News Coverage

Westworld, the most highly circulated magazine in Western Canada, just published an article and photo (taken by the AFA’s TJ Watt) on the Avatar Grove and Ancient Forest Alliance in their most recent issue. With a press run of 540,000 copies, it will help to raise major public awareness about this spectacular but endangered forest near Port Renfrew.

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigners took issue after a Cantelon's constituency assistant included an AFA website hyperlink in an e-mail to a Nanoose Bay woman asking government to save coastal Douglas fir forests.

An environmental group working to protect old-growth forests in B.C. is condemning local MLA Ron Cantelon’s office for insinuating they support the logging of a parcel of Coastal Douglas Fir forest in Nanoose Bay. “It’s a sleazy tactic to try and link us in their responses to concerend citizens when they write letters back as somehow insinuating that we are supporting the Nanoose Bay ancient forest logging,” said Ken Wu, one of the founders of the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) in Victoria.

The Shaw Daily local news program ran a great feature on the popular Avatar Grove in August 2010. Watch the video to see the giant gnarly redcedars the grove is now famous for and to hear some excellent commentary from Liberal MP Keith Martin on the need for more old-growth forest protection in BC!

Active logging operations are creeping closer to the largest Douglas fir in the world and environmentalists fear the 1,000-year-old tree will be left vulnerable to blowdown and its value as a tourist attraction will be degraded.

The Ancient Forest Alliance published photos of some of the biggest trees still standing in B.C. The newly formed organization is seeking to inform the public of the deteriorating existence of old-growth forests over the past century.

Following a trip to visit Avatar Grove and nearby clearcuts in the Gordon River Valley with Ancient Forest Alliance campaigners TJ Watt and Brendan Harry, Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca federal Liberal MP Dr. Keith Martin wrote to the Times Colonist to express his ardent support for the protection of the old-growth forests on southern Vancouver Island. Martin has proposed the expansion of the boundaries of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve to include much of the remaining unprotected old growth stands on the South Island.

Despite the presence of ancient Red cedars and evidence of karst formations under the forest floor, the provincial forest ministry appears to see no need to protect the stand of trees north of Port Renfrew dubbed Avatar Grove. The ministry recently rejected a proposal by the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and the Sooke Regional Tourism Association to protect the grove in its entirety, arguing that 24 percent of the grove is in an old-growth management area, and that is sufficient protection.

When two forest activists were rooting around for ancient trees along southwest Vancouver Island’s logging roads in December, the pair made an unexpected discovery. Just a five-minute walk from the road, centuries-old hemlocks, red cedars, firs and an identified evergreen that’s been dubbed Canada’s “gnarliest tree,” stood untouched in a 10-hectare setting, about a 15-minute drive from the village of Port Renfrew.