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The Avatar Grove — a stunning stand of old-growth trees on Vancouver Island — is slated for destruction but local “Na’vis” hope to save it.

In reference to the James Cameron blockbuster film Avatar, the Ancient Forest Alliance will dress in blue like the indigenous Na’vis in the movie, at a demonstration Saturday in Vancouver.

Big-tree enthusiast and photographer T.J. Watt and AFA cofounder Ken Wu gave the name Avatar Grove to “a spectacular stand of old-growth red cedars and Douglas firs, some covered in giant contorted burls and hanging mosses in an alien rainforest.”

Wu pointed out Avatar Grove is an ideal ecotourism destination, about 10 kilometres north of Port Renfrew, the jumping-off point for hikers who walk the West Coast Trail.

“We wanted people to know about this world of ancient trees that is just as beautiful,” as that in the movie, said Wu.

Wu and Watt were shocked last month to find that the area’s trees were spray-painted and flagged for logging boundaries.

“This is the most accessible and finest stand of ancient trees on southern Vancouver Island, in an area of maybe 1,500 hectares in the Gordon River Valley,” said Wu.

“They’ve already logged about 88 per cent of the old-growth forests south of Port Alberni, and 95 per cent of the productive old-growth forests on low, flat terrain.”

A Facebook site set up to save the grove, including what the AFA calls the “world’s gnarliest tree” has attracted 6,000 hits.

Logging flags are now placed within a few metres of the “gnarliest” tree which is a massive red cedar, with a trunk distorted and distended by naturally-occurring burls caused by fungus growth.

It may be Avatar Grove to conservationists, but it’s part of Tree Farm License 46 to the Teal-Jones Group, which owns the area’s logging rights.

Teal-Jones, started in 1946 by Jack Jones and his sons Tom, Dick and Harry Jones, has become a four-generation family business, with a logging operation and other sites that now employ about 700 people.

April Choquette, an employee and daughter of Tom Jones had no comment yesterday.

Unlike other remote big-tree stands that require serious bushwhacking, Avatar Grove is easily accessible by paved road and good gravel road.

Even the town of Port Renfrew would like to see Avatar Grove preserved.

“This would be perfect for all the visitors we get who want to see big trees but can’t do long, difficult hikes,” said Jon Cash, president of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce.

“Absolutely, the future of this town lies in ecotourism, not logging.”

Forests Ministry spokeswoman Vivian Thomas said Teal Jones has “not yet submitted a cutting permit [which is] required before they can begin logging.”

The rally will begin at Canada Place at 12 noon Saturday, then march to the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Gnarly, dude. Environmentalists are exploiting a grotesquely shaped western red cedar to highlight the need to protect a grove of old-growth trees near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island.

The Ancient Forest Alliance describes the ancient cedar as “Canada’s gnarliest tree” and the patch of forest where it is located as Avatar Grove after Canadian James Cameron’s blockbuster movie with an environmental theme.

The alliance fears that at least part of the grove could be logged by the Surrey-based Teal-Jones Group; it urges protection for the 100 or so massive old-growth cedar and Douglas fir trees due to their easy public access.

The grove is located about 10 kilometers north of Port Renfrew in the Gordon River Valley in Tree Farm License #46, the environmental group said.

The gnarly western red cedar measures 11 meters in circumference near the base of its trunk. Its look is attributed to a burl created by a non-lethal fungal infection that caused the tree trunk to grow giant contorted lumps, the alliance states.

Officials with Teal-Jones and the B.C. forests ministry were not immediately available to comment.

A recent shakeup in Victoria’s activist community may signify a new chapter in our long history of environmental action.

The longtime coordinator for the Victoria branch of BC’s Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC), Ken Wu, has recently left that organization to start the fledgling Ancient Forest Alliance with co-founder TJ Watt.

At recent info session held at UVic, Wu, Watt—a Metchosin-born wilderness photographer and self-proclaimed “big tree hunter—and Sierra Club coastal forest campaigner Jens Wieting addressed a mixed crowd of environmentalists and community members.

“There’s something very different about this,” says Wu. “Virtually every environmental group in the province has charitable status, and charitable status, including what the WCWC has, restricts what you can do and say.”

Under charitable status, an organization can neither reject nor endorse specific political parties or candidates.

This makes it nearly impossible to overtly organize campaigns in electoral districts where the public hugely influences government policies, due to the fact that the riding can go to the NDP or BC Liberals, explains Wu.

Called swing ridings, these districts are the front lines of political influence, and the AFA, unlike the WCWC, is now free to enter the fray.

“We can organize riding by riding now,” says Wu. “We’re not going to be partisan in the sense that were going to endorse any political party, per se, ideologically, but on the issues we can say, ‘This BC Liberal MLA in this riding has stated that it’s fine to log off all of our last unprotected old-growth forests on Vancouver Island and to keep exporting raw logs. So, if you care about our ancient forests and forestry jobs, don’t vote for him.’”

“I couldn’t say that while I was at the Wilderness Committee,”continues Wu. “Now I can. This will have a huge influence on BC government policies.”

While foregoing charitable status ostensibly casts off an annoying political muzzle, it poses challenges elsewhere—without it an organization can’t issue tax receipts for donations, and fundraising becomes more difficult.

But Wu remains confidently optimistic. “I know a lot of people will appreciate us being able to be more direct and honest about the government and politicians in regards to the fate of our ancient forests,” he says.

The AFA also plans to become a centre for training new activists, according to Wu. “Another function of the AFA will be to help empower, train, and guide new citizens’ groups that are going to fight for ancient forests,” he says. “We’ll run a most effective campaign with a miniscule fraction of the funds used by the larger environmental groups who have budgets of millions of dollars.”

At the recent presentation, local wilderness photographer and AFA co-founder Watt showcased photos of some of Vancouver Island’s biggest known remaining old-growth trees. While many large trees still exist in and around the greater Victoria area, “to see the big, big trees, you need to get out of the dryer areas, and further up the coast,” says Watt.

Among those showcased was the recently discovered Refugee Tree, situated just 20 minutes past Jordan River and measuring over 45 feet around; the famous San Juan Spruce, which contains enough wood to make 330 telephone poles and is the second largest of its kind in the world; and Port Renfrew’s own Red Creek Fir, which is the largest of its kind known to exist on Earth.

Unfortunately, much of the surrounding area is slated for logging, which could leave trees vulnerable to blow down. Today, less than one percent of coastal Douglas Fir old growth is still standing, and 97 percent of valley bottoms, which are typical areas to find old growth trees, have been logged. The last one percent of unprotected old growth Douglas Fir is still currently slated for liquidation.

“We have the largest of something in the world and we’ve done absolutely nothing to promote it. Up until now there’s been no signage, the trails have never been taken care of, there’s virtually no effort to let people know these exist,” says Watt, “and this leads me to believe that maybe someone doesn’t want people to know that they exist.”

According to Wieting, BC’s coastal forests are among the best carbon storehouses on the planet, and one of the world’s most powerful tools in the fight against climate change.

A recent Sierra Club report states that on Vancouver Island alone 370 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, or more than five times the official annual BC emissions, have been released into the atmosphere over time as a result of the conversion of at least one million hectares of old growth into second growth.

As a result, many of the island’s ecosystems are now below a critical level of old-growth forest needed to sustain species.

The report calls for an urgent transition to the innovative land-use planning model that has been successful in the Great Bear Rainforest on the coastal mainland.

The AFA and Sierra Club BC are calling for a comprehensive and systemic change to current BC forest practices that would protect remaining old growth in regions where they are scarce, and ensuring the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, which constitute the majority of forest systems in southern Vancouver Island.

In addition, the AFA is calling for provincial assistance in retooling coastal BC’s sawmills in order to accommodate second growth logs, as well as an end to raw log exports, which could ensure a constant supply of logs for BC-based wood-processing facilities, and generate much-needed jobs within the forestry sector.

The AFA hopes to raise $10,000 by Earth Day on April 21, and another $10,000 by Summer Solstice on June 21.

News Article Link: https://nexusnewspaper.com/articles/28668