Recent News

Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Award-winning Canadian poet Don McKay takes lichen-naming bid to $3,500

McKay is the author of twelve books of poetry and has been publishing since 1973. His poems are ecologically centred, inspired by the conflict between inspiration and spiritual, instinct and knowledge and he sees his writing as “nature poetry in a time of environmental crisis.”
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Canada’s largest tree

Canada’s biggest tree

Canada’s largest tree, a western redcedar named the “Cheewhat Giant” stands in a remote location near Cheewhat Lake west of Lake Cowichan. The tree is over six meters (20 feet) in trunk diameter, 56 meters (182 feet) in height and 450 cubic meters in timber volume (or 450 regular telephone poles’ worth of wood).
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A waterfall cascades through the old-growth redcedars in the endagered Avatar Grove.

Province takes step towards protecting ‘Avatar Grove’

Speaking on CFAX 1070 with Adam Stirling Tuesday afternoon, the group's spokesperson Ken Wu says the government made the commitment on Saturday
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Photographer TJ Watt is dwarfed by one of the huge alien shaped Red Cedar's in the threatened Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew

B.C.’s Avatar Grove needs park status, say environmentalists

The move to protect the grove has the support of the local chamber of commerce and the logging company that has the cutting rights to the area, but Wu says without park status, there is no guarantee the grove will not be logged in the future.
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Avatar Grove

BC Government Takes Important Step towards Protecting Vancouver Island’s “Avatar Grove”

On Saturday, the Ministry of Forests, Lands, and Natural Resource Operations publicly stated their commitment to designate the entire Avatar Grove off limits to logging through an Old-Growth Management Area (OGMA).
Media Release
AFA's photographer TJ Watt takes a shot of "Canada's Gnarliest Tree" in the Upper Avatar Grove

Hunt for trophy trees yields a treasure trove on Vancouver Island

The popularity of Avatar Grove, as it was named in a brilliant branding move, has convinced the British Columbia government to protect the area — and it may yet lead to a rethinking of how the province manages its oldest forests.
News Coverage
Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Like lichen? Name of species up for grabs in fundraiser

Normally, the person who makes the discovery gets the right to name a newly discovered species but Goward decided to auction off that right to raise funds for the Ancient Forest Alliance and The Land Conservancy of British Columbia.

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Bidders can buy the rights to name these two new species of lichen.

Naming rights to new lichen species up for sale

The money will go to two conservation projects — to help the Ancient Forest Alliance protect B.C.'s old growth forests, and help the Land Conservancy buy private lands in the Clearwater Valley to expand Wells Gray Provincial park.
News Coverage
The lichens being auctioned off for namining rights are a key part of the diet of BC's mountain caribou.

Likin’ a lichen? Why not put your name on it forever?

National Geographic explorer Wade Davis, who lives in the Stikine Valley in northern B.C., has made a $3,000 bid. And Andy MacKinnon, a noted author who works as a forest ecologist for the B.C. government, has offered $3,200.
News Coverage
Naming rights for this new species of Bryoria or “Horsehair Lichen”

Wade Davis and Andy MacKinnon, BC’s Best Known Botanists, Make Bids for Naming Rights for New Species of Old-Growth Forest Lichens as part of Conservation Fundraiser

“We’re lucky to have BC’s Rock Star botanists, Wade Davis and Andy MacKinnon, support this ground-breaking conservation fundraiser,” stated Ken Wu, co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance. “Wade has a long history as a great conservationist and ethnobotanist, working for decades to protect BC’s wilderness as well as tropical ecosystems and cultures. Andy co-authored ‘Plants of Coastal BC’, which many think of as the ‘Bible of BC Botany’. He is also the foremost authority on old-growth forest ecology in this province.”
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The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) is a registered charitable organization working to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and to ensure a sustainable, value-added, second-growth forest industry.

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