News Coverage

Read the CBC News article highlighting our report card with Sierra Club BC and Wilderness Committee that evaluates the BC government’s progress on promised implementation of the Old Growth Strategic Review panel’s recommendations.

AFA’s TJ Watt recently sat down for a chat with Creative Director Heidi Volpe at A Photo Editor. 

We’re excited to share that AFA photographer TJ Watt was featured in CBC’s podcast, The Doc Project: Big Tree Hunt, which highlights his efforts to explore, document, and protect ancient forests in BC.

THERE WERE A FEW TIMES, as TJ Watt slogged through a sea of stumps and barren clearcuts, that he questioned whether anyone cared that trees, which had grown for centuries and supported intricate networks of species, had been destroyed forever.

Victoria photographer TJ Watt, whose photos documenting the loss of old-growth trees have been seen around the world, has won a grant named for former Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek. The Trebek Initiative grant will support the continuation of Watt’s “before” and “after” series, which depicts 800-to-1,000-year-old red cedars in the Caycuse Valley of southern Vancouver Island next to images of the stumps left behind after the trees are cut.

In British Columbia’s Nahmint Valley, an 11th-hour reprieve was issued this week for ancient forests that were slated for logging.

British Columbia Premier John Horgan patted down his suit pockets, theatrically searching for a misplaced $50-million cheque. The performance was in response to a reporter’s question about Ottawa’s offer to help resolve the ongoing conflict over old-growth logging.

In the May 2021 edition of Red Bull's magazine, The Red Bulletin, TJ Watt talks about the devastating before and after photos taken in the Caycuse Valley.

There are no trails in the old-growth coastal temperate rainforests of Canada’s southern Vancouver Island. As I follow TJ Watt through another grabby thicket of stink currant, I offer silent thanks that I’m not the one lugging the camera equipment.