News Coverage

They don’t have much in the way of money, equipment or people, but Ken Wu says big tree hunting is drawing critical attention to the plight of old growth forests.

When members of the Ancient Forest Alliance asked Port Renfrew restaurant owner Jessica Hicks to host a public meeting about a stand of old growth trees dubbed Avatar Grove, Hicks thought she might use the event as a fundraiser for the fledgeling environmental group. Then, reflecting on her Coastal Kitchen Cafe’s place in the community and the smouldering tension between environmentalists and B.C.’s logging towns, Hicks decided a simple information session might ruffle fewer feathers.

From the Discover Sooke tourism website: "Over the long weekend, Mrs. Discover Sooke and I, made the trek west from Sooke to Port Renfrew to visit the much talked about piece of land with a few remaining first growth forest trees standing on it. This piece of land has been dubbed “Avatar Grove”, after the movie, for its large and gnarly trees."

A group who's mission is to save the island's old growth forests is giving CRD Parks a pat on the back, this for hosting a number of public input meetinsg over the past two weeks.

Across northern Canada, environmentalists are high-fiving one another over Tuesday's landmark declaration of peace in the woods. No more logging in an Italy-sized swath of boreal forest stretching from coast to coast. The war is over. Hooray. Meanwhile, Wu watches Vancouver Island's old growth disappear like Gordon Campbell during the HST debate.

A first rate opportunity towards ending the war in the woods on southern Vancouver Island is currently being presented through the Capital Regional District Parks public input process. The public input process involves a series of Community Engagement Sessions held in a variety of CRD communities between May 6 through 19 and online written feedback until an unspecified date (see https://www.crd.bc.ca/parks/planning/strategicplan.htm). The public input will be used by the CRD Parks Committee to determine the strategic direction of the regional parks and trails in the area on southern Vancouver Island.

Some Vancouver Island environmentalists who say they discovered tree stumps as wide as a living room are turning to Facebook for help raising awareness of what’s being lost through old-growth logging.

Massive stumps found on Crown land near Port Renfrew are arousing fears that logging companies are taking the biggest and best old-growth trees even though the local chamber of commerce wants to promote giant tree tourism.