You don’t have to travel down the rough backroads of Vancouver Island to see giant trees and explore old-growth forests. In fact, just outside of Victoria, there are multiple parks and trails where visitors can walk amongst ancient giants.
These open, sunlit forests differ from the misty rainforests of the west coast. The ecosystem is called the Coastal Douglas-fir (CDF) biogeoclimatic zone, as Douglas-fir trees are most abundant in the drier Mediterranean climate of southeastern Vancouver Island. The thick, corky bark of old-growth Douglas-firs allows them to withstand the periodic fires that define this ecosystem (look closely and see that many of trees still bear the scorch marks from fires long ago).
The CDF is the most endangered ecosystem in BC, with less than 1% remaining as old-growth. Some of the finest remaining examples of these rare forests are in parks in the greater Victoria area in the territories of the W̱SÁNEĆ and Lekwungen Peoples.
