View gallery at: https://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/gallery-tree-climbers-scale-big-lonely-doug-1.1118808
Many of us have climbed a tree or two in our lives, but how many of us can say that tree was as tall as an 18-storey building? A group of professional tree climbers scaled Canada's second-largest Douglas-fir — fondly referred to as Big Lonely Doug — and there are some amazing photos to prove it. Climbers from Arboreal Collective partnered with Ancient Forest Alliance, a B.C.-based conservation organization that discovered Big Lonely Doug, to complete the ascension of the tree near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island.
For a few hours last month Big Lonely Doug was a little less lonely. On may 25, a group of climbers and environmentalists scaled the giant tree, which was confirmed as Canada’s second-largest Douglas Fir earlier this year. “It’s a humbling experience exploring the tops of centuries-old trees and in a place no human has been before. I hope the novel images that come from this initiative to climb and document the largest trees and grandest groves in B.C. will help to raise awareness… about these highly endangered ecosystems,” said T.J. Watt of the Ancient Forest Alliance.
"The only evident plan [of the BC government] is to keep the rates of timber harvesting unsustainably high, thereby making the eventual collapse of available timber even more painful for forest-dependent communities, a policy based on the premise that it is better to have more jobs today and none tomorrow rather than fewer jobs today and some tomorrow. ...the government is preoccupied with rewarding an oligopoly of companies with exclusive timber rights over public forests within quasi-private timber farms (Tree Farm Licences) In its zeal to justify further enclosure of The Commons and increased corporate control over the commoners’ timber, the government’s twisted thinking becomes so bent that it defines mountebank politics."
"How did we get to this point? It is no secret that this redressed proposal is especially aimed at companies operating in the Interior. After the mountain pine beetle epidemic, the province allowed a significant increase to the annual cut to deal with massive quantities of dead or dying trees in this region. But that process has almost run its course: dead wood is running out and forest companies are cutting down more and more living trees, also known as green timber. In a headline-making case, West Fraser and Canfor took one million cubic metres of green timber over and above the allocated cut, without penalty by the B.C. government."
"TFLs have always enabled monopolistic corporate control of our public forests and, over the long term, have not maintained the public benefits that were promised when they were awarded. The sorry state of BC’s coastal forests and coastal forest industry, where the majority of current TFLs exist, provides all the evidence needed to reject the creation of any more TFLs..."
"Dubbed 'Big Lonely Doug', this Douglas-fir is the second largest tree of its species (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in Canada."
The Globe and Mail's coverage on Big Lonely Doug.
Coverage by CTV News on Big Lonely Doug, officially measured as the second-largest Dougas fir tree in Canada.
Article by Huffington Post on the recent measurement of Big Lonely Doug as the second largest Douglas fir in Canada.
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