News Coverage

Big Lonely Doug is a survivor.

The gigantic Douglas fir has weathered storms, earthquakes and a massive logging operation, but according to environmentalists on Vancouver Island, its days are numbered.

“With the other trees gone, there’s no more wind buffer,” said Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “Its largest branch was blown off by the wind a few weeks ago, and the whole tree itself is in peril.”

Along with his colleague T.J. Watt, Wu spotted the tree months ago in a logged-out area near Port Renfrew, but only had the chance to measure it last week.

At approximately four metres wide and 69 metres tall, it’s believed to be the second largest Douglas fir ever recorded in Canada.

“It’s so big it’s like arriving at a small planet,” Wu said. “It’s one of those trees that produces awe in people.”

The area around Big Lonely Doug was logged in 2012 by a Vancouver-based timber firm, leading Wu and Watt to give the tree its “lonely” moniker.

“I can only imagine what a spectacular landscape it would have been two years ago, filled with Douglas firs and ten-foot wide cedars,” Wu said. “Now it looks like a moonscape, except for this one, huge tree.”

Based on the rings of nearby stumps, Wu estimates Lonely Doug is 1,000 years old.

The Ancient Forest Alliance has spent years tracking down Vancouver Island’s largest trees in an effort to bring awareness to the plight of old growth forests. Claiming only 10 per cent of the productive, old growth forest on the Island is under protection, Wu believes more regulation is needed.

“Second-growth forests in B.C. are logged every 50 years, so if you lose something that doesn’t come back for another 1,000 years, it’s gone for good,” he said. “And all the creatures associated with these ancient forests lose their habitat.”

Wu said the forest around Big Lonely Doug would have served as habitat for the endangered Queen Charlotte goshawk.

To bring attention to their cause, Wu and Watt have dubbed the old growth tract around Doug the “Christy Clark grove,” after B.C.’s premier.

“The grove was named after the premier as a strategy to put her on the spot and in the spotlight to have to take responsibility to protect the area’s ancient forests,” Wu said.

The area is definitely home to some large trees. In fact, the world’s largest Douglas fir — standing 73.8 metres tall — is only one valley away, and record-setting cedars and spruces are also nearby.

Andy MacKinnon, an ecologist who manages the B.C. Big Tree Registry, said the discovery of Lonely Doug could help spur conservation efforts in the area.

“If you’re trying to save a grove of trees and you can point to a tree as being one of the largest in the world… that gets a lot more press and a lot more attention, and it indirectly affords the area a kind of protection,” he said.

MacKinnon points to a giant Sitka spruce that led to a portion of the Carmanah Valley on Vancouver Island being designated a provincial park.

“That whole campaign and some of its best publicity was built around the Carmanah Giant,” he said.

MacKinnon expects Big Lonely Doug may be among the world’s ten largest Douglas firs, but he’s waiting until he can officially measure it before adding it to the registry.

For more information on large trees in the province, visit the B.C. Big Tree Registry, or consult the Google map below (follow news link below to view) created by Craig Williams.

Read more: https://metronews.ca/news/victoria/981658/photos-giant-douglas-fir-tree-found-in-b-c-may-be-largest-in-world/

Port Hardy – With the blessing of the Kwakiutl Hereditary Chief, the Kwakiutl Indian Band held a peaceful protest last Thursday, January 9, at an Island Timberlands logging operations in Port Hardy.

Band members carried signs proclaiming the area as Kwakiutl traditional territory and gathered at the entrance of the site. Fallers in the area reportedly ceased operations and left the site, as the protestors drummed and sang.

In a release, the band said that, “This logging is symptomatic of the long-standing disregard by Canada and B.C. to act honourably to meet their commitments and obligations of the ‘Treaty of 1851’.”

A B.C. Supreme Court decision on June 17, 2013, upheld the Kwakiutl’s Douglas Treaty and “encouraged and challenged” both the federal and provincial governments to begin honourable negotiations with the First Nation “without any further litigation, expense or delay.”

Band representatives explained that logging operation along Byng Road is in the area of a cultural use trail and said they had not been consulted before falling began in the area.

“The Kwakiutl people have never ceded, surrendered, or in any way relinquished aboriginal title and rights to our traditional territories,” explained the release.

“We continue to hold aboriginal title, and to exercise our rights in and interests in all of our traditional territories. Our aboriginal title and rights are recognized and protected by Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which recognizes our occupation of the territories before the assertion of British sovereignty and affirms our rights to the exclusive use and occupancy of the land and to choose what uses the land can be put to. These Constitutional Rights apply throughout our traditional territories.”

Economic Development Manager Casey Larochelle said that the continued failure of B.C. and Canada to recognize the unextinguished title and rights of the Kwakiutl reflected poorly on the ‘Honour of the Crown.’

Lands and Resources Coordinator Tom Child explained that current logging operations were taking place in a culturally sensitive area, including trapline sites and a medicinal plant harvest site in addition to the trail.

The representatives expressed frustration at the Crown’s minimization and “narrow legal interpretation” of the Douglas Treaty and the lack of meaningful consultation with the Kwakiutl.

“Canada and B.C. need to consult in good faith with the Kwakiutl to create a new course for comprehensive implementation of the Treaty of 1851,” said the release. “Rather than simply being an archaic document with narrow legal interpretation, this treaty should be seen as a living document to guide how the Kwakiutl and the new settlers to this land co-exist. There is a shared history and a future that will continue to bind ‘all peoples’ together.”

See more: https://issuu.com/blackpress/docs/i20140116100029732/1?e=1205826%2F6374208
 

The oldest trees in a forest aren't just passively clinging to the carbon they've drawn from the atmosphere and stored as leaves and wood – they're capturing CO2 at a pace that increases with each passing year.

That's the surprising result from an exhaustive new study of tree growth and carbon storage, a key element in Earth's carbon cycle and a focus of international efforts to draw up a new international climate treaty.

For years, conventional wisdom held that even if old-growth trees weren't felled by fire, disease, lightning, or chain saws, they retained no additional carbon as they entered their golden years. They were valuable as storage bins for the carbon they had taken up and stored as they grew. But few counted on old-growth trees to continue sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere in their senior years.

That bit of arboreal ageism began to change in 2008, when researchers published a study showing that old-growth forests actively added to their carbon stocks, although at a slower pace than forests with younger demographics.

Now, an international research team has shown that, for many tree species across the globe, old trees accumulate carbon at an increasing rate as time passes. On average, trees whose trunks are about three feet across add nearly 230 pounds of dry mass to their girth each year. That's about three times more mass than a younger tree of the same species with a trunk half as wide would add.

This does not mean that trees will save the planet from the relentless rise of heat-trapping CO2 in the atmosphere resulting from human industrial activities and land-use changes, researchers caution.

The fact that concentrations continue to rise in itself shows that natural sinks for carbon aren't keeping up with human emissions, although they are moderating the increase the atmosphere sees.

Nor do the results imply that old-growth forests are better at soaking up and retaining CO2 on a given day than large stands of young trees or forests with a broader mix of young and old, says Nathan Stephenson, a forest ecologist with the US Geological Survey's Western Ecological Research Center in Three Rivers, Calif. Mortality rates in these younger forests tend to be lower, allowing more trees to carry on the vital work of photosynthesis. And proportionately fewer trees are dying at any one time, limiting the net amount of carbon dioxide that returns to the atmosphere as the dead trees decompose.

Still, in managing forests for the carbon they actively acquire and hold in long-term storage, “you need to know who your star players are on the team. It turns out that the star players in an old forest are the old trees, not the young trees.”

The results are “very exciting,” says Doug Boucher, director of tropical forest and climate initiative at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental group based in Cambridge, Mass. “It reinforces the value of old-growth forests for the storage of carbon in the biosphere.”

Beyond a tendency to anthropomorphize the life cycle of trees, doubts about the capacity of older trees to increase their carbon stores had some basis in earlier research, Dr. Stephenson says.

Researchers looking at the role of leaves noted that as trees grew older, their leaves became less efficient at taking up CO2 – which would be expected to show up as a slowdown in carbon accumulation. And in stands where the trees were all about the same age, net CO2 storage declined as the trees aged.

A couple of studies, each focusing on an individual species, found that the older trees in their samples bucked conventional wisdom. But the results weren't overwhelming enough to overturn it.

Stephenson and his colleagues culled their measurements from records kept at research stations worldwide. Their sample included more than 670,000 trees, representing 403 species from six continents. Their measurements focused on increases in trunk diameter at a standard height above the ground.

Overall, 98.6 percent of the species in the sample experienced increased mass with age, suggesting that while a tree might reach a maximum height, it could add mass along its trunk indefinitely, with biggest trees adding the most mass.

One reason, Stephenson explains, is that as trees grow, they continue to add branches and leaves. Even though the carbon uptake of an individual leaf might decline with time, an older tree has many more leaves than its younger siblings. A decline in leaf efficiency is more than offset by an increase in numbers.

As for the sequestration declines seen in old stands of trees of similar age, such stands started out with many more trees, which would have boosted their carbon-sequestration potential. “You can pack a lot more young trees on a patch of land than old trees,” Stephenson says.

The study's results have important implications for managing forests in a warming climate, he adds.

In regions such as the US's Mountain West, climate-related contributions to wildfire frequency and intensity, as well as to more-frequent infestations of insects such as the Mountain pine beetle, already are putting more-intense stress on forests.

“Maybe if environmental changes are hitting your biggest trees the hardest, this is sort of an added impetus to go: 'Oh my gosh, we need to mitigate that,' because these are the star players in pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere,” he says.

Read more: https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2014/0116/Surprise!-Old-growth-trees-are-star-players-in-gobbling-greenhouse-gas 

Today, Kwakiutl commemorates the 163rd anniversary of its 1851 “Douglas” Treaty as the First Nation enters into its twelve day of protest against the Province of British Columbia, Canada and Forest Companies over the controversial clear-cutting of cedar trees on lands with exclusive Kwakiutl Aboriginal title, rights & interests, and Treaty rights.

“The people of Kwakiutl have been left with no choice but to protest and stop Canada and BC from allowing Companies to cut and remove cedar trees from our Land,” said Chief Coreen Child of Kwakiutl First Nation.

Cedar is vital to the Kwakiutl people, contributing to every facet of life—from ceremony to sanctuary. “As our respected ones taught us, the trees are the 'standing people'. They have the same energy as a bear, a salmon, a mountain, or a human being. The trees in the forest are like family,” said Tom Child, Lands Manager and Band Member of Kwakiutl First Nation.

At the centre of Kwakiutl's protest is an 1851 Treaty with the British Crown, which stipulated that lands and waters were to be set-aside for the exclusive use by Kwakiutl to maintain livelihood “as formerly” and for “generations to follow”.

“Our people viewed the Treaty as vital to protecting land, water, and a way of life,” said Chief Child. “But treaty implementation never happened. It was denied. And by way of denial, natural resource based industries sprang up around us and decimated our lands and waters,” said Chief Child.

In June 2013, after a century and a half of Crown neglect, the BC Supreme Court found that BC and Canada had failed to implement and respect Kwakiutl “Douglas” Treaty and “challenged” both levels of government to begin honourable negotiations with the First Nation “without any further litigation, expense or delay.” Kwakiutl considered this aspect of the judgment a victory because it put to rest, once and for all, the Provincial Crown's denial of Kwakiutl rights, title and interests.

As of this writing, BC has appealed the ruling and Canada has fallen silent. Both levels of government claim they do not have a mandate to implement Kwakiutl's 1851 Treaty.

Kwakiutl believes it has been left with little recourse but to protest, and views its actions as part of a larger struggle shared by First Nations across Canada.

“There is a resistance growing across Canada because the Crown continues with its shopworn practice of dispossession, and if it works, why change it. It's infringing, insulting and infuriating. Here, we live amidst the most resource rich Nation in the world and our people continue to be mired in a system of poverty and stigma that still dresses itself in assimilationist clothing,” said Chief Child.

In the wake of anniversary and protest, Kwakiutl First Nation calls upon the federal and provincial Crown governments to cease their delay tactics, stop their denial of Aboriginal rights, title and interests, and acknowledge that the Treaty of 1851 exists and needs to be honoured and implemented.

“Our Treaty is alive and well,” said Kwakiutl Councillor, Ross Hunt, Jr. “It stands as testament to Kwakiutl self-government and the principles of Kwakiutl law. Tonight, in heat of our protest fire and in the heart of Kwakiutl territory, our forests will ring with traditional games and songs. We invite BC and Canada to celebrate the honour with us.”

See more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1727448