Canada’s largest tree, a western redcedar named the “Cheewhat Giant” stands in a remote location near Cheewhat Lake west of Lake Cowichan. The tree is over six meters (20 feet) in trunk diameter, 56 meters (182 feet) in height and 450 cubic meters in timber volume (or 450 regular telephone poles’ worth of wood).
Speaking on CFAX 1070 with Adam Stirling Tuesday afternoon, the group’s spokesperson Ken Wu says the government made the commitment on Saturday
The move to protect the grove has the support of the local chamber of commerce and the logging company that has the cutting rights to the area, but Wu says without park status, there is no guarantee the grove will not be logged in the future.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations publicly stated their commitment to designate the entire Avatar Grove off limits to logging through an Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA).
The popularity of Avatar Grove, as it was named in a brilliant branding move, has convinced the British Columbia government to protect the area — and it may yet lead to a rethinking of how the province manages its oldest forests.
“We’re lucky to have BC’s Rock Star botanists, Wade Davis and Andy MacKinnon, support this ground-breaking conservation fundraiser,” stated Ken Wu, co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “Wade has a long history as a great conservationist and ethnobotanist, working for decades to protect BC’s wilderness as well as tropical ecosystems and cultures. Andy co-authored ‘Plants of Coastal BC’, which many think of as the ‘Bible of BC Botany’. He is also the foremost authority on old-growth forest ecology in this province.”
The money will go to two conservation projects — to help the Ancient Forest Alliance protect B.C.’s old growth forests, and help the Land Conservancy buy private lands in the Clearwater Valley to expand Wells Gray Provincial park.
National Geographic explorer Wade Davis, who lives in the Stikine Valley in northern B.C., has made a $3,000 bid.
And Andy MacKinnon, a noted author who works as a forest ecologist for the B.C. government, has offered $3,200.
Normally, the person who makes the discovery gets the right to name a newly discovered species but Goward decided to auction off that right to raise funds for the Ancient Forest Alliance and The Land Conservancy of British Columbia.
To celebrate Parks Day this past week, the AFA captured a YouTube video of Canada’s largest tree, a western red cedar named the Cheewhat Giant, growing in a remote location near Cheewhat Lake, north of Port Renfrew and west of Lake Cowichan. The tree remains the country’s biggest with a trunk diametre over six metres (20 feet).
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