Blog Archive Layout

Port Renfrew businesses call on B.C. to halt logging of ancient trees

Dec 14 2015/in News Coverage

PORT RENFREW, B.C. – Business leaders in Port Renfrew, B.C., a community that once thrived on forestry, are calling for a ban on logging in the nearby Walbran Valley.

The valley is full of ancient old-growth trees, and the Chamber of Commerce says tourists who come to see them have created a multibillion-dollar economy along Vancouver Island’s west coast.

Some of the old trees are protected within the boundary of the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, but chamber president Dan Hager says logging is currently underway in the rest of the valley.

The chamber, which represents 73 local businesses, has released a statement calling on the B.C. government to immediately ban logging in the unprotected portion of the valley.

It says the most heavily visited areas of the Walbran are outside the park’s protected areas.

The group Ancient Forest Alliance has lobbied heavily for the Walbran’s protection and says a logging company is planning eight new cutblocks in the valley, including one that has been approved by the province.

Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce Calls for the Protection of the Central Walbran Valley’s Old-Growth Forest

Dec 14 2015/in Media Release

Port Renfrew, BC – Conservationists are delighted that the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, representing 73 businesses in the region, has issued a statement to the provincial government requesting that it protect the Central Walbran Valley from old-growth logging. Port Renfrew, formerly a logging town, has been transformed in recent years into a big tree tourism destination as hundreds of thousands of tourists have come from around the world in recent years to visit some of Canada’s largest trees in the nearby Avatar Grove, the Red Creek Fir (the world’s largest Douglas-fir tree), Big Lonely Doug (Canada’s 2nd largest Douglas-fir tree), San Juan Spruce (until recently Canada’s largest Sitka spruce tree – its top broke off in a recent storm unfortunately), the Harris Creek spruce (one of the largest Sitka spruce trees in Canada), and the Central Walbran Valley.

• See the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce's statement for the Walbran here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qjstakjrvbf8jsh/PRChamberToProtectWalbran.pdf?dl=0
• See spectacular photos of the Walbran at: www.ancientforestalliance.org/photos.php?gID=7
• See a recent Youtube clip using drone footage over the Central Walbran at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyMPXHOjlK0
• See 2012 video (when a similar attempt to log by the Castle Grove was held off…only to return) at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHnG_sC4oms

“The publicity about the old-growth forests near Port Renfrew in recent years has brought in a flood of visitors from Europe, the USA, Canada, and diverse countries to visit Port Renfrew. This has especially been true since the protection of the Avatar Grove in 2012. Big tree tourism has increased the total flow of dollars spent in Port Renfrew, in our rental accommodations, restaurants, grocery stores, and businesses in general. Along with sport fishing, old-growth forest tourism has become a staple of our local economy,” states Dan Hager, president of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce. “Recently, increasing numbers of visitors are heading through town to visit the Central Walbran Valley to see its old-growth forest. If the Central Walbran were to be protected, it would be a great addition to our town’s repertoire of big tree attractions.”

The Central Walbran Valley’s 500 hectare tract of lush old-growth temperate rainforest has long been an area of public interest since hiking trails were built in the valley in 1990. In 1994, the BC government protected the Lower Walbran Valley, about 5500 hectares, as part of the larger Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park, but left out the Central Walbran Valley (500 hectares) and the Upper Walbran Valley (7,000 hectares) from the park. Since then, most of the Upper Walbran has been heavily tattered by logging, but the Central Walbran remains largely intact. However, Teal-Jones is planning eight new cutblocks in the Central Walbran, of which one (cutblock 4424) has been approved by the province. The Central Walbran Valley lies on Crown (public) land in the territory of the Pacheedaht band in Tree Farm Licence 46 held by Teal-Jones.

“The Central Walbran Valley is truly exceptional in so many ways. It has the most extensive, densely-packed groves of old-growth western redcedars in the country – including some of the very largest on record, such as the Tolkien and Castle Giants,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance photographer and campaigner. “I've personally brought tourists to see the rainforests of Central Walbran Valley who had flown all the way from Europe to see these specific ancient trees. It’s truly one of the grandest old-growth forests on planet Earth and it's time for it to be fully protected.”

“The Central Walbran is seriously one of the most scenic and spectacular places anybody could visit. With its gargantuan trees, emerald-coloured swimming holes, amazing waterfalls, and perfect camping areas, in all of my experiences the Walbran is virtually unmatched for recreational and scenic grandeur in the world. It’s just the perfect place to visit, and to riddle the whole area with clearcuts and giant stumps would be the lowest, worse use of a place like this,” states Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance executive director.

Ancient Forest Alliance campaigners recently located and measured two huge western redcedar trees, one of which makes it into the top 10 widest redcedars in BC according to the BC Big Tree Registry, in the Central Walbran Valley – the 4.6 metre (15 feet) wide “Tolkien Giant” and the “Karst Giant”. See: www.ancientforestalliance.org/news-item.php?ID=944

About 75% of the original productive old-growth forests have been logged on southern Vancouver Island, including over 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow, while about 8% is protected in parks and Old-Growth Management Areas. See maps and stats at: www.ancientforestalliance.org/old-growth-maps.php

The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC government to protect our endangered old-growth forests, ensure the sustainable logging of second-growth forests, end the export of raw logs, and assist in the retooling and development of sawmills and value-added facilities to handle second-growth logs.

Jack Knox: Pop bottles could give green funding extra fizz

Dec 12 2015/in News Coverage

Could unredeemed pop- bottle deposits save B.C.’s precious green bits? Yes, says the Ancient Forest Alliance. So could a property-speculation tax, or money from the extraction of non-renewable natural resources, or a dozen other potential revenue streams.

The Victoria-based conservation group wants the province to set up a $40-million-a-year fund to protect critical natural areas — crucial wildlife habitat, recreation corridors, sources of drinking water and so on — before they get covered in asphalt.

The twist, though, is that the Alliance isn’t asking the province to raise the money for the proposed Natural Lands Acquisition Program by simply dipping into general revenue.

Instead, the group had the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre look at ways other jurisdictions fund similar endeavours.

The law centre found 16 ways that other governments, mostly in the U.S., pay for conservation projects.

Among them were:

• “Pops For Parks”: The law centre report says $10 million to $15 million a year could be raised by scooping up unredeemed deposits on soft drinks and other containers that B.C. consumers fail to return.

Governments in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and Michigan reason that unclaimed deposits rightly belong to the consumers who paid them, not the entities that keep them as an unearned windfall profit. Hence, those states claim the bulk of the money in the consumers’ name, arguing that doing so makes up for all the containers that end up in the landfills and as roadside litter.

• Resource Taxes: The law centre argues a small portion of B.C. resource revenue should be dedicated to the fund.

The rationale is that the depletion of non-renewable natural resources should be offset by the acquisition and protection of natural lands.

The U.S. federal government plows $900 million in resource taxes, mostly from the offshore oil and gas industry, into its parks system each year. Individual states have similar programs.

• Land-speculation tax: The idea would be to tax certain types of speculation, making up for the loss of land as B.C. adds 30,000 homes a year. The law centre cited a Vermont tax aimed at property flippers.

This one would be contentious, though: Remember that the province quickly slapped down Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson this year when he proposed such a tax to stop speculators from driving up housing prices in the Lower Mainland.

The Ancient Forest Alliance wants the province to adopt those three measures as well as some combination of 13 other tools used elsewhere to fund conservation. Among the possibilities are a dedicated tax on outdoor equipment such as hunting rifles and fishing rods, a tax on environmentally harmful products and a fee for vanity-style licence plates sold to conservationists.

“The mechanisms are creative,” Alliance executive director Ken Wu says.

The important thing, he says, is to come up with a dedicated, predictable source of funding, just as the Capital Regional District did when residents voted for a parkland-acquisition property tax in 1999.

Not that the Natural Lands Acquisition Program would be just for parks. It could also be used to secure Port Alberni’s water supply, say, or to put a protective covenant on wildlife habitat on private land.

B.C. had a pretty aggressive parks-expansion program in the 1990s, but it was based on the dedication of Crown land, not the acquisition of private property. That’s where the issue is particularly acute: the places where development sprawls into the same near-urban areas where fragile eco-systems exist. It’s great to have a park in the wilderness, but you also have to protect your local water supply, or the bog that sponges up the rain and keeps your basement from flooding.

Greater Victoria residents recognized that 16 years ago when they voted for the CRD’s parks acquisition fund, which now generates about $3 million a year. It has been used to preserve much of the region’s taken-for-granted greenery: the Sooke Potholes, bulldozer-bait property next to the Juan de Fuca trail, land linking Mount Work and Thetis Lake parks, and the massive swath of the Sooke Hills that Victorians view as the city's backdrop.

“Repeatedly, voters have voted to tax themselves to protect parks,” says Calvin Sandborn, the UVic law centre’s legal director. That convinces him that there would be widespread public support for a dedicated provincewide conservation fund.

That belief will be put to the test as Wu and his Ancient Rainforest Alliance attempt to get other conservation and recreation groups to sign on to the idea and, the real challenge, win over the government.

2025 Activity Report & Financials

Apr 30 2026

2025 was a milestone year for the Ancient Forest Alliance and the old-growth campaign. Despite the BC government's backsliding on many of its old-growth commitments, there was still much work to be proud of, including celebrating our 15th year working to protect ancient forests. Check out our 2025 Activity Report & Financials to see the impact YOU made on 2025, plus, find out what we have in store for 2026!

Announcements