The B.C. government will examine the contentious possibility of opening old-growth forests to logging in parts of the province hardest hit by plummeting timber supplies. It's an idea that both proponents and opponents say would require chopping protective measures that took years to create.
The British Columbia government says it is acting on a series of recommendations to help the province's forest industry in the wake of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. Critics say it's a weak response to the issue that shows the government hasn't learned from the collapse of other natural resource industries.
The song was inspired by a trip to the BC Forest Discovery Centre in Duncan where there is a cross-section of a 1300-year-old fir tree that blew down in a storm in the 1960s.
In an ethereal valley near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island, more than 100 remarkable Douglas-fir and red cedar trees have held their ground for centuries. Members of the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance came upon the gnarled titans - some over 60 metres tall and more than four metres in diameter - in December 2009. Soon after, they learned the area was slated for harvest and launched a campaign to save "Avatar Grove."
Logging on hillsides such as McLaughlin Ridge inevitably affects the water supply of surrounding communities and the province should do more to help protect watersheds, says the chairman of the AlberniClayoquot Regional District.
An old-growth forest near Port Alberni that had been protected as critical habitat for wintering deer and endangered goshawks is being logged by Island Timberlands - even though newly released documents show Environment Ministry staff strongly disagreed with the company's harvesting plans.
These days, visitors to Port Renfrew can pick up a map to the area's largest trees and set out to explore what's been coined the Big Tree Capital of Canada. While some of Canada's largest trees are out of reach of a typical rental car, there are still plenty of accessible giants - aided by the recent paving of the Pacific Marine Circle Route, which allows travellers to drive across the interior of the island and pop out on the east coast near Duncan, rather than doubling back along the same route to Victoria.
Re: Kieran Report, Aug. 23-29 In his attempt to blame the NDP government of the 1990s for the pine beetle epidemic in B.C.'s forests, Brian Kieran claims that the "infestation was first detected in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park and could have been contained there if forest companies had been permitted to go into the park and selectively log infested areas” — an argument that has been roundly refuted by everyone with the most rudimentary knowledge of the issue.
The Vancouver Island old-growth forest that, over the decades, has sparked bitter confrontations over logging is again in the spotlight after survey tape was found near a grove of massive western red cedars.
Members of the Ancient Forest Alliance found the tape in the Upper Walbran Valley, near Castle Grove, which contains the Castle Giant, a western red cedar with a five-metre diameter. The tree is listed in the provincial big tree registry as one of the widest in Canada.
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