s politicians who still sanction the elimination of our last endangered old-growth forests … and see them as lacking vision, compassion and a spine,” says TJ Watt, AFA co-founder. “We desperately need more politicians with courage and wisdom to step forward.”

See the clip “Canada’s Largest Tree — the Cheewhat Cedar” at https://youtu.be/Xw2Im8nSOdg

[Original Monday Magazinearticle no longer available]

Eco-tourism in Port Renfrew

Jul 21 2011/in News Coverage

Port Renfrew, long a logging town, has realized they can capitalize on the protection of their natural assets to keep the community alive.

The Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce has partnered with the Ancient Forest Alliance, the advocacy group that leads tours of the majestic ‘Avatar Grove’, to funnel more tourists into the area and feed the local economy.

The two organizations launched an info centre Thursday, July 14 that will hopefully be a hub for visitors looking for information about Avatar Grove and a boom for local businesses.

“What we used to rely on to sustain Port Renfrew was logging, but the tables have turned,” said Rosie Betsworth, chamber president.

She said while the partnership with an environmental group initially raised eyebrows among area residents, the forest alliance isn’t a “radical” group, instead one that aims to educate people gently about the importance of protecting old-growth forests.

“Their application is soft and it works.”

And it is working. The Ancient Forest Alliance holds tours once a month through the grove, and an average of 50 people show up each time, many from across Canada and Europe. TJ Watt, campaigner and photographer for the alliance, said thousands have come through the grove since he first discovered it in late 2009.

“There are five, six, seven cars there on an average day,” he said. The maps available in the info centre provide directions on how to reach the grove, a 20-minute drive from the village centre and then a 15-minute hike. It features the world’s biggest Douglas fir and Canada’s gnarliest tree, covered with a 10-foot wide burl at its base. Watt estimates the oldest tree in the grove is 500 years old.

Betsworth said the flow of visitors coming to see the grove is translating into real growth for the village, and she can understand why.

“The town is small, unique, green and clean,” she said. Everywhere you turn there’s something else to see.”

The community now has its first strip mall- a row of businesses with a restaurant, a market and the info centre, as well as a growing list of accommodations, eateries and eco-tourism opportunities.

She admits that the quality of the West Coast highway needs to be improved, and the switchbacks need to be gentler.

“The pressure is on” to keep the Pacific Rim Circle Route, a logging road which connects Port Renfrew to Lake Cowichan, maintained.

Watt thinks local businesses are on-board with this new tourism strategy.

“I find that most business owners have made the connection between protecting the earth and raising funds,” he said.

However, he’s not yet assured that the tourists will be able to visit Avatar Grove indefinitely.

On Watt’s second visit to the grove in February 2010, he noticed surveyor tape around some of the trees. Since then, it’s been “a long, drawn-out battle for the last year and a half” to get the grove protected. The government is currently consulting with Teal-Jones Group, which has logging rights. Watt thinks that with the frenzy of people coming in to see the trees, it would be in the government’s best interest to

“It’d be way too backwards to cut it down at this point.”

Link to Sooke News Mirror article: https://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/sookenewsmirror/lifestyles/125824828.html

The Cheewhat Giant is over 6 meters (20 feet) in trunk diameter

Meet Cheewhat, Canada’s largest tree — and help the alliance keep giants like it safe

Jul 18 2011/in News Coverage

Tucked deep in the Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island sits the Cheewhat cedar, Canada’s largest tree.

“It’s like arriving at a small planet. You wouldn’t know it was there driving along a logging road unless someone showed you the spot,” said Ken Wu, co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance, an organization focused on protecting old-growth forest and promoting sustainable forestry jobs.

“Luckily, it’s in the borders of a national park that was made 40 years ago.”

The giant western red cedar reaches 56 metres high and spans six metres around, containing enough wood to make 450 telephone poles. It’s accessible by a logging road and by hiking in.

“It must be close to 2,000 years old,” Wu said.

While Parks Canada celebrated 100 years protecting trees like the Cheewhat Saturday, Wu said large stumps littering the area around the park are a sign that more needs to be done to save others like it.

“A lot of people think logging of old growth has ended, when it’s actually the norm on public land on B.C.’s coast,” he said.

“We’re saying that the collapse of the ecosystem as a result of resource depletion also results in the collapse of rural employment in those industries. We’ve seen it in fisheries and we’ve seen it actually happen over a 20-year span now with the collapse of coastal forestry employment.”

Instead, the organization advocates for the logging of second-growth forest where trees have been re-planted, “like the rest of the country and the rest of the world is doing,” Wu said.

Hannah Carpendale, outreach co-ordinator with the alliance, said it’s jarring travelling from the protected park to the areas that have been clear-cut. “Sometimes it’s hard to take it all in, the amount that’s been lost,” she said. “It’s not just the trees, it’s the entire ecosystem and everything that comes with it.”

The group has launched a petition in support of their cause and “have thousands of supporters now,” Wu added.

So far, the provincial government has said they’re considering increasing protection for old-growth forest and some of the largest trees near Port Renfrew.

Wu grew up in the prairies of Saskatchewan, where “you could hug a tree with one hand,” but has lived on the island for the past decade.

He became fascinated with old-growth trees as a 10-year-old when he saw a photo of six people dancing on a large stump.

“It blew me away that we had trees like that. Then I found out we still do,” he said. “You’ve got some of the biggest trees in the world [around the Pacific Rim Park], and some of the biggest stumps.”

Link to original news article: https://www.theprovince.com/travel/Meet+Cheewhat+Canada+largest+tree+help+alliance+keep+giants+like+safe/5114186/story.html#ixzz1SVaaILU7

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