Ancient Forest with some of the largest cedar trees in B.C. will be class A park

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Great news! The province has established a new 11,900 hectare protected area east of Prince George that includes important tracts of the famous ancient redcedar groves in the inland temperate rainforest. Thanks to the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation, the Northern Wetbelt Working Group (who have been working for a substantially more extensive, science-based protected areas network in the region to protect more of the inland temperate rainforest) and the province for this important step forward in old-growth forest protection!

Also take note you can still sign-on to the Northern Wetbelt Working Group's letter for expanded protection in the region (if you haven't already) at: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/16hq-R8ZOylR-wLSz9OjbxRdf4NYHYnG9Uo1Lu12qr0U/viewform

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PRINCE GEORGE, B.C. — A unique rainforest comprised of some of the largest cedar trees in British Columbia is set to become a provincial park.

Premier Christy Clark has announced that 119 square kilometres of forest in northern B.C. will become a class A provincial park under legislation to be introduced Wednesday.

The designation would protect the Ancient Forest, also known as Chun T'oh Wudujut to local First Nations, from timber harvesting and other commercial activity.

Located about 120 kilometres east of Prince George, the forest is part of the only known inland temperate rainforest in the world, and is home to many different plant and wildlife species.

Prince George MLA Shirley Bond says in a release that the 1,000-year-old trees are “historical natural wonders” with trunks measuring up to 16 metres around.

The province is also planning to work with the federal government to have the area considered as a UNESCO World Heritage Site based on the outstanding value of the ancient trees.

Read more: https://www.vancouversun.com/travel/ancient+forest+with+some+largest+cedar+trees+will+class+park/11786827/story.html

Pops for Parks movement comes to Saanich

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A proposal to save the environment using unclaimed bottle deposits may soon be endorsed by Saanich council.

On Monday, Saanich council is set to consider endorsing a proposal, prepared by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre for the Ancient Forest Alliance, that would turn over unclaimed bottle deposits to the BC government for a land acquisition fund to create and maintain green spaces. The local conservation group is pushing for the resolution to be submitted to the AVICC and UBCM, and later to the provincial government.

“Upon the purchase of a beverage, BC customers pay a deposit on the container, which is refunded when the container is returned,” reads a report prepared by Coun. Fred Haynes. “If the container is not returned, the deposit remains with the beverage industry.

“‘Pop for Parks’ proposes the redirection of unredeemed container deposits to an important cause: the acquisition and protection of ecologically sensitive private lands in BC.”

Ken Wu, executive director of the alliance, said states such as New York and Michigan have enacted similar legislation because unclaimed deposits are seen as windfall profits that should belong to the state and used for public benefit.

“They basically take the unredeemed bottle deposits and file them into land acquisition for conservation,” said Wu. “It comes out to about $10 to $15 million per year. It wouldn’t increase anyone’s taxes because this is already a pot of money that, right now, is going to the beverage container industry.

“They’re floating around on the streets and polluting the environment, so it makes sense to take the proceeds and better the environment through protecting green spaces.”

The District of Highlands has already endorsed the proposal, with other local municipalities expected to follow suit.

While the CRD already has a land acquisition fund of its own, Wu said it’s time the BC government chipped in to help create and protect more environmental areas.

“The park acquisition fund through the CRD is highly successful – it’s already helped to purchase about 4,500 hectares and raised about $35 million since it was implemented in 2000,” said Wu. “We want a provincial equivalent – the province has got to do its part as well.”

[Saanich News article no longer available.]

Tall trees turning Port Renfrew into tourist hot spot

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The discovery of a grove of massive and unusual cedar trees six years ago has slowly been attracting more and more tourists from around the world to the tiny community of Port Renfrew.

And now the business community says it’s better for the local economy to move on from logging, and set its sights instead on ecotourism.

Port Renfrew is a two hour drive from Victoria, along Vancouver Island’s west coast.

“To be able to drive somewhere, and to be able to immerse themselves in an environment that looks the same, is the same, the way it was perhaps 1000 years ago, is a wonderful experience,” said Dan Hager, President of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce.

A short drive from the centre of Port Renfrew brings you to Avatar Grove.

TJ Watt discovered the unusual and massive cedars while exploring the area with a friend in 2009.

“We found these incredible gigantic trees that are covered in these amazing burls,” said Watts.

Watt’s group the Ancient Forest Alliance along with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce campaigned to have the area saved and in 2012 the provincial government declared Avatar Grove a protected area and word of it’s unique beauty started to spread.

“Avatar started to bring a lot of people, and they started coming and every year they came more and more and more,” said Hager.

In the peak of summer, it’s estimated up to 200 people will visit the “gnarly” trees each day, many from Europe, and the United States.

“There’s been a massive influx of tall tree tourism and the town has re-branded itself as the Tall Tree Capital of Canada,” said Ken Wu with the Ancient Forest Alliance.

But the Tall Tree Capital was actually built on falling trees and signs of the forest industry dot the hills all around.

“Logging really has the origins of Port Renfrew, the reason the road is there because of logging, but we can bring more people and more revenue into Renfrew through tourism than from logging, taking the trees out,” said Hager.

Hager says you can see the impact ecotourism is having on the tiny community of 250 as developers build cabins and cottages for people from around the world who want a closer view of Vancouver Island’s raw beauty.

One of the most iconic tall trees in the Port Renfrew area is affectionately known as “Big Lonely Doug”.

The second largest douglas fir in Canada, it is nearly four meters wide and 67 meters tall, and estimated to be roughly 1000 years old.

It was saved as a wildlife tree when the area was logged a few years ago.

And it is just one more reason local business and environmental groups say the remaining ancient forests in the region need to be protected.

“Giant douglas firs, big red cedars, these are primeval forests, sort of Jurassic Park type landscapes that really deserve protection there’s so little left,” said Wu.

But for many in the area the tall trees remaining are a sign of transformation, for a town ready to cut ties with its logging roots and plant a new seed for a future in tourism.

Port Alberni, Vancouver Island’s Forestry Capital – Sustainability Champion?

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In recent years, there has been considerable public concern in Port Alberni over logging in its China Creek drinking watershed, in particular over McLaughlin Ridge’s magnificent old-growth Douglas-firs which shelter wintering deer and is also home to endangered species.

 

Additional concerns have also erupted over proposed logging along “The Hump’s” forested highway buffer, at the “Lookout”, on Mount Horne above Cathedral Grove, and at the Cameron Valley Firebreak – which is akin to a “second Cathedral Grove” with its rare ancient Douglas firs and herds of Roosevelt elk. All of these stands are owned by Island Timberlands.

 

McLaughlin Ridge, the Cameron Valley Firebreak, and Mount Horne were all intended to be protected as Ungulate Winter Ranges for wintering deer and/or elk until negotiations between the B.C. government and Island Timberlands fell apart, subsequent to the lands’ removal in 2004 from their Tree Farm Licence (TFL). These lands, along with another 78,000 hectares, were once regulated to stronger public standards within their TFL’s – their removal thereby deregulated most of the environmental laws that otherwise would have protected the scenery, riparian zones for water quality and wild salmon, deer and elk winter ranges, endangered species habitats, and many old-growth stands, as well as restrictions on raw log exports.

 

However, hundreds of Port Alberni residents have attended public forums in recent years to speak out about the fate of these forests, and hundreds more have attended rallies against raw log exports where forestry workers and conservationists have stood together in solidarity. The Port Alberni city council has also passed a resolution calling for the protection of McLaughlin Ridge in the drinking watershed and has met with Island Timberlands over the past year seeking a conservation solution. During the same period, Island Timberlands seems to have taken pause at McLaughlin Ridge and has indicated that they are open to potential buyers – for how long, we don’t know.

 

The fact that so many Port Alberni residents are standing up for both environmental protection and sustainable forestry jobs today seems quite incredible if you remember the early 1990’s. During the era of the Clayoquot Sound protests, Alberni had a reputation among environmentalists as the town to avoid while hitch-hiking to Tofino. Today, Port Alberni has become a major centre of environmental concern for forests. For those who’ve experienced the history, it may seem quite remarkable – but not if you realize that it’s in the interest of forestry workers to ensure a sustainable industry that retains jobs, and for environmentalists to support sustainable forestry jobs in order to transform the economic and political forces causing the environmental destruction.

 

Port Alberni in the 1970’s was reputed to have the highest per capita income of any town in Canada due to numerous high-paid, unionized forestry jobs based on the “green gold” – vast stands of accessible, valley-bottom giant Douglas firs, Sitka spruce, and red cedars in the region. By 2014, with the best old-growth stands long since depleted, Port Alberni was ranked at the bottom of MoneySense magazine’s annual list of the best places to live in Canada. Port Alberni residents have been understandably irked by the label, given the down-to-earth kindness of many of the local people and the area’s natural beauty.

 

The situation in Port Alberni, from extreme economic prosperity to significant collapse, has been shared by many of B.C.’s coastal communities over the past two decades – and in fact, by communities around the world as a result of the pattern of unsustainable, high-grade resource depletion.

 

B.C.’s forest industry was historically built on logging the biggest and best old-growth stands in the valley bottoms and lower slopes. Over time, the remaining trees have become smaller in size, lower in value and more expensive to reach on steep slopes at high elevations, far away in valley headwaters. Today on Vancouver Island, over 90% of the productive, valley-bottom old-growth forests that historically built the forest industry have now been logged. This has resulted in diminishing returns for the forest industry as expenses have gone up and revenues have declined, resulting in the closure of old-growth dependent sawmills everywhere and the loss of thousands of forestry jobs. In the mid 1990’s almost 100,000 people were directly employed in B.C.’s forest industry – today, about 60,000 remain.

 

Around the world – whether one looks at fishing down the food chain or old-growth logging – this pattern of high-grade resource depletion of taking too much, too fast of the biggest and best, has resulted in the collapse of both ecosystems and of resource dependent communities. Not only do we lose the biodiversity – and water quality in this case – we lose the jobs.

 

The decline in forestry employment has particularly been exacerbated as the B.C. Liberal government has largely deregulated the forest industry, removing the local milling requirement in 2003 that – had it remained – would have mandated that companies convert their old-growth mills to handle the maturing second-growth stands. Instead, as the original mills shut down, there has been a mass exodus of raw, unprocessed logs leaving the province for foreign mills, facilitated by the B.C. government which has been marketing our logs and last old-growth stands in China.

 

However, the people of Port Alberni are speaking up today for their drinking watershed, their last old-growth stands, and for sustainable, second-growth forestry jobs. An individual of particular note is Jane Morden, the coordinator of the Port Alberni Watershed-Forest Alliance, and her team of concerned residents who have worked hard to bring these issues to the forefront of municipal and provincial attention in recent years. Over the past year there have been talks between the municipality and the company towards a possible resolution for McLaughin Ridge – although nothing is ever certain until there is legislation and funding, which will require provincial leadership now.

 

In a move that could bolster the local momentum, 16 major conservation and recreation organizations, including the Port Alberni Watershed Forest Alliance and the Ancient Forest Alliance, signed a statement in January calling on the B.C. Liberal government to establish a $40 million/year Natural Lands Acquisition Fund that would help to purchase and protect private lands of high environmental value – for example, McLaughlin Ridge and Mount Horne by Port Alberni.

 

In other words, there is hope – Port Alberni, long known as the forestry capital of Vancouver Island, could become the forest sustainability capital of Vancouver Island if we all keep working for a better future.

Read more: https://www.albernithrive.com/#!Port-Alberni-Vancouver-Island?s-Forestry-Capital-?-Sustainability-Champion/cjds/56c1e29d0cf2fc0bb780741a

Metchosin supports stopping old-growth logging

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While it’s not quite a New Years resolution, Metchosin resolved to prevent any more logging of old-growth forest on provincial Crown Land on Vancouver Island.

The resolution will see a letter go to the Association of Vancouver Island Coastal Communities, seeking its support for a request to amend the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan to protect all remaining old-growth forest.

“The amount of old growth remaining on southern Vancouver Island is a small fraction of what it used to be, and old growth has all sorts of value – economic, social and environmental value,” said Metchosin Coun. Andy MacKinnon. “We thought it was timely to create a resolution to save the remaining old growth for ourselves and future generations.”

The longtime forester and biologist said such trees at Avatar Grove, and Big Lonely Doug – left standing in the middle of a clearcut, it’s considered the second-largest Douglas fir tree in Canada – attract visitors to the area. He pointed to an estimate showing that only 13 per cent of old-growth forest on southern Vancouver Island remain.

“These are some of the largest trees on the planet, some of the largest living organisms that have ever existed on earth,” MacKinnon said. “And some people visit to view these stands, so there is an important economic resource even if you don’t log them.”

The Association of Vancouver Island Coastal Communities is one of six regional groups under the umbrella of the Union of B.C. Municipalities. It deals with issues and concerns of the 51 municipalities and districts it represents on the Island.

MacKinnon said it’s inevitable that the logging of old-growth forests will stop.

“This will happen when all the old-growth forest outside of protected areas has been logged and the logging will transition to second growth,” he said. “The halt to logging old growth will happen sooner rather than later; this resolution calls for an immediate halt.”

Ancient Forest Alliance

Most of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest protected

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VANCOUVER – A jewel in the crown of British Columbia’s magnificent landscape — the Great Bear Rainforest — has been largely protected from logging in a landmark agreement between First Nations, forest companies, environmental groups and the government, Premier Christy Clark said Monday.

The land-sharing deal 20 years in the making will protect 85 per cent of the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world, located on B.C.’s central coast about 700 kilometres northwest of Vancouver.

The Great Bear Rainforest, stretching from the Discovery Islands northwards to Alaska, is 6.4 million hectares, and more than half the region is covered by ancient forests. The agreement ensures 85 per cent of the forests — 3.1 million hectares — are permanently off limits to logging.

“This is what Vancouver used to look like,” said Clark as images of vast forests were displayed on screens during a news conference at the University of B.C.

“It is proof of what we can do if we decide to find common purpose,” she said.

Clark’s government will introduce legislation this spring that enshrines the deal and includes benefits-sharing agreements with area First Nations.

Twenty six First Nations, environmental groups, coastal forest companies and the government reached the agreement after more than a decade of negotiations.

The agreement also ends the commercial grizzly bear hunt and protects habitat for the marbled murrelet, northern goshawk, mountain goat and tailed frog.

Coastal First Nations spokeswoman Chief Marilyn Slett said reaching the pact was not an easy task but the eco-based management pact is the “modern term to describe what we’ve always done. Our leaders understand our well-being is connected to the well-being of our lands and waters.”

Coast Forest Products Association chief executive officer Rick Jeffery said the deal involved complex talks between groups with opposing points of view, but compromise and success was achieved over time.

“It’s unprecedented in the history of our province,” said Jeffery. “It’s a unique solution for a unique area.”

Environmentalist Richard Brooks said 95 per cent of the area was open to logging 20 years ago, but protests, blockades and ensuing negotiations resulted in Monday’s agreement that ensures most of the forests will not be logged.

“Each of us took tremendous risks to step into the unknown and bridge the huge divide,” said Brooks, describing the collaboration. Three environmental groups, Greenpeace, Forest Ethics and Sierra Club of B.C., are part of the deal.

Jens Wieting of the Sierra Club said logging in the remaining part of the forest will be tightly controlled.

“There is certainty for forestry, 15 per cent of the region’s rainforest will remain open for forestry under very stringent logging rules, the most stringent that you can find in North America.”

The area was officially named the Great Bear Rainforest by then-premier Gordon Campbell in 2006. Environmentalists had given the area the name years before that in an effort to protect the central coast from logging.

The area is also home to the kermode or sprit bear and is where nine area First Nations declared bans on bear hunting in their traditional territories.

Wieting said those involved in the agreement realized the region is globally important because there are so few temperate rain forests left on the planet.

“It is larger than the Netherlands or Belgium or Switzerland and it is really a global responsibility to find solutions to protect the ecological integrity and support communities in this region.”

Read more: https://globalnews.ca/news/2489812/most-of-b-c-s-great-bear-rainforest-protected/

Hope on Vancouver Island following historic Great Bear Rainforest agreement

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It was an historic moment 20 years in the making.

Today it was announced an agreement has been reached between the province, 26 First Nations, environmental groups and the forest industry to protect 85% of BC’s Great Bear Rainforest from logging.

“It preserves land with cultural, ecological and spiritual ties vitally important to the people who have lived there for millennia,” said BC Premier Christy Clark at a press conference in Vancouver.

“I stand here today proud, happy, but still a little bit upset that it’s taken this long for us to find that balance that we were looking for for the last 20 years,” said Dallas Smith, President of the Nanwakolas Tribal Council.

The Great Bear Rainforest covers 6.4 million hectares and is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world.

The best known species to call it home is the Spirit, or Kermode, bear.

20 years ago the battle to protect it began with protests and blockades — that was followed by an international campaign against BC forest products, which cost millions of dollars in contracts.

“International pressure was definitely key to bring the parties together to collaborate,” said Richard Brooks, Greenpeace Canada’s Forest Campaign Coordinator.

There will still be logging in the remaining 15%, but the parties involved say it will be under some of the strictest regulations in North America.

Ken Wu, executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance, says now that BC’s northern rainforest is protected, it’s time to focus on Vancouver Island.

“We actually have the most significant or grandest ancient forests remaining,” said Wu.

“These are Jurassic Park-type landscapes, primeval ancient landscapes and we only have 6% of our productive forests under protection.”

Wu says if nothing is done to protect places like the Walbran Valley from logging, old growth-dependent species here will eventually go extinct.

But he hopes with today’s unprecedented agreement, it will never come to that.

“This basically changes the political dynamic in terms of forests in this province, in fact, in this country, so it’s a huge leap forward,” Wu said.

[Chek News article no longer available.]

Avatar Grove

Avatar Grove Ecotourism

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Here's a new piece by Shaw TV about the importance of old-growth forests of Port Renfrew for the tourism economy, focused on the Avatar Grove and the Walbran Valley, and featuring Dan Hager, president of the local Chamber of Commerce, and the AFA's Ken Wu and TJ Watt.

See video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85ZbPbd0R2Q

Ground zero for Walbran

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The Delica stops along a narrow, twisting section of the Walbran Main just a few miles from the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park border. We scramble from the van for a view across a broad valley overlooking two strings of hills that lead into the distance. At the bottom of the valley is a confluence of rushing water, a distant waterfall visible as a thin twisting ribbon glistening white amid a landscape otherwise green.

It’s a deceiving green, as it hides the wealth within. A forest may seem just a forest, but TJ Watt, a campaigner for the Ancient Forest Alliance, points out the details.

“Second growth forest will look quite monotonous. The trees will typically be all the same height and generally the same shade of green, almost looking like a lawn, very uniform, whereas old-growth forests tend to look messy, to put it the simplest way.

“You have trees of varying heights so one will be sticking up higher than the other. Because of gaps in the canopy you’ll have these dark shadows that give the forest more of a 3D look to it. They often have more mosses or lichens so from a distance you can sometimes see those hanging off the tree branches. And also if there is a lot cedar there, then you often see the dead tops of the cedar trees sticking out; they look like white spires. That doesn’t necessarily mean the trees are dead, but sometimes the leader section of the tree has died off. Once you get used to seeing those, you can really tell the forests apart from a distance.”

What we’re looking at across this wide valley is a messy forest – the indication it is old-growth. In the valley bottom is Castle Grove, one of the finest remaining examples of ancient red cedar stands. It and the surrounding old growth on the lower slopes make up one of the largest intact chunks of endangered, unharvested forest remaining on Vancouver Island.

It’s a rare view. On Vancouver Island south of Barkley Sound, about 90 percent of the original forest has been logged, along with about 95 percent of the lowland old growth.

“What we’re really down to is the last remnants of the classic giants and it’s the best of the classic giants because it’s literally in the Carmanah-Walbran-San Juan-Gordon River, these four southern valleys where you get the very best growing conditions in the entire country. If you go north it gets colder, as you go east it gets drier,” says Ken Wu, a campaigner for the Ancient Forest Alliance.

What we’re looking at is a snapshot of what soon won’t exist. Eight cutblocks are proposed for the slopes surrounding Castle Grove, and one has been approved.

It’s what Ken and TJ are here to fight.

“It would turn that whole region into a Swiss cheese if they were approved and cut,” TJ says.

It’s a region already well sliced. Right behind us is a cleared slope of stumps, debris and encroaching scrub. That cutblock was logged in 1992, when Ken walked through the wreckage to come upon a 16-foot-wide stump.

“It was as wide as the Castle Giant, the biggest known tree in the Walbran. That area was really a gargantuan Jurassic Park kind of stand – it was really one of the most significant, grandest old-growth forests in the world, and now they’ve logged it.”

For TJ, as a new activist at the time, seeing that stump had a profound impact.

“It was one of the first moments I realized old-growth logging was not a thing of the past and these giant trees were still being cut down each and every day. To think this is still happening another 10 years later is disheartening, but makes me resolve to fight harder to keep it from happening any more.”

The fight in the Walbran is escalating and while Ken believes the first cutblock is almost certain to be logged, – unlike the others, it has received approval – he believes mounting public pressure could turn the tide in favour of preserving the remainder.

And the pressure is building.

The Ancient Forest Alliance spearheaded the drive to save nearby Avatar GroveÜ, an old-growth forest outside Port Renfrew. Ken credits the support of the Port Renfrew chamber in helping win that battle.

The support to save the Walbran is already much stronger – particularly as a host of conservation groups are now involved in the Walbran. But Ken believes it is the business support, not the environmental support, that will be tip the balance.

“The reason Avatar was protected was support from the Chamber of Commerce and the business community. That’s one of the key things we’ll be working on – the outreach to all the restaurants and B&Bs and lodges.”

If there’s a lesson learned from Avatar Grove, it is that conservation has a payback. The grove is widely accredited to a growth in tourism to the Port Renfrew region and is a key item of the region’s tourism menuÜ. Clearcuts, on the other hand, never make the must-see list.

A variety of petitions, protests and initiatives are planned by the various groups battling the logging, but another emerging element is a protest camp – at the Walbran Witness Camp, the same location for the camp in the early 1990s. That served as the base for the blockades that led in part to the inclusion of the Lower Walbran Valley into Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park. A spray-painted slogan, painted by a protestor while dangling over the river on a log, still clearly proclaims “Wilderness forever” on the bridge.

The park is populated full-time by only a small band of diehards, though the weekend population tends to swell. At the moment (November, 2015) no blockades are planned; the camp residents are only keeping an eye on the progress of the logging with one brief clash between protesters and policeÜ.

Trails criss-cross the area around the Witness Camp, many leading to the monster trees that can be found nearby. One is the Emerald Giant, and Ken offers a laugh as he sees the sign, proclaiming it “aka Mordor Tree.”

“I named it that back when Lord of the Rings was popular,” Wu says. “It seemed fitting because it looked like Mordor with the turrets for branches.”

He concedes the new name sounds nicer and is more applicable as the Giant is adjacent to the Emerald Pool, a stretch of river that almost glows its namesake colour (the pool is pictured on page 17). We stop to admire a thick patch of tiny mushrooms growing from an adjacent tree. It’s an area that possesses an unspeakable beauty, from the smallest detail to the largest giant spruce.

Previous ‘wars in the woods’ have garnered international attention, and many Canadians must wonder at the fuss. Yet’s it’s hard to believe those who would let the Walbran be logged would fail to be emotional at the bulldozing of the Serengeti or strip mining in the Grand Canyon. Wu sees no difference.

“If you think about where the natural wonders of the earth are, say the Grand Canyon in the U.S. or the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania, I’d argue that the coastal rainforests of Vancouver Island rank up among them. And the Carmanah Walbran is just too beautiful; I just can’t describe it in words.”

To help the war in the woods to save the Walbran, help with any of the initiatives by the supporting conservation groups: the Sierra Club of British Columbia, the Wilderness Committee, the Ancient Forest Alliance or the Friends of Carmanah/Walbran. For driving instructions, the Friends of Carmanah/Walbran website has detailed instructions.

Islands in the Sky: Chopping Ancient Walbran Valley Forest Spells Extinction for Treetop Species

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High in the trees that have been growing in the Walbran Valley on Vancouver Island for up to 1,000 years, unique colonies of insects and invertebrates are thriving.

Carpets of soil which develop in the massive branches of the old-growth trees contain a plethora of species not found anywhere else on Earth and, since 1995, University of Victoria entomologist Neville Winchester has climbed more than 2,000 trees to document and catalogue this life in the tree-tops.

“These ancient forests are a repository of biodiversity,” said Winchester, who has had more than a dozen beetle mites, aphids and flies named after him and who is giving a public talk this Friday at 6:30 p.m. at the University of Victoria.

Together with UVic graduate students, Winchester has conducted one of the most extensive canopy research projects in North America, using ropes to scale trees the equivalent of 18-storeys high in the Carmanah and Walbran valleys.

“Then I take my mom’s bulb planter and take a sample of the suspended soils, which can be up to 60 centimetres in depth,” he said.

Despite overwhelming scientific evidence of unique ecosystems, Winchester is fighting a battle he thought had been won two decades ago when massive protests and demonstrations — part of the ‘War in the Woods’ that marked the 1980s and 1990s in B.C. — erupted over plans to log Carmanah Walbran.

At that time, Winchester was already doing canopy research and, when the government of the day responded to overwhelming public opposition and created the Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park, taking in 16,450 hectares of the old growth forest, he believed the war was over.

But now, part of the Central Walbran, just outside the park boundary, is under threat.

“I have the feeling that ‘here we go again.’ The same issues that were present then have surfaced again. They have been simmering for 20 years,” said Winchester, who finds it difficult to believe that politicians cannot look at the evidence and ban old-growth logging in the area.

“It’s greed, ignorance and arrogance. The scientific evidence is out there and it shows that these areas and these species are essential to protect biodiversity,” he said.

“By taking these trees down or by causing disruption you are committing species to go extinct… . Who would feel good about species going extinct just because we have mismanaged a resource? That’s the bottom line.”

The province has granted Surrey-based Teal Jones Group a permit for a 3.2-hectare cutblock east of Carmanah Walbran Park.

The cutblock is in the 500-hectare Central Walbran where, unlike the valley further south which is tattered with cutblocks, there is contiguous old-growth.

“It’s where our forests reach their most magnificent proportions,” said Ken Wu of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“These are the classic giants. The biggest and the best — and some of the largest remaining tracts and finest old growth western red cedars are in areas such as Castle Grove, together with old-growth dependent species such as the Queen Charlotte goshawk and marbled murrelet,” Wu said, emphasizing the importance of these areas for tourism as well as biodiversity.

Business leaders in Port Renfrew have called on the B.C. government to immediately ban logging in the unprotected part of the Walbran Valley, saying tall tree tourism is now a multi-million dollar business and the highest value would come from stopping further logging of old growth trees.

At the heart of the problem is the original configuration of the park, said Torrance Coste of the Wilderness Committee.

A large chunk, surrounded by park and known colloquially as “The Bite,” was left without protection.

“It was a big concession to logging interests. When the park was laid down, there was no consensus or agreement from the environmental side,” Coste said.

Logging has already degraded old-growth on the south side of Walbran Creek, and environmentalists are not happy about Teal Jones plans for seven more cutblocks in that area, but the line in the sand is the approved cutblock on the north side of the river, said Coste, who wants to see the 486-hectare northern section of The Bite protected.

Protests started in the area in November, but, three weeks later, a court injunction restricted access and stopped protesters from interfering with logging operations.

On January 4, in a B.C. Supreme Court ruling, the injunction was extended until the end of March.

Coste said that, although he and the Wilderness Committee are named in the injunction, the role of the group has been to record and advocate, not participate in blockades.

However, he believes the injunction is heavy-handed and designed to discourage people from going into the Walbran Valley.

There is a great need for eyes on the ground and for British Columbians to let the province know that it is not acceptable to log some of the last low-elevation old-growth on southern Vancouver Island, he said.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations said in an e-mail that the ministry facilitated a meeting between the company and environmental groups in December to discuss how concerns could be addressed and another meeting is scheduled for next month.

The 3.2-hectare area that Teal Jones plans to log is part of a special resource management zone, which limits cutblock size to five hectares, and the company will use helicopter harvesting, meaning there will be no trails, roads or use of heavy equipment, the province said.

Conserving old growth and biodiversity are important parts of the province’s long-term resource management plans, said the spokesman.

“Of the 1.9 million hectares of Crown forest on Vancouver Island, 840,125 hectares are considered old growth, but only 313,000 hectares are available for timber harvesting,” the e-mail reponse read.

Coste remains hopeful that the province will have a change of heart.

“Nowhere else on Vancouver Island do we have the opportunity to protect such a large tract of contiguous old-growth,” he said.

“It’s an opportunity we absolutely can’t afford to miss.”

Winchester is hoping science will convince the government of the need for protection and he will publicly share findings from his years of research at a lecture Friday Jan.29, 6.30 p.m. at the University of Victoria Student Union Building Upper Lounge.

Admission is by donation with proceeds going to the Friends of Carmanah/Walbran campaign to protect the Central Walbran Ancient Forest.

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