Lower Avatar Grove

The battle to save Avatar Grove

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Near the end of a December day last year, TJ Watt, a long-time environmentalist, discovered a seemingly overlooked area of old growth forest only 15 minutes from Port Renfrew on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Watt has actively campaigned for the protection of BC’s old growth forests for many years. On this occasion, he had embarked on a two-day hike to explore the Gordon River valley in search of any remaining old growth forest — or at least remnants, in the form of giant tree stumps. As darkness fell on the second day, what he found was truly special.

Spotting the tell-tale forked tops of old growth cedars on a hillside, Watt and a friend hiked deeper into the woods. “As soon as we stepped into the forest we knew we had found something exceptional,” he recalls. “We’ve lost 96 percent of the valley bottom old-growth on southern Vancouver Island so to find an area like this within the remaining four percent — and have it be so close to town and a paved road — was just unbelievable.”

The gigantic Douglas firs, cedars, and hemlocks found in old growth forests are valuable commodities for the logging companies. The valley bottoms are the most easily accessible for logging, so most of those trees have been harvested already. Companies then turn to harvesting the hills or mountainsides. Outside Port Renfrew, the surrounding area had been logged, but somehow this 10 hectare plot had been left standing.

Within weeks, Watt and other prominent local activists created the Ancient Forest Alliance, a group that has since grown to 8000 members. Ken Wu, the group’s campaign director, is no stranger to the old growth forest issue. It was his idea to name this area of the Gordon River valley, “Avatar Grove”.

The name was a clever move to capitalize on the popularity of the James Cameron film, Avatar. But the connection was much deeper. “If you’ve seen the film, you can see it’s about protecting old growth forest,” Wu insists. Even the forest scenes with its giant ferns and big trees resembled BC’s old growth forests.

Despite the uniqueness of Avatar Grove, this rare patch of old growth forest appeared to be in jeopardy. When Watt returned to the site two months later, he found the area had been flagged for logging and road development.

A Surrey, BC, logging company, Teal Jones, has permission to harvest trees on 60,000 hectares on land in the Gordon River valley. The province granted permission through tree farm licence (TFL) 46. Despite appeals to the BC Ministry of Forests to save Avatar Grove, the government has taken no action to halt logging. A Teal Jones representative says the company has not yet made a decision to cut down those trees.

The Ancient Forest Alliance wants the Ministry to make Avatar Grove and the surrounding 90 hectares off-limits to logging. “The Avatar Grove presents the finest opportunity for the public to easily gain access world class old-growth forest, in a wilderness setting on flat gentle terrain,” says Watt. “It contains dozens of giant alien-shaped red cedars, some measuring up to 13 feet across, as well as rare old-growth Douglas fir — and it’s already becoming the Cathedral Grove of Port Renfrew.”

Cathedral Grove, located on the highway near Port Alberni on Vancouver Island, attracts one million visitors a year, says Watt. The road is regularly the site of traffic jams as buses, cars, and campers pull over to park. Trails allow visitors to wander through this preserved old growth forest and marvel at the circumference and height of these forest giants.

Avatar Grove, he says, has the potential to attract just as many tourists to Port Renfrew, and thereby stimulate the local economy.

West Coast old growth forest consists of giant Sitka spruce, Douglas fir, western hemlock, and both red and yellow cedar trees. Protecting these forest giants is more than a matter of keeping a few big trees for tourists to view. Old growth forests support a level of biodiversity not found in second growth forest. The giant trees are also valuable as carbon “sinks”, absorbing harmful greenhouse gases that are a factor in global warming.

Eighty percent of productive forest land in BC southern coast is already second growth. To complaints that protecting old growth forest will cost forest industry jobs, Wu counters, “The total transition to second growth trees is inevitable. Why not do it now, instead of waiting until all the unprotected old-growth forest is gone?”

The “jobs versus tourism” conundrum often plagues logging communities, where saving trees may be regarded as sacrificing vital jobs. Past confrontations between loggers and environmentalists show what happens when people see their livelihoods threatened.

Logging Avatar Grove, Wu explains, would provide a few months’ work for half a dozen people. On the other hand, preserving the space as a tourist attraction would create a sustainable source of income for Port Renfrew indefinitely.

Watt says, “The Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce is in full support of having the area protected and local businesses are already seeing the increased traffic from those who come to town because of the trees.”

The Ancient Forest Alliance is circulating a petition to pressure the BC government into protecting not just Avatar Grove, but all areas in the province where old growth forest is rapidly disappearing due to logging. The group hopes to collect 100,000 names to show the extent of its public support.

Until then, curiosities like Canada’s “gnarliest” tree are at risk of being cut down. A redcedar in Avatar Grove was given this unofficial distinction because of a burl on its trunk of over 12 feet across, giving the tree an alien-like appearance, as Watt’s many photographs reveal.

Watt says, “If the Avatar Grove is lost, Port Renfrew won’t get another chance like this for another thousand years.”

Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) Launches the “100,000 Strong for Ancient Forests and BC Forestry Jobs” Campaign

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The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) launched a campaign today to get 100,000 British Columbians to sign a petition (see ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/) calling on the BC government to protect the province’s endangered old-growth forests and forestry jobs. The “100,000 Strong for Ancient Forests and BC Forestry Jobs” public education and mobilization campaign will be the largest grassroots mobilization effort undertaken by BC’s ancient forest movement since the Clayoquot Sound campaign of the early 1990’s. It will entail a large number of presentations, community meetings, protests (including three pickets this week at Premier Gordon Campbell’s office and BC Liberal MLA’s Harry Bloy and Richard Lee’s Burnaby offices), public hikes and campouts, online advocacy, and an effort to enlist 3000 to 5000 volunteers to circulate petitions across BC. People can sign the petition online, on Facebook, and via hardcopies. At the culmination of the campaign, the petition will be delivered to the BC government at a thousands-strong rally at the BC Legislative Buildings.
 
“Time is running out for our increasingly scarce ancient forests as the markets for old-growth cedar return and as the BC government works to ramp-up sales of old-growth lumber and raw logs in China,” states Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “With the use of the internet and social media, we have an added advantage in working to snowball public support behind our new outreach and mobilization efforts, relative to the ancient forest campaigns of the early 1990’s.”
 
The petition, which was posted online a few months ago (ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/), has so far picked up about 3500 signatures with very little effort.
 
See “before” and “after” maps of Vancouver Island’s remaining old-growth forests at:  https://ancientforestalliance.org/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/
 
See spectacular photogalleries of Canada’s largest trees and stumps at:
 
“If you ask the average British Columbian in the year 2010 if they’d like to see our endangered old-growth forests protected, the sustainable logging of second-growth forests instead, and a ban on raw log exports, the vast majority will say ‘yes’! Very few people today, except those with ancient, old mindsets, are still arguing that we should finish off the last of the unprotected old-growth forests on Vancouver Island and continue exporting raw logs to foreign mills,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner. “Unfortunately the BC Liberal government holds this outdated and ultimately distastrous view. But we’re confident we have the vast majority of the public on our side, and we’re going to start rounding them up through this campaign.”
 
Last week on Shaw TV’s “Voice of BC” in response to a question about protecting Vancouver Island’s old-growth rainforests, Forest Minister Pat Bell stated that “we have more old-growth today than we had historically.”
“What a ridiculous, delusional and ultimately destructive mindset this government has towards our globally significant ancient forests! Somehow a hundred years of industrial logging on Vancouver Island has resulted in more old-growth forests standing today, according to our Minister of Forests,” stated Ken Wu, campaign director of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “The BC Liberal government is still in a state of convenient denial about the status of our old-growth forests. Once we have 100,000 people directly signed up with our campaign, we’ll have enough leverage to make the BC Liberals an endangered species by the next provincial election – unless they change their tune.”
 
Bell and the Ministry of Forests and Range also consistently cite highly misleading statistics, stating that “almost 900,000 hectares of the 1.9 million hectares of Crown lands on Vancouver Island are old-growth.”
 
“What Bell fails to mention is that half of the 900,000 hectares of the old-growth forests he refers to consist of stunted trees growing in bogs, on granite rock faces, and in the subalpine ‘snow forests’, most of which can’t be profitably logged. Their arguments are fundamentally dishonest, as the whole controversy is not over stunted bonsai trees, but rather over the moderate to high productivity stands where the forest giants grow, where the endangered species live, and where the actual logging takes place,” stated Wu. “Bell also conveniently forgets to mention the 600,000 hectares of private forest lands on Vancouver Island where virtually all of the old-growth has been eliminated – these are private lands that were publicly regulated until the BC Liberal government removed them from their Tree Farm Licenses a few years back.”
The petition calls on the BC government to:
  • Undertake a Provincial Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory and protect the remaining old-growth forests in regions where they are scarce (eg’s. Vancouver Island, Southern Mainland Coast, Southern Interior, etc.)
  • Ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, which now constitute the majority of forest lands in southern BC.
  • End the export of BC raw logs to foreign mills in order to ensure a guaranteed log supply for BC wood processing facilities.
  • Assist in the retooling of coastal BC sawmills and the development of value-added facilities to handle second-growth logs.
  • Undertake new land-use planning processes to protect endangered forests based on new First Nations land-use plans, ecosystem-based scientific assessments, and climate mitigation strategies through forest protection
75% of the productive ancient forests have been logged on Vancouver Island, while less than 10% of our productive forests are in protected in parks and Old-Growth Management Areas, and the situation is similar throughout southern BC. Tens of thousands of hectares of ancient forests fall each year in BC.
 
Old-growth forests are important for species at risk, tourism, the climate, clean water for salmon and people, and many First Nations traditional cultures.
 
Forestry jobs are declining as the biggest and best old-growth trees in the valley bottoms and lower slopes are logged-off, resulting in diminishing economic returns as the trees get smaller, less valuable, and more expensive to reach on higher, steep terrain. Old-growth mills are closing as the resource runs out, while vast quantities of coastal second-growth logs are being exported raw to foreign mills due to a lack of government incentives for investments in second-growth mills in BC. Over the past decade about 70 BC mills have closed down and 20,000 BC forestry jobs have disappeared, in large part due to resource depletion, raw log exports, and deregulation of the industry.
 
“If the coastal industry does not retool in order to process second-growth logs, what happens down the road when that’s basically all that is available? Where are the forestry jobs going to be?” Watt wonders. “The rest of most the world is logging second, third, and fourth growth stands now and making it work, and we can too. We need to be moving up the value chain, not down it. In the end, it’s about the long term sustainability of the ecosystem and of an industry, and right now we’re moving in the completely wrong direction.”
Image from Ancient Forest Alliance rally for old-growth forests and forestry jobs in Vancouver

Week of Action for Ancient Forests – MLA Office Pickets This Week!

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As part of a Week of Action for Ancient Forests and the launch of the 100,000 Strong for Ancient Forests and BC Jobs campaign, Ancient Forest Committees (AFCs) around Greater Vancouver, paired with the Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), are picketing at three Liberal MLA offices, starting at Gordon Campbell’s office tomorrow (Monday, October 4th), calling for an end to old-growth logging in southern BC and a move toward sustainable forestry and forestry jobs.

See which one is closest to you and come on out for half and hour! Banners, chanting and other ancient forest activists!

Monday, October 4

Premier Gordon Campbell’s MLA office, 3615 West 4th avenue in Kitsilano, 12 NOON

Wednesday, October 6
Liberal MLA’s Richard Lee’s office (MLA Burnaby-North),1833 Willingdon Ave (at Lougheed Highway), 12 NOON
Friday, October 8
 Liberal MLA’s Harry Bloy’s office (MLA Burnaby-Lougheed), 202-3355 North Road (at Cameron St.), 12 NOON
"Canada's gnarliest tree" as seen in the upper Avatar Grove has been featured in the fall edition of Westworld Magazine.

Avatar Grove Featured in Westworld Magazine

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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. Find it on page 50 of the online version of Westworld at:

https://www.myvirtualpaper.com/doc/Westworld-magazine/wwbc_vpfall2010_cwm56771/2010091001/

San Juan Spruce tree and the Red Creek Fir - some of the Canada's largest trees found right nearby!

Old-Growth Forest Slideshow Comes to Saltspring Island on Wednesday, October 6th

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Saltspring Island, Canada- Co-founders of the newly formed Ancient Forest Alliance Ken Wu and TJ Watt will host an informative and inspiring slideshow featuring spectacular photographs of Canada’s largest trees, including the Red Creek Fir, San Juan Spruce, Cheewhat Cedar, and the newly-discovered, threatened Avatar Grove. The presentation will include discussion of the stunning ecology and complex politics surrounding BC’s old-growth forests and forestry jobs. It will be held at Central Hall on Fulford-Ganges Road from 7:00-8:30 pm on Wednesday, October 6th, 2010.
 
“Time is running out for our endangered old-growth forests and BC’s coastal forestry jobs. Saltspring Island is famous as a hub of environmental consciousness – it may very well have the highest density of tree-huggers in North America! It’s a key place for us to build support and expand the campaign to protect our ancient forests, ensure sustainable second-growth forestry, and to ban raw log exports to foreign mills,” states Ken Wu, AFA campaign director.
 
To date, about 75% of Vancouver Island’s productive old growth forest has been logged according to satellite photos, including 90% of the flat valley bottoms, while only 6% of its original, productive old-growth forests are protected in parks. Meanwhile thousands of forestry jobs are being lost as millions of cubic meters of raw logs are exported each year to foreign mills.
 
Old-growth forests are important for sustaining species at risk, tourism, clean water, and First Nations traditional cultures.
 
With so little of our ancient forests remaining, the Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC Liberal government to:
 
– Undertake a Provincial Old-Growth Strategy that will inventory and protect old-growth forests where they are scarce (egs. Vancouver Island, Gulf Islands, Lower Mainland, southern Interior, etc.).
 
– Ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, which now constitute the vast majority of southern BC’s forests.
 
– End the export of raw logs in order to ensure guaranteed log supplies for local milling and value-added industries.
 
– Assist in the retooling and development of mills and value-added facilities to handle second-growth logs.
 
– Undertake new land-use planning initiatives based on First Nations land-use plans, ecosystem-based scientific assessments, and climate mitigation strategies involving forest protection.
 
“How many jurisdictions on Earth have trees with trunks as wide as living rooms and that grow as tall as big-city skyscrapers? We’re so lucky to have such exceptionally magnificent forests here in southern Coastal BC. Unfortunately 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow have already been cut here, yet the BC Liberal government still contends that it’s fine for the industry finish off the last of the unprotected stands,” states TJ Watt, campaigner and photographer with the Ancient Forest Alliance.