Ken Wu knows how to get attention for ancient forests.
When we met at the Bread Garden Café on Broadway in Vancouver just after the news broke a few weeks ago that he and several other tree-hugging stalwarts from Vancouver Island had splintered from the Western Canada Wilderness Committee to form the Ancient Forest Alliance, the former Victoria campaign director for WCWC mentioned how much he enjoyed the movie Avatar.
Flagging tape in the immediate vicinity of the world’s largest Douglas fir does not mean the area will be logged in the near future, according to forest company TimberWest.
The marked cutblock, less than 100 metres from the Red Creek Fir, was found by members of the Ancient Forest Alliance who say that if surrounding trees are cut, the 74-metre tall tree will be in danger of blow-down.
The provincial government should not let the mostly undisturbed grove in the Gordon River Valley, nicknamed Avatar Grove, be logged. It is a gem of an ecosystem and with so little of our old-growth forests left, it is not something we can afford to lose. With its proximity to Port Renfrew, it will be very beneficial for bringing in tourists, which will support local economies.
A new proposed logging cutblock near the world's largest Douglas fir tree, the Red Creek Fir, has been identified as that of TimberWest, a BC-based logging company. The Red Creek Fir, located 15 kilometers east of Port Renfrew, is recognized as the largest Douglas Fir Tree on Earth, with enough wood to make 349 telephone poles (ie. 349 cubic meters in total timber volume – see https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hre/bigtrees/docs/BigTreeRegistry.pdf). It is 73.8 meters in height and has a trunk 4.2 meters wide (Diameter-at-Breast-Height or DBH).
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.
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.
The world’s largest Douglas fir could be at risk, say Vancouver Island environmentalists.
Conservationists say the BC government is putting the future of the World’s tallest Douglas fir tree in jeopardy.
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