VIDEO: “Big Lonely Doug,” Canada’s 2nd largest Douglas-fir tree!


Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island, 2014 – “Big Lonely Doug,” a recently found old-growth Douglas-fir tree standing alone in a clearcut on southern Vancouver Island, has been officially measured to be the second largest Douglas-fir tree in Canada. Last week, renowned forest ecologist Andy MacKinnon, who manages the BC Big Tree Registry run by the University of British Columbia and is also the co-author of the best-selling “Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon,” measured the goliath tree.
Click here to watch on AFA’s YouTube channel.

For Immediate Release
April 24, 2014
“Big Lonely Doug” Officially Measured and Confirmed as Canada’s 2nd Largest Douglas-fir Tree
Port Renfrew, Vancouver Island – “Big Lonely Doug”, a recently found old-growth Douglas-fir tree standing alone in a clearcut on southern Vancouver Island, has been officially measured to be the second largest Douglas-fir tree in Canada. Last week, renowned forest ecologist Andy MacKinnon, who manages the BC Big Tree Registry (see: https://bigtrees.forestry.ubc.ca/) run by the University of British Columbia and is also the co-author of the best-selling “Plants of Coastal British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon”, measured the goliath tree. The results are as follows:
Big Lonely Doug dimensions:

  • Height: 70.2 meters or 230 feet
  • Circumference: 11.91 meters or 39 feet
  • Diameter: 3.91 meters or 12.4 feet
  • Canopy Spread: 18.33 meters or 60.1 feet
  • Total Points (“AFA Points” – American Forestry Association, NOT Ancient Forest Alliance!): 714.24 AFA points.

This makes Big Lonely Doug the second largest Douglas-fir tree in British Columbia and Canada in terms of total size, based on its “points” (ie. a combination of circumference, height, and crown spread) and the second largest in circumference. Big Lonely Doug was first noticed by Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt several months ago as being an unusually large tree, and the organization returned several weeks ago to take preliminary measurements. Official measurements were taken last Friday.
The world’s largest Douglas-fir tree is the Red Creek Fir, located just 20 kilometers to the east of Big Lonely Doug in the San Juan River Valley, and is 13.28 meters (44 feet) in circumference, 4.3 meters (14 feet) in diameter, 73.8 meters (242 feet) tall, and has 784 AFA points.
Conservationists estimate that Big Lonely Doug may be 1000 years old, judging by nearby 2 meter wide Douglas-fir stumps in the same clearcut with growth rings of 500 years. Big Lonely Doug grows in the Gordon River Valley near the coastal town of Port Renfrew on southern Vancouver Island, known as the “Tall Trees Capital” of Canada. It stands on Crown lands in Tree Farm Licence 46 in the traditional territory of the Pacheedaht First Nation band.
Conservationists are calling for provincial legislation to protect BC’s biggest trees, monumental groves, and endangered old-growth forests.
“We’re encouraging the province to keep moving forward with its promise to protect BC’s largest trees and monumental groves, and to also protect BC’s endangered old-growth ecosystems on a more comprehensive basis,” stated Ken Wu, AFA executive director. “The days of colossal trees like these are quickly coming to an end as the last unprotected lowland ancient forests in southern BC where giants like this grow are almost all gone.”
The BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations is currently working to follow up on a 2011 promise by then-Forest Minister Pat Bell to develop a new “legal tool” to protect the province’s biggest old-growth trees and grandest groves. Such a legal mechanism, if effective and if implemented to save not just individual trees but also the grandest groves, would be an important step forward in environmental protection and for enhancing the eco-tourism potential of the province. More comprehensive legislation would still be needed to protect the province’s old-growth ecosystems on a larger scale, to sustain biodiversity, clean water, and the climate, as the biggest trees and monumental groves are today a tiny fraction of the remaining old-growth forests which remain mainly on more marginal growing sites with smaller trees.
BC’s old-growth forests are important to sustain numerous species at risk that can’t live or flourish in second-growth stands; to mitigate climate change by storing over twice as much atmospheric carbon per hectare than the ensuing second-growth tree plantations that they are being replaced with; as fundamental pillars for BC’s multi-billion dollar tourism industry; to support clean water and wild salmon; and for many First Nations cultures who use ancient cedar trees for canoes, totems, long-houses, and numerous other items.
“The vast majority of BC’s remaining old-growth forests are at higher elevations, on rocky sites, and in bogs where the trees are much smaller and in many cases have low to no commercial value. It’s the productive valley-bottom stands where trees like the Big Lonely Doug grow that are incredibly scarce and are of the highest conservation priority right now,” stated TJ Watt.
See previous media coverage on Big Lonely Doug at:
• Global TV https://globalnews.ca/news/1235236/canadas-second-largest-douglas-fir-tree-may-have-been-found-near-port-renfrew
• Times Colonist https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/vancouver-island-douglas-fir-may-be-canada-s-second-biggest-1.916676
• Vancouver Observer https://www.vancouverobserver.com/news/canadas-second-largest-douglas-fir-discovered
• CHEK TV https://www.cheknews.ca/?bckey=AQ~~,AAAA4mHNTzE~,ejlzBnGUUKY1gXVPwEwEepl35Y795rND&bclid=975107450001&bctid=3374339880001
• Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/03/26/big-lonely-doug-tree_n_5038519.html?1395881730
• MetroNews [Original article no longer available]

VIDEO: Ancient Forest Movement of BC

BC’s ancient forest movement is a diverse coalition of First Nations, community activists, youth and elders, unions and businesses, conservationists, recreationists and everyday British Columbians who are united against the industrial-scale logging of BC’s endangered old-growth forests. This short video is part of the series Heartwood: A West Coast Forest Documentree by Daniel Pierce of Ramshackle Pictures and features many of these groups coming together in solidarity in Cathedral Grove in October 2013 to fight Island Timberlands’ old-growth logging near Port Alberni.

Watch other videos in the Heartwood series.

Watch this film on Vimeo.

Ancient Forest Alliance's Ken Wu stands alongside a 14ft wide redcedar stump from an old-growth tree cut down on Edinburgh Mountain near Port Renfrew.

VIDEO: Save BC’s Endangered Old-Growth Forests & Forestry Jobs!

Watch on the AFA’s YouTube channel.

May 2013

Send your LETTER to government at www.BCForestMovement.com
Please SIGN our PETITION at staging.ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/

BC’s old-growth forests are world renowned for their beauty and grandeur, where moss-draped trees can grow as wide as living rooms and as tall as downtown skyscrapers

Old-growth forests are vital to support wildlife, including numerous species at risk;
they’re fundamental pillars of BC’s multi-billion dollar tourism industry;
they store vast amounts of carbon to counteract climate change;
they provide clean water and support wild salmon;
and they’re vital to many First Nations whose cultures evolved in old-growth forests over millennia.

A century of unsustainable overcutting has largely eliminated the biggest and best trees in the biologically-diverse valley bottoms and lower elevations that historically built BC’s forest industry.

This has resulted in diminishing returns as the trees get smaller, lower in value, and more expense to reach high up the mountainsides

As a result, dozens of old-growth mills have closed and tens of thousands of BC workers have lost their jobs over the past two decades as the finest old-growth stands have been depleted.

Much of the remaining old-growth forests are marginal stands in bogs, on steep, rocky slopes, and at high elevations with small and stunted trees, and generally have little timber value. Meanwhile, the last endangered old-growth stands on the productive growing sites with big trees, or ancient forests, are still being targeted for logging.

As our second-growth forests mature – which now comprise most of BC’s productive forest lands — there has been a lack of government regulations and incentives to ensure investment in coastal second-growth mills and wood processing facilities. This has resulted in the mass exodus of raw logs to China, the US, and other nations at the expense of BC job opportunities.

With a provincial election approaching on May 14, 2013, British Columbia is now at a crossroads:  The BC Liberal government and the NDP opposition can choose a bigger, wiser vision to protect our endangered old-growth forests and ensure a sustainable, value-added second-growth forest industry.

Or they can fail to learn from our history’s mistakes and continue to support the disastrous status quo of unsustainable, short-sighted resource depletion in our forests that is causing the increasing collapse of ecosystems and communities. Politicians who fail to recognize this trajectory and the need to take a new direction, don’t deserve power.

And it’s citizens who speak up, organize, mobilize, and vote with an informed conscience, who are key to creating the political will among our elected representatives.

Please SEND a MESSAGE to BC’s politicians at www.BCForestMovement.com and take part in the campaign for sustainable forestry!

Authorized by the Ancient Forest Alliance, registered sponsor under the Election Act
Ancient Forest, Alliance, Victoria Main PO, PO Box 8459, Victoria, BC, V8W 3S1 Can

Ancient Forest Alliance

The Walbran Valley’s Castle Grove& – Canada’s Finest Old-Growth Cedar Forest

Direct link to YouTube video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHnG_sC4oms

Please sign and share our petition at: staging.ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/

The endangered Castle Grove is the finest stand of unprotected monumental ancient redcedars in Canada – it is the largest, densest, and most intact of such remaining stands. The Lower Castle Grove includes the “Castle Giant”, an enormous, 16 foot (5 meter) diameter western redcedar that is one of the largest trees in Canada, and both the Lower and Upper Castle Grove are jam-packed with a high density of enormous trees. Marbled murrelets, screech owls, Queen Charlotte goshawks, red- legged frogs, cougars, black bears, and black-tailed deer all live in the Upper Castle Grove, while steelhead and coho salmon spawn in the Walbran River below. Most of western Vancouver Island including the Walbran Valley is within the territory of the Nuu-cha-nulth First Nations people.

In the summer of 2012 survey tape for logging was discovered in the Upper Castle Grove. However, after a large-scale public awareness and mobilization campaign led by the Ancient Forest Alliance, the BC government announced in November that the company, Teal-Jones, had rescinded its plans to log the grove. Now, follow-up legal protection is needed for this incredible forest.

The Castle Grove has been featured in numerous media reports on BC’s old-growth forests for over two decades, including the front pages of the Victoria “Times Colonist” and in the “Vancouver Sun”. The Walbran Valley was the focus of early protests against old-growth logging in 1991 and 1992, playing an important role in the build-up towards the massive Clayoquot Sound protests near Tofino on Vancouver Island in 1993.

In the spring of 2011, the BC Liberal government promised to implement a new “legal tool” to protect the province’s largest trees and monumental groves. Of all places where such a designation would make most sense, it would be in the Castle Grove. However, more importantly, more comprehensive “ecosystem-level protection” for our old-growth forests on a much larger scale is fundamentally needed. The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC Liberal government and the NDP Opposition to commit to implementing a BC Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory and protect old-growth forests wherever they are scarce (such as on Vancouver Island, in the Lower Mainland, in the BC Interior, etc.). The AFA is also calling on the BC Liberal government to ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, which constitute most of the forests in southern BC, and to ensure a guaranteed log supply for BC mills and value-added wood manufacturers by ending the export of raw logs to foreign mills.

Filmed and edited by TJ Watt. Camera – Canon 5D MKII.
Music: “Solo Acoustic Guitar” by Jason Shaw (https://audionautix.com/index.html)

Ancient Forest Alliance

VIDEO: Protect Echo Lake Ancient Forest

Video: Protect Echo Lake
https://youtu.be/HPstV14oZ6s

Echo Lake is a spectacular, unprotected, lowland ancient forest near Agassiz, BC on the east side of the Lower Fraser Valley. It is in the unceded territory of the Sts’ailes First Nations band (formerly the Chehalis Indian Band). The area is home to perhaps the largest concentration of bald eagles on Earth, where thousands of eagles come each fall to eat spawning salmon in the Harrison and Chehalis Rivers and hundreds roost in the old-growth trees at night around Echo Lake. It is also home to bears, cougars, deer, mountain goats, and osprey, and was historically populated by the critically endangered northern spotted owl. The vigilance of local landowners on the east side of Echo Lake, whose private lands restrict access to the old-growth forests on the Crown lands on the west side of the lake, have held-off industrial logging of the lake’s old-growth forests for decades. Local conservationists are interested in increased protections for eagles in the Harrison/Chehalis area and the protection of the Echo Lake Ancient Forest where the eagles roost at night.

Please SIGN our PETITION at https://staging.ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/
Send you LETTER to government at https://www.ProtectEchoLake.com

Filmed and edited by TJ Watt.
Eagle photo by Christian Sasse.
Music – “Razorback Sucker” by Tom Fahy (https://tomfahy.org/)

For information on printable coupons for bed bath and beyond go to this coupon site.

Protect McLaughlin Ridge YouTube Clip (1min)

Direct link to YouTube clip (1min): www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsZiO1wAKwE

Help us protect the old-growth forests of McLaughlin Ridge near Port Alberni!

Conservationists are calling on the BC government to protect a 500 hectare tract of ancient Douglas fir forest near Port Alberni that biologists have classified as both critical habitat for wintering deer and nesting endangered Queen Charlotte goshawks. Conservationists would like the BC government to protect the old-growth forest on private land on McLaughlin Ridge by purchasing it from Island Timberlands.

See the photo gallery here: www.staging.ancientforestalliance.org/photos.php?gID=10

The land was formerly intended for protection as an Ungulate Winter Range (UWR) for black-tailed deer and as a Wildlife Habitat Area (WHA) for the endangered goshawk until 2004 when the BC Liberal government removed 88,000 hectares of land now owned by Island Timberlands from their Tree Farm Licenses (TFL’s), thus removing most existing environmental protections on those lands and failing to implement other planned protections. Island Timberlands began logging the 500 hectare tract of old-growth forest a year ago, clearcutting 100 hectares or more from both sides of the Grove, while about 400 hectares of the core area still remains – for now.

Ancient Forest Alliance

CHEK TV News clip featuring Port Renfrew’s new Tourist Information Centre and the Avatar Grove

The Ancient Forest Alliance along with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce launched the new Tourist Information Centre today which will serve to funnel thousands of visitors into the town’s surrounding old-growth forests, raise awareness of the need to protect them, and help create a vibrant eco-tourism based economy.

Direct link to video: https://bcove.me/p0rti00i

Ancient Forest Alliance

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

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.