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Arbutus RV Island Adventures Ep.1 – Avatar Grove

Feb 23 2014/in News Coverage

Shaw TV's Sucheta Singh takes us just north of Port Renfrew to Avatar Grove. A magical place full of old growth forest the size of skyscrapers.

Direct link to video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pMcveWnjK0

Conservation and industry reach agreement on protecting old growth in the Great Bear

Feb 23 2014/in News Coverage

The B.C. government announced last week that environmental groups and forestry companies have jointly submitted recommendations to ‘increase conservation while maintaining economic activity in the Great Bear Rainforest.’

The agreement — which will preserve another 500,000 hectares of old growth — increases forest protection to nearly 70 per cent in the mid-coast region from the 50 per cent level already protected by 2009. The addition pushes the amount of old-growth forest preserved to more than three million hectares, an area larger than Metro Vancouver.

An 82 page submission from the ‘Joint Solutions Project,’ a working group of environmental groups and forest companies that includes Western Forest Products, Interfor, Howe Sound Pulp and Paper, BC Timber Sales and Catalyst, and three environmental groups ForestEthics, Greenpeace and Sierra Club of BC, contains numerous recommendations.

The submission proposes that additional areas be set aside for conservation, that harvest levels be adjusted to maintain viable forestry operations, and advocates a new approach to landscape planning that better accounts for old growth, cultural values, biodiversity and riparian zones.

The process of protecting the central coast began in 2001 with then-premier Gordon Campbell. At that time environmentalists around the world were putting the pressure on B.C. to act by a campaign against provincial forest products, and by 2009 large areas of the Great Bear were under protection.

The recommendations will now be evaluated by the Province, Nanwakolas Council and Coastal First Nations. The government has reconciliation agreements with both these groups of First Nations. In addition, 12 other First Nations will need to be consulted since they also have traditional territory in the Great Bear Rainforest. Ministry staff will review the recommendations for legislative and fiscal implications and implications to other resource users, and First Nations will review for implications to their interests.

Coastal First Nations executive director Art Sterritt said they don’t expect to call for massive changes. Sterritt also noted that several First Nations hold tenures in the mid-coast area and will also want to protect the eco-system while participating in logging. But, he also pointed out that expects some conflict between the First Nations and industry on which areas to protect and which to log.

“We are pleased that the Joint Solutions Project has completed its work,” said Sterritt. “Coastal First Nations will now take this report to our communities for review and discussion prior to finalizing legal objectives with the Province for the Great Bear Rainforest.”

ForestEthics senior campaigner Valerie Langer said this is the final step in protecting the Great Bear Rainforest. “There’s never been any conservation of this scale achieved. To do this in a collaborative way with unlikely allies over an area the size of some countries, and to both protect the forest and maintain viability of an industry, is a great achievement,” she said.

Industry officials are also in support of the recommendations, reflecting on past conflicts that made it seem that an agreement of this type would be impossible to reach.

“This has been a long time coming. It was not just done in the last week, or last month,” said Interfor vice-president and chief forester Ric Slaco. “This looks to be the final chapter. That’s a big deal.”

Government is also pleased with the outcome. “I congratulate the forest companies and environmental groups for their continued cooperation and efforts in finding solutions that manage both the environment and local economies in this unique region of the world,” said Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

Oldies but goodies: The oldest establishments in B.C., and a couple of people as well

Feb 23 2014/in News Coverage

Oldest Tree Ever

If you were expecting Canada’s longest-lived tree to be a towering monolith, you’re in for a disappointment. B.C.’s oldest tree is a 1,835-year-old yellow cedar stump in the Caren Range of the Sunshine Coast.

You might glance at the remains and think: “That’s no tree — it’s a tombstone.”

You’d be wrong. It’s no grave marker or monument to a butchered giant.

The Caren yellow cedar is as close as B.C. gets to the predictive power of the ancient Greek oracle of Delphi.

Like the oracle, it tells the future.

“You can learn a lot from studying the rings of older trees,” says botanist Andy MacKinnon, a research ecologist with B.C.’s forests ministry.

“You have a much better chance of appreciating how, and whether or not, today’s climate is different from the climate of the last couple of millenniums, and what you might expect for the future.”

The Caren cedar was 1,835 years old when it was felled in 1980. The Friends of Caren, a Sunshine Coast community group, discovered the huge stump in 1993.

How did it grow to such an age? Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, says it would have been spared wind, fire and destructive insects.

MacKinnon says yellow cedars are naturally long-lived. Nor are the province’s oldest trees its biggest trees.

“We have discovered that a lot of the oldest trees are growing at higher elevations in more extreme environments and are growing very slowly,” MacKinnon says. “This yellow cedar is probably three times the age of the giant Western red cedar and Douglas fir in Cathedral Grove.”

Identifying the province’s oldest living tree is challenging because Western red cedars get hollow in the middle as they age, Wu says. Some reds may be older than the Caren yellow but because the rings are gone from their interior base, nobody knows, Wu says.

“It’s reasonable to assume that the oldest tree in British Columbia is still out there, unmeasured,” MacKinnon says.

Oldest Treehugger

B.C.’s oldest treehugger began to track down the province’s evergreen giants almost a century ago.

Victoria resident Al Carder, 103, has been working to identify and protect the province’s tallest trees for close to 97 years.

His devotion to big trees grew from a child’s sense of self-preservation in Cloverdale in 1917, when his father suggested he accompany him to measure a nearby Douglas fir felled by loggers. Carder did the sensible thing and went along.

“He was scared of his father’s wrath. He was rather a disciplinarian,” says Judith Carder, Al’s daughter.

As they measured the 104-metre behemoth, the seven-year-old boy caught the Big-Tree Bug. Carder has spent his working life as an agro-meteorologist — he was Canada’s first — but his fascination with big trees abided. Carder has written three books about trees. His most recent book, Reflections of a Big Tree Enthusiast, was published when he was 100.

Carder, who has lost most of his hearing but still lives independently, is an inspiration to young environmentalists.

Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, points out that Carder has outlasted B.C.’s 80-year-old second-growth forests, which replaced its felled old-growth giants.

“I’ve heard of his work since I was a child as one of the early people who valued and promoted protection of the province’s monumental giant trees long before it was cool,” Wu says.

Judith says her father is fine with being called a treehugger but doesn’t consider himself an extremist.

“He says that at 103, he won’t be chaining himself to a tree.”

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!

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