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TJ Watt
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TJ Watt2026-03-03 09:07:112026-03-04 14:36:34NOW HIRING: Forest CampaignerRelated Posts
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1365
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TJ Watt
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TJ Watt2026-03-03 09:07:112026-03-04 14:36:34NOW HIRING: Forest Campaigner
It’s AFA’s 16th Birthday!
On Tuesday, February 24th, we’re celebrating 16 years of working together with you, our community, to ensure the permanent protection of old-growth forests in BC. To mark the date, will you chip in $16 or more to support our work?

Budget 2026 Shortchanges Nature Protection and Sustainable Forestry Transition At a Critical Time for British Columbia
BC’s Budget 2026 fails to provide the funding needed to secure lasting protection for endangered ecosystems and at-risk old-growth forests in the province.

Welcome, Zeinab, our new Vancouver Canvass Director!
We're excited to welcome Zeinab Salenhiankia, our new Vancouver Canvass Director, to the Ancient Forest Alliance team!
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NEW Posters, Winner of Lichen Auction, Canada’s Mossiest Rainforest TV Clip!
/in AnnouncementsDec. 23 AFA Newsletter – 3 Items (1. Donate/New Posters, 2. Anne Hansen wins!, 3. News Clip of “Fangorn Forest”):
1. Please support the AFA during the last stretch of 2011 – your donation will go furthest with us, we are about the leanest environmental organization in BC with the largest impact! You can:
DONATE any amount, whether $5 or $500, it all adds up! Donate:
PURCHASE our AFA gift products, including our NEW POSTERS of Canada’s biggest trees (featuring the Cheewhat Giant, San Juan Spruce, and Avatar Grove’s Gnarly Tree) as well as greeting cards, postcards, stickers, and prints see www.ancientforestalliance.org/store/ Order them by phoning us at 250-896-9007 or come to our office cubicle at 827 Broughton St. today (see above). We will have an online store soon too.
2. WINNER! Victoria artist Anne Hansen makes winning bid in the New Species Conservation Auction!
Victoria artist Anne Hansen, aka. Oystercatcher Girl (see https://oystercatchergirl.blogspot.com/), made the winning $4000 bid for the naming rights to a newly described species of old-growth forest lichen loaned by UBC’s lichen curator Trevor Goward to the AFA as a fundraiser. Congratulations Anne! She has named the lichen Bryoria kockiana, after her late husband Henry Kock, a renowned environmentalist and horticulturalist who was the public face of the University of Guelph Arboretum for many years.
3. Canada’s Mossiest Rainforest in the news recently!
Have a great Holiday Season and thank you all so much for your generous support for our incredible Ancient Forests. We couldn’t do it without you!
Ken Wu, TJ Watt, Joan Varley,
Ancient Forest Alliance.
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Support the Ancient Forest Alliance!
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Email: info@ancientforestalliance.org
Petition: ancientforestalliance.org/ways-to-take-action-for-forests/petition/
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Final week to visit AFA store for Holiday Gifts!
/in AnnouncementsLichen legacy
/in News CoverageThe first time they met, Anne Hansen and Henry Kock both showed up for a canoe trip wearing mismatched canvas sneakers.
“We like to be different, in a fun, whimsical kind of way,” said Hansen, an artist based in James Bay, who wears two long braids and colourful knits. Their shared love of the outdoors also helped bring the couple together, more than two decades ago.
The pair lived in Ontario, where Kock earned a reputation as a horticulturalist at the University of Guelph. In 2005, he died of brain cancer.
Last week, Hansen found a fitting way to memorialize her late husband. For $4,000, she bought the scientific naming rights to a newly-discovered lichen.
The horsehair lichen – which Hansen says resembles Kock’s beard – will be known as Bryoria kockiana.
“He would be thrilled,” said Hansen, of how Kock would feel about his lichen legacy.
After more than a decade of exposure to pesticides during his young working life, Kock dedicated himself to organic gardening. Hansen believes his cancer was a result of these pesticides, many of which are now banned.
Lichenologist Trevor Goward recently discovered the species of lichen in the southern Interior. In fact, he discovered two new species and he donated one to the Ancient Forest Alliance and one to The Land Conservancy to be put toward a Name-that-Lichen auction, which closed Dec. 15.
The naming auctions are the first example of “taxonomic tithing,” meaning they raise money for their own conservation, according to Goward.
“I believe that future auctions of this kind will garner even more support as Canadians awaken to the honour of being linked, if only in name, to other living species that share this planet with us,” he said, in a release.
The Sulyma family purchased naming rights from The Land Conservancy for $17,900. Parmelia sulymae has been named in honour of Randy Sulyma, a biologist at the University of British Columbia who died tragically in January. The money will got toward a $350,000 campaign to purchase a land corridor between two pieces of Wells Grey Park in the southern Interior of B.C.
The Ancient Forest Alliance will use the money from Hansen’s winning bid to map and report on old-growth forest on Vancouver Island.
Link to Victoria News article: https://www.bclocalnews.com/community/135945688.html