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With Gadhafi teetering, Mubarak toppled and pretty much every Arab state having come down with a severe case of the wobbles, Al Jazeera naturally turns its attention to … Avatar Grove.

It’s true. A crew from the English-language version of the Mideast-based news network has waded into the Vancouver Island woods for a story on BC logging practices.

Which evokes a picture of Moammar, the man who put the Daffy in Gadhafi, glued to the big-screen TV and saying: “That’s the gnarliest Sitka spruce I’ve ever seen.”

Well, no, Al Jazeera English is actually available to 220 million homes in more than 100 countries around the world, which is what has local environmentalists excited.

“International audiences will be astounded to see that British Columbia still has 1,000-year-old trees with tree trunks as wide as living rooms and that tower as tall as downtown skyscrapers -and horrified to know that our government still sanctions cutting them down on a large scale,” said Ken Wu, executive director of the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance, which is campaigning to end old-growth logging in areas where such trees are scarce.

Wu and Metchosin’s T.J. Watt guided the Torontobased Al Jazeera crew around the Port Renfrew area, taking in clearcuts and the stand of massive trees they have dubbed Avatar Grove. The name might be so shamelessly contrived that it makes some want to club a whooping crane to death out of spite, but it seems to have done the trick in attracting attention to the cause.

“We’re always interested in environmental stories,” said Al Jazeera producer Jet Belgraver, on the phone from Toronto. The story, which will air Saturday, aims to give global viewers “a bit of a reality check” about BC logging practices. “When they think of Canada, they think of pristine forests.”

This sort of thing makes Canadians squirm. We get our noses out of joint when international media ignore us, then do a 180 and get all shirty when they report on our dirty laundry, as was the case when the world showed up for the Olympics and discovered that Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside looked like the cast party for Shaun of the Dead.

As for the struggle for Vancouver Island’s forests, it hasn’t really garnered international attention since 1993’s War in the Woods, the massive protest against Clayoquot Sound logging. The cameras rolled when activist rockers Midnight Oil -whose big, bald lead singer, Peter Garrett, went on to become Australia’s environment minister -played a concert at the protesters’ camp that July. Environmental lawyer Robert Kennedy, Jr. (another kind of rock star) waded in two weeks later. International pressure, the threat of boycott, eventually spurred BC forestry reform, such as it was.

Americans tend not to pay much attention to us anymore, though. The Washington Post shut its Canadian bureau in 2007, following the lead of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. Two years ago, CNN was so ignorant that when Barack Obama paid his first presidential trip to Canada, it identified the red-serge Mounties as soldiers.

Al Jazeera English bills itself as the only international network with a permanent bureau in Canada. The four-year-old 24-hour news service, based in Qatar, began broadcasting as a digital channel in Canada last May. The Toronto bureau’s staff are all Canadian, with Imtiaz Tyab, who had worked for the CBC in Vancouver, its on-camera face.

In fact, the entire network has a strong Canadian flavour, including Tony Burman, former editor in chief of CBC News.

Although influential abroad, the network is having a hard time getting a toehold in the U.S., where the Al Jazeera name conjures up images of bombhappy radical Muslim clerics, and where there appears to be widespread support for exposing the public to a diversity of perspectives, as long as they’re American.

Al Jazeera isn’t that readily accessible in Canada, either. Shaw carries it as a specialty channel in Victoria, up in the nosebleed section with the Knitting Knetwork and Lithuanian pay-per-view porn, or something like that. It’s easiest to stream it live over the Internet.

As for the old-growth logging practices at the heart of the story, Wu and Watt are encouraged that Forests Minister Pat Bell recently asked BC’s chief forester to investigate a Forest Practices Board recommendation that the province find a new way to protect ancient, giant trees.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine the government declaring Avatar Grove (even politicians have begun using the name) off-limits to logging; the Liberals need to do something to recover from the Juan de Fuca lands debacle.

But Wu says that would just be a start. “It’s not just about saving the cherry on top of the cake.”

If the government doesn’t come up with an old-growth strategy acceptable to the Ancient Forest Alliance, the group plans to target vulnerable Liberal MLAs -not a war in the woods, but a war in the swing ridings.

Maybe that would bring back the cameras, the media always being drawn by war.

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Ancient Forest Alliance plans public hike to Avatar Grove on Sunday, February 27

Forest activists reacted with amusement at comments made by the BC government and a logging industry representative in a Times Colonist article “BC looking for new ways to protect ancient trees” on Tuesday.

In the article the Forests Minister Pat Bell states, “BC has more old-growth today than we’ve ever had,” and that “we are not running out of old-growth on Vancouver Island…”

“Somehow a century of industrial logging has actually increased the amount of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island, according to the BC government. Maybe the Ancient Forest Alliance should take up logging to increase the amount of old-growth forests in BC!” joked Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) executive director. “The BC government still retains its old mindset about old forests, as they’re still into their silly spin-doctoring – clearly they haven’t experienced a paradigm shift about our old-growth forests. However, the fact is this government has always maintained such nonsense – the main difference now, the new thing here, is their acknowledgement that there is a real public mood in seeing greater protection levels for our old-growth forests, including the Avatar Grove and BC’s largest trees. Of course we welcome this acknowledgement on the need to expand old-growth forest protections.”

The Ancient Forest Alliance is planning another public hike to the Avatar Grove on Sunday, February 27. More details will be posted on its website www.ancientforestalliance.org next week.

Since the Avatar Grove was located in December of 2009 by Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner TJ Watt, the AFA has organized countless public hikes, slideshows, rallies, photography expeditions, letter-writing drives, and petition drives to get the area protected. There has been a torrent of local, provincial, and national media stories about the Avatar Grove, and support has snowballed to include the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce, Sooke Region Tourism Association, and local elected representatives at the federal, provincial, and regional levels including Liberal MP Keith Martin, NDP MLA John Horgan, and Regional Director Mike Hicks, respectively. The Avatar Grove consists of numerous monumental ancient redcedars, some 14 feet (over 4 meters) in trunk diameter, giant Douglas firs, and a few large Sitka spruce, all of which are heavily targeted by the old-growth logging industry. “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree”, a huge redcedar with a 10 foot (3 meter) wide burl, is also found in the Avatar Grove. The area was surveyed and flagged with falling boundary and road location tape by Teal-Jones by February of 2010.  See Avatar Grove photos at: https://ancientforestalliance.org/photos-media/

Almost 6000 people have now viewed the Ancient Forest Alliance’s new video clip (1 minute), “Canada’s Gnarliest Tree – Save the Avatar Grove” at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_uPkAWsvVw

“We’ll give thanks if Bell makes good to protect the Avatar Grove. Protecting our most impressive monumental trees and ancient groves is much needed, although most importantly we need to protect old-growth ecosystems on a larger scale. Saving the cherry on top while the voracious neighbour devours the rest of the cake will still deprive our children,” states Ken Wu, Ancient Forest Alliance executive director. “The logging industry’s appetite has devoured 90% of our valley bottom ancient forests on Vancouver Island where the largest trees grow – they’ve had far more than their share. “

“There is an inevitable transition to logging only second-growth forests in southern BC as the old-growth stands run out – what we’re saying is let’s make the transition now while we still have some significant old-growth stands left,  for wildlife, tourism, the climate, and future generations. I think the majority of British Columbians would agree with that,” stated TJ Watt, Ancient Forest Alliance campaigner and photographer.

In Tuesday’s Times Colonist article, Rick Jeffery, president of the Coast Forest Products Association, also spin-doctored various statistics, claiming that there are more protected areas than lands available for logging (reality check:  most park lands consist of alpine rock and ice, marginal subalpine forests, and coastal bog forests, and contain a minority fraction of productive forest lands of value for logging), that most monumental stands of ancient trees are already protected (reality check: 90% of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth forests in the valley bottoms, where the monumental stands grow, have already been logged, and a significant amount of the remainder is unprotected), and that the threat against a stand like the Avatar Grove is an exception.

“The Avatar Grove is just one example of the thousands of ancient forest stands currently under threat in BC, literally hundreds of which get clearcut each year – that’s a simple, sad fact. The difference with the Avatar Grove is that it is easy to get to and grows on gentle terrain so that large numbers of people have now seen this place. Most other endangered ancient forests are remote and difficult for the average person to get to, and thus their destruction goes unseen,” states TJ Watt, AFA explorer and photographer.

On Vancouver Island, according to satellite photos, about 75% of the original, productive old-growth forests have been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow. See “before” and “after” maps at:

https://ancientforestalliance.org/ancient-forests/before-after-old-growth-maps/

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Speaking of those pesky environmental issues, Port Renfrew’s beloved Avatar Grove may have made some exciting headway with the BC Liberals this past week, when Minister of Forests, Mines and Lands Pat Bell announced that he is considering protecting the endangered area.

“Certainly we have been hearing the message . . . that we should be considering some tools, perhaps new tools that we could use when particularly unique trees are identified. They may be individual trees or small areas like the Avatar Grove that provide incremental value over and above the timber resource value,” Bell told media.

Ken Wu, long-time environmental and grove advocate with the Ancient Forest Alliance, says that credit must be given to Bell’s advancements, but that B.C. still has a long way to go yet.

“There’s the real possibility of policy change right now with B.C. being leaderless,” Wu says. “Bell is saying he may open some doors, but we’re going to have to wait and see.”

Wu says the province is still in need of protection on three levels: individual trees, groups (like Avatar Grove) and large forested areas.

“We did bust our asses on this campaign, but the grove speaks for itself . . . when you get business affiliates — like the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce — calling for its support, that’s when you see the BC Liberals listen.”

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