A large group of hikers crowd around the massive redcedar dubbed "Canada's Gnarliest Tree" during an Ancient Forest Alliance led public hike to the Avatar Grove in summer 2010.

Eco-tourism in Port Renfrew

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.
News Coverage
Read More >
Canada’s largest tree

The Week – We’ve Still Got Wood

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).
News Coverage
Read More >
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

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.
News Coverage
Read More >
The new Port Renfrew Tourist Information Centre will help to funnel thousands of new visitors into the surrounding old-growth forests

Coastal town replaces logging with tourism

"We used to depend on logging to sustain Port Renfrew. Now the tables have turned and we're looking at the tall trees as our future," said Betsworth as the two groups cemented their partnership Thursday with the opening of a new tourist information centre, where visitors can pick up a map of the area's massive old-growth trees.

News Coverage
Read More >
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.
News Coverage
Read More >
Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Name that lichen

Naming rights for two recently discovered species of lichen are up for grabs to the highest bidder. It's all part of a fundraiser for The Land Conservancy of B.C., a non-profit habitat protection group, and the Ancient Forest Alliance, which focuses on saving B.C.'s old-growth forests.
News Coverage
Read More >
A waterfall cascades through the old-growth redcedars in the endagered Avatar Grove.
,

Canadian Student Takes Top Prize in International Environmental Journalism Competition with an Article on Avatar Grove

International winner Liz Welliver, whose article “Making a Stand for Avatar” captures the attempts to preserve a newfound swath of ancient old growth forests in BC, was among three youth to take home a prize in the Canadian leg of the competition.
Announcements
Read More >
Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

If you take a lichen to them, name them

While new lichens are discovered on an almost monthly basis, most of those are in the “dime-a-dozen” category of crust lichens, said Mr. Goward. The two lichens up for auction are from the much more prestigious “macrolichens” category.
News Coverage
Read More >
Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Your name could go on a lichen

A botanist from the University of B.C. has donated the naming rights to two species of lichen he's discovered to two environmental groups. The Ancient Forest Alliance and The Land Conservancy are auctioning off the right to name the species to the highest bidders.
News Coverage
Read More >
Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Naming rights for new species up for auction online

Trevor Goward, curator of lichens at the University of British Columbia and author of several books, said in an interview Friday he discovered a new species of horsehair lichen in the mid-1990s in the Hazelton-Kispiox area and a new species of crottle lichen in the Clearwater Valley two years ago, both of them in old-growth B.C. forests.
News Coverage
Read More >