The world's largest Douglas fir tree, the famous Red Creek Fir tree, located in Port Renfrew at the southern tip of Vancouver Island, remains vulnerable to the effects of logging in an adjacent old-growth forest, claim environmentalists.
Becoming a field of giant stumps continues to be the fate of many of our last stands of giant trees in southern B.C. and shows a lack of understanding of what draws many people to the best place on Earth.
Vancouver – Between 2013 and 2016, more raw logs were shipped from BC than during any other four-year period in the province’s history, prompting two forest industry unions and three leading environmental groups to call for a ban on raw log exports from old-growth forests and a bold government action to plan to stimulate BC’s flagging forest sector.
The world’s largest Douglas fir could be at risk, say Vancouver Island environmentalists.
When you stop and think about it, post-Avatar depression isn’t as bizarre a phenomenon as it seems. If news reports and postings on fansites such as Naviblue and Avatar Forums are to be believed, many filmgoers are feeling as blue as those tall, peace-loving Na’vi aliens after watching James Cameron’s stunning 3-D sci-fi epic.
New logging tape marks an area about 50 metres away from the largest Douglas fir in the world in the Red Creek area east of Port Renfrew.
Conservationists say the BC government is putting the future of the World’s tallest Douglas fir tree in jeopardy.
Logging is already prohibited in part of a stand of massive old-growth trees near Port Renfrew that the community and environmentalists want protected, but it’s not nearly enough, say members of the Ancient Forest Alliance.
A section of the stand, nicknamed Avatar Grove, is in an old-growth management area, meaning no cutting is allowed, Forests Ministry spokeswoman Vivian Thomas said yesterday.
An exceptionally spectacular and accessible stand of newly discovered old growth redcedars and Douglas firs near Port Renfrew has recently been marked for logging. The unprotected forest on Crown lands about 10 kilometers north of Port Renfrew, nicknamed the “Avatar Grove” after the hit movie for its awe-inspiring beauty and alien-shaped, enormous trees covered in burls, was discovered in early December last year by Vancouver Island photographer and “big tree hunter” TJ Watt and a friend.
Filmmaker James Cameron has spoken before about how his Avatar is a cautionary environmental tale. In a MTV interview this week, he says Fox wanted to remove its "treehugging crap," but environmentalists now want to create a curriculum based on it.
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