A giant ancient yellow-cedar tree (left) and logging road location ribbon (right)
Sep 23 2013

Ancient Yellow-Cedar Forest at Risk in the Roberts Creek Headwaters Ancient Forest, Sunshine Coast, BC

Roberts Creek, BC - Local environmental groups are calling on the BC government to establish an Ecological Reserve on approximately 15 hectares of endangered old-growth forest located on public (Crown) land at the headwaters of Roberts Creek on BC’s Lower Sunshine Coast. The mid elevation forest, located about 7 kilometres northeast of the community Roberts Creek, is proposed to be logged by BC Timber Sales (BCTS).

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Aug 15 2013

War in the Woods mass arrests 20 years ago prompted lasting change

It is the quiet amid the chaos just as the logging trucks and police rolled in that Tzeporah Berman remembers acutely about the War in the Woods, the fight by environmentalists 20 years ago over Clayoquot Sound.  Every day for almost three months during the summer of 1993, Berman and hundreds of other protesters stared down the logging trucks destined for some of Canada's most pristine old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, B.C.

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Aug 15 2013

Twenty years after clash at Clayoquot Sound, activists see new wave of unrest on the horizon

Twenty years after a protest led to massive arrests on logging roads in Clayoquot Sound the organizers say a lot has changed – but a lot hasn’t, and they predict a new generation of activists may soon be on the barricades again.

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Then Burnaby NDP MP Svend Robinson (second from right) joins in anti-logging protest on the Kennedy Lake bridge in Clayoquot Sound in 1993.
Aug 11 2013

Clayoquot protest 20 years ago transformed face of environmentalism

The protests at Clayoquot Sound, which lies just off Tofino on Vancouver Island’s outer coast of pristine beaches, rugged coastlines, islets, inlets and tranquil sheltered coves, represented the coalescing of public objections to clearcut logging plans by corporations who were following government policy in majestic old-growth forests.

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Aug 6 2013

Avatar Grove: the Extraordinary and the Ordinary

A scant 10 minute walk off a logging road near the BC's West Coast town of Port Renfrew is Avatar Grove, a stand of old cedars so majestic, powerful and gnarled that T. F. Watt said he and his colleagues from the Ancient Forest Alliance "were running around like kids in a candy story" when they found it in 2009.

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Master stylist
Aug 1 2013

Salon cuts hair in support of endangered forests

If you can stave it off until Sunday (Aug. 4), you can get a cut from noted Vancouver master stylist Champ Waterhouse at the Spirit of the Sea Festival – and help protect endangered old-growth forests in B.C. in the bargain.

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Aug 1 2013

Cougar den may have been lost to logging, Port Alberni man says

“Island Timberlands has built a road right up to it, and there’s flagging tape right at the entrance,” said Ray McLellan, who has tracked and watched cougars at the small cave since he was growing up in Port Alberni in the 1970s.

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Aug 1 2013

Province has until Thursday to buy Quadra Island park land with community-raised funds

The government has until 3 p.m. Thursday to submit a bid to buy 395 hectares of waterfront property for sale by forest company Merrill & Ring, based in Washington state. Quadra Island’s roughly 3,000 full-time residents have led a charge to raise more than $200,000, to try to push the province into action to save the property from logging or development.

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AFA's photographer TJ Watt takes a shot of "Canada's Gnarliest Tree" in the Upper Avatar Grove
Jul 17 2013

Avatar Grove: Seeing the forest for the ancient trees

“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.

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Jul 9 2013

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

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.

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