Old-Growth Campaigns

Home to monumental and centuries old trees, a variety of wildlife including old-growth dependent species (such as the marbled murrelet), and supporting significant salmon and steelhead spawning runs, the Nahmint Valley is one of the largest tracts of remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island outside of Clayoquot Sound. A popular destination for hikers, campers, and anglers, and hosting remarkable ancient forests, lakes, rugged peaks, swimming holes, and gorgeous turquoise canyons, the area is considered by many to be one of the most scenic places in BC.

Home to monumental and centuries old trees, a variety of wildlife including old-growth dependent species (such as the marbled murrelet), and supporting significant salmon and steelhead spawning runs, the Nahmint Valley is one of the largest tracts of remaining old-growth forests on Vancouver Island outside of Clayoquot Sound. A popular destination for hikers, campers, and anglers, and hosting remarkable ancient forests, lakes, rugged peaks, swimming holes, and gorgeous turquoise canyons, the area is considered by many to be one of the most scenic places in BC.

Just a half hour drive from Cathedral Grove is an ancient forest that is just about as impressive – the Cameron Valley Ancient Forest or “Firebreak.” This area is a valley-bottom-to-mountain-top old-growth Douglas-fir forest that was originally left as a moist, old-growth rainforest firebreak to stifle the spread of forest fires raging through the dry clearcuts.

The unprotected “Mossy Maple Grove” is a several kilometer long stretch of enormous old-growth Bigleaf maple trees – some as much as 2 meters (7 feet) wide in trunk diameter – completely draped in hanging gardens of mosses and ferns found along a creek just south of Cowichan Lake on Vancouver Island.

The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling for the provincial government to establish a BC Old-Growth Protection Strategy that would ensure comprehensive, legislated protection for BC’s ancient forests on public/Crown lands. The science-based plan would incorporate timelines to immediately end old-growth logging in “critically endangered” forests, and quickly phase out old-growth logging where there is a “high risk” to biological diversity and ecosystem integrity.

Echo Lake is a spectacular, unprotected, lowland ancient forest near Agassiz, BC, in a region where virtually all of the valley bottom old-growth forests have been logged.