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A giant 14ft diameter old-growth redcedar stump sits among dozens more in the clearcut near Port Renfrew

Watchdog wants big trees protected

Feb 11 2011/in News Coverage

Creative ways should be found to protect the ancient giants in B.C.’s forests, says the Forest Practices Board.

The watchdog board investigated a complaint about massive old-growth trees being cut near Port Renfrew and concluded that, although the forest company — Teal Cedar Products Ltd. — did nothing wrong, government and forest companies should pay more attention to trees of exceptional size, form, age or historical significance.

“This complaint highlights the strong public interest in seeing more ancient trees and forest stands preserved to live out their natural lives and functions and managed as a social, economic and ecological asset to the public and surrounding communities,” said board chairman Al Gorley.

The report says such trees “can inspire awe and reverence, a sense of spirituality and connection to past events.”

Public awareness of special trees -often between 500 and 1,000 years old -is increasing as forest areas become more accessible, Gorley said. “From a public relations point of view, for the logging companies it’s sometimes going to make more sense to leave [the trees] there,” he said in an interview.

But the board stopped short of recommending hard and fast rules and, instead, is suggesting voluntary co-operation.

Forest companies could incorporate special trees into leave-alone areas, roads and landing areas could be planned to protect big trees or logging boundaries moved so big trees are not in the cutting area, Gorley said.

Some giant trees are protected through old-growth management areas and parks, but no one knows whether the most valuable and unusual sites are protected because B.C.’s forestry inventory and policies do not differentiate between forest stands 250 years old and those 500 years or older, the report says.

“A result is that the discovery of ancient, exceptional and irreplaceable trees often occurs with the onset of harvest planning. This situation can lead to public uncertainty and a sense of urgency and conflict in considering whether, in the circumstances, such trees should be protected,” it says.

Gorley said he does not know whether voluntary measures are enough to protect special trees.

“Time will tell. If over time we find we are losing them, then maybe government will feel it has to actually enact more specific rules,” he said.

The giant stumps near Port Renfrew were discovered close to a grove of huge trees, nicknamed Avatar Grove by the Ancient Forest Alliance, a group pushing for oldgrowth protection.

After photographs of the grove and the stumps were made public, an increasing number of hikers and tourists visited the area.

Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance said government needs to immediately expand the number of oldgrowth management areas and sites such as Avatar Grove should be given full protection.

The stump of a 14ft diameter old-growth redcedar freshly cut in 2010 found along the Gordon River near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island.

Companies urged to conserve ancient trees

Feb 11 2011/in News Coverage

The Forest Practices Board is encouraging the government and forestry companies to get creative to save trees of exceptional size or form, age or historical significance.

The recommendation comes out of an investigation into a public complaint about logging of particularly large trees near Port Renfrew on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, the board said in a news release.

“This complaint highlights the strong public interest in seeing more ancient trees and forest stands preserved to live out their natural lives and functions, and managed as a social, economic and ecological asset to the public and surrounding communities,” said board chair Al Gorley.

“These significant trees can be from 500 to over 1,000 years old. Having withstood the ravages of time over many centuries, they can inspire awe and reverence, a sense of spirituality and connection to past events,” the release states.

The report found that the licensee in question complied with legislation, and did retain some trees of similar size and age to those harvested.

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Forests minister to protect ancient trees

Feb 11 2011/in News Coverage

Forests minister Pat Bell said Friday that ancient trees in British Columbia need more protection than they now have under existing legislation.

The minister’s acknowledgment that more needs to be done to protect monumental trees is not exactly a revelation. Environmental groups, particularly the Ancient Forest Alliance and the Wilderness Committee have been pushing for it for years.

However, it took the government’s own advisory group, the independent Forest Practices Board to climb on board before Victoria responded. (see story here) In a report released Thursday the board recommended that the province, forest professionals and timber companies “seek creative means to preserve trees of exceptional size or form, age or historical significance when they encounter them.”

The board waded into the ancient tree fight after a private citizen, University of Victoria professor Hans Tammemagi, filed a formal complaint about logging in the so-called “Avatar Grove” near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island. The complaint was the mechanism that launched the review. The board’s finding lifted the issue beyond the usual polarization that characterizes most of the debate over just how much old-growth needs to be saved.

Bell said in an interview Friday that he has asked the province’s chief forester to review existing regulations and to develop new “tools” for protecting trees that, because of their age, have values that make them worth preserving.

“Certainly we have been hearing the message for some time from different organizations that we should be considering some tools, perhaps new tools that we could use when particularly unique trees are identified. They may be individual tees or small areas like the Avatar Grove that provide incremental value over and above the timber resource value,” the minister said.

He said the tools would likely be surgical in nature, permitting the forests ministry to protect individual trees and the forest patch around them. What these tools will look like, however, will be up to the chief forester.

The move was supported by the leading environmental group in the fight over Vancouver Island old growth, the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance.

“That’s good, considering they appointed the board. It’s their advisory group. The question is, what tools are they going to use to protect monumental trees,” said the alliance’s Ken Wu.

He said the fight is not over, though. Monumental trees are the symbol the alliance is focusing in its fight to protect more old-growth eco-systems.

The trees in question are not just old-growth, which the province characterizes as anything more than 250 years old. The board uses the term “ancient” meaning they are over 500 years old.

The Avatar Grove was named by the alliance after the movie of the same name because the tree trunks are so huge and gnarly. The ancient trees are scattered throughout a much younger forest that likely originated because of fire or high winds about 100 years ago. Some of the area is protected from logging through the government’s old-growth management strategy for the Gordon River watershed. It requires five to 14 per cent of the trees to be protected as wildlife trees patches.

The board found that although the government has a strategy in place to manage the old-growth forest in the Gordon River watershed, there was not sufficient data to estimate the extent of ancient forest on the landscape. Inventories are not that detailed.

The board’s report states that if the government is to manage more precisely for ancient trees, more detailed inventories are required.

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