The new Port Renfrew Tourist Information Centre will help to funnel thousands of new visitors into the surrounding old-growth forests

Coastal town replaces logging with tourism

"We used to depend on logging to sustain Port Renfrew. Now the tables have turned and we're looking at the tall trees as our future," said Betsworth as the two groups cemented their partnership Thursday with the opening of a new tourist information centre, where visitors can pick up a map of the area's massive old-growth trees.

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Ancient Forest Alliance

CHEK TV News clip featuring Port Renfrew’s new Tourist Information Centre and the Avatar Grove

The Ancient Forest Alliance along with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce launched the new Tourist Information Centre today which will serve to funnel thousands of visitors into the town's surrounding old-growth forests, raise awareness of the need to protect them, and help create a vibrant eco-tourism based economy.
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Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Name that lichen

Naming rights for two recently discovered species of lichen are up for grabs to the highest bidder. It's all part of a fundraiser for The Land Conservancy of B.C., a non-profit habitat protection group, and the Ancient Forest Alliance, which focuses on saving B.C.'s old-growth forests.
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A waterfall cascades through the old-growth redcedars in the endagered Avatar Grove.

Canadian Student Takes Top Prize in International Environmental Journalism Competition with an Article on Avatar Grove

International winner Liz Welliver, whose article “Making a Stand for Avatar” captures the attempts to preserve a newfound swath of ancient old growth forests in BC, was among three youth to take home a prize in the Canadian leg of the competition.
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Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

If you take a lichen to them, name them

While new lichens are discovered on an almost monthly basis, most of those are in the “dime-a-dozen” category of crust lichens, said Mr. Goward. The two lichens up for auction are from the much more prestigious “macrolichens” category.
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Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Your name could go on a lichen

A botanist from the University of B.C. has donated the naming rights to two species of lichen he's discovered to two environmental groups. The Ancient Forest Alliance and The Land Conservancy are auctioning off the right to name the species to the highest bidders.
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Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Naming rights for new species up for auction online

Trevor Goward, curator of lichens at the University of British Columbia and author of several books, said in an interview Friday he discovered a new species of horsehair lichen in the mid-1990s in the Hazelton-Kispiox area and a new species of crottle lichen in the Clearwater Valley two years ago, both of them in old-growth B.C. forests.
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Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

New Species Name to be Auctioned-off as Fundraiser for the Ancient Forest Alliance!

“Having your name linked to a living species is a legacy that lasts,” says botanist and taxonomist Goward. "With any luck your name will endure as long as our civilization does. Not even Shakespeare could hope for more than that.”

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The last of BC's old-growth forest continues to be targeted by logging companies like this example on southern Vancouver Island.

B.C. isn’t doing enough to preserve its forests

The science on forest conservation recommends much greater amounts of forest be protected, and I have confidence that B.C. can meet the challenge. We can produce more jobs and value per cubic metre of forest cut while conserving much more of the forests themselves.
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Much of Vancouver Island's second-growth forest is being logged quickly and shipped out of BC as raw logs instead of being processed and manufactured at local mills.

Translation needed in raw-log export debate

A letter writer does an excellent job of de-bunking industry spin regarding raw log exports point by point in this hard-hitting article.
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