Patagonia
July 23, 2021
As the old-growth logging crisis heats up in Canada, a photographer goes searching for trees to save them.
TJ Watt stands on a 12-foot-wide stump, a former old-growth Western red cedar, overlooking a recent clear cut in the Caycuse watershed on southern Vancouver Island. Photo: Jeremy Koreski
There are no trails in the old-growth coastal temperate rainforests of Canada’s southern Vancouver Island. As I follow TJ Watt through another grabby thicket of stink currant, I offer silent thanks that I’m not the one lugging the camera equipment. We plough through underbrush, wade across streams, climb over moss-covered boulders and fallen logs, and circumvent the trunks of massive trees. It takes us an hour to gain a single kilometer.
Watt moves with the dogged determination of a hunter. He doesn’t seem to tire. His purpose is to locate groves of old-growth trees—giants the size of grain silos that are hundreds or even thousands of years old—and photograph them in order to rally people to their defense through his nonprofit, Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA). He’s been building conservation campaigns this way for over a decade, nearly one-third of his life, but the stakes have suddenly gone up.
The latest science shows that old-growth coastal temperate rainforests are among the world’s best natural defenses against global warming, absorbing and storing even more carbon from the atmosphere than the Amazon tropical rainforest in South America. Yet logging companies in British Columbia continue to harvest old-growth trees, with no signs of stopping. Depending on the species, trees from this region will be turned into a variety of building materials ranging from airplane-frame components to roof shingles. Others will be made into furniture, cabinets and interior woodwork. Some will be sent to specialty mills to create components for musical instruments, like guitar soundboards. On southern Vancouver Island where Watt lives and works, 96 percent of the productive old-growth forests along the valley bottoms—where the largest trees grow—have already been logged. “Big trees are big money for the logging industry, but at a high cost to the environment,” Watt says.
In some ways, Watt is a relative newcomer to old-growth conservation efforts in British Columbia. In the ’90s, Vancouver Island was famously the epicenter of the “War in the Woods,” where mass civil disobedience arrests eventually led to the protection of Clayoquot Sound on the island’s west coast. In the last few months, hundreds of protestors have amassed at Fairy Creek in what is quickly becoming the biggest act of civil disobedience over logging in decades. Watt is taking a different approach to save these last groves: building support among diverse demographics and creating a clear, photogenic message that can ripple through the media. His vision is for the British Columbia government to implement science-based legislation that protects endangered old-growth forests across the province.
“You can’t win this one grove at a time” he says. “It has to be bigger.”
Watt didn’t know what an old-growth forest was until the age of 20. His father was among the first cold-water surfers on southern Vancouver Island, and Watt spent his youth watching waves and entering local skateboarding competitions. “I’m sure I’d seen old growth by that point in my life but just didn’t understand what I was looking at,” Watt says.
In 2005, he signed up for a public outing to the Walbran Valley, home to Canada’s most majestic red cedar forests, that was organized by the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria office. The trip opened his eyes to the grandeur of trees and their plight. “There were all these rivers and beautiful waterfalls and trees probably 16 feet in diameter, 4 or 5 meters wide,” Watt recalls, switching between metric and Imperial measurements in typical Canadian fashion. “To learn that they were at risk of being cut down just totally shocked me.”
Watt’s interest in photography started in high school when he began borrowing his mom’s camera. After graduation, he spent three months backpacking and photographing his way through Southeast Asia but wasn’t sure how to make a career out of it. He ended up back in his hometown working for his dad building houses. Once Watt started taking photos for the Wilderness Committee, he was inspired to enroll at the Western Academy of Photography. He completed the program in 2007.
Ken Wu, then the executive director of the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria office, remembers the day Watt walked into his office and volunteered to take photos. “He was this skateboarding hippie with dreadlocks down to his waist,” Wu recalls. “I looked through his photos and thought, yeah these are pretty good.” Wu initially sent Watt to photograph environmental demonstrations in the city, but it was soon clear that Watt’s skills and interests were stronger in the wild. “He has a tremendous sense of balance, which is really important out there—old-growth forests are among the most rugged landscapes in the world,” Wu says. Wu hired Watt on contract to explore old-growth groves and take photos for marketing materials and press releases. The two men would go on, in 2010, to cofound a new environmental nonprofit, Ancient Forest Alliance, devoted to protecting Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests.
“It just was a perfect fit,” says Watt. “I loved adventure, and I loved the outdoors. And maybe because I came from a skateboarding background the jumping around through the forest part felt like a fun game.”
“That’s a nurse log,” Watt says, pointing out a fallen tree with new saplings starting to grow out of it. I stop, marveling at how much old-growth trees give back to the ecosystem even in death. We’re traipsing through Avatar Grove, a stand of highly photogenic red cedar and Douglas fir that Watt first came across while tree hunting in Pacheedaht territory, in the Gordon River Valley not far from the hamlet of Port Renfrew. In 2012, he worked with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce to save these 50 hectares (about 124 acres) from being logged. AFA rallied volunteers to build boardwalks and viewing platforms for the trees, and in a stroke of marketing genius, they nicknamed the site Avatar Grove after the blockbuster film. Soon after, in the same region, Watt encountered a 230-foot-tall Douglas fir with a 39-foot circumference—the second-largest Douglas fir tree in Canada—standing alone in a recent clear-cut. Watt’s photos of “Big Lonely Doug” were heartbreaking and effective. Following countless news stories, Canadian journalist Harley Rustad wrote a book, Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees, in 2018. The BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development enacted permanent protection for the tree and 53 others identified by the University of British Columbia’s BC Big Tree Registry.
Port Renfrew, a former logging town, rebranded itself as Canada’s Tall Tree Capital. The results are encouraging. In non-pandemic years, local hotels and B and Bs reported a surge in demand between 75 and 100 percent each year since 2012. New businesses are opening and thriving, like Wild Renfrew, an ecotourism resort and outfitter, and Pacheedaht Pit Stop, the town’s first gas station in two decades. In a place where clear-cutting was once the only means of economic growth, residents now recognize that old-growth trees can provide just as much, if not more, value as part of a tourism-based economy. “When you cut down an old-growth tree, it’s a one-time payout,” Watt says as we climb stairs built into a fern-covered slope to reach the viewing platform for what’s called Canada’s gnarliest tree. “But this,” he says, gesturing toward the whimsical tree, a nearly 200-foot-tall cedar with big knotty burls covering its trunk, “this can provide a sustainable economy for the town indefinitely.”
As affirming as AFA’s early success with Avatar Grove was for Watt, it was also sobering. The feat took two years of nonstop effort for Watt and Wu, who led dozens of hikes to the site and generated hundereds of news articles calling for its protection—plus what Watt calls “a heroic effort” by the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and local business leaders. “It would be impossible to replicate this for every place,” Watt says as we walk back to his van. “This is one grove out of thousands that are being cut across the province at any given time. It just happened to be one we were able to showcase.”
On a sunny summer day in 2020, Watt sits at his computer at the AFA office, a modest window-lined room in the Central Building in downtown Victoria. Through iMapBC, the government’s free web-mapping application, Watt can access publicly available geographic data like pending cut blocks, active cut blocks and protected Old Growth Management Areas (places such as Avatar Grove). The application enables him to overlay the data onto satellite images, providing Watt the same bird’s-eye view as the logging industry.
We’re looking at a zoomed-in section of southern Vancouver Island’s Nahmint Valley, near the small town of Port Alberni. Watt’s been analyzing satellite images for so long that he can tell the type of forest by the shape and contour of the treetops. Second growth has a lighter green coloring and appears uniform, almost like a lawn. Old growth is darker green, scruffy and rough, with conical shapes and dark shadows that Watt says indicate the tops of very tall, very old trees. “Anything outlined in green is a planned BC Timber Sales cut block,” he says as he scrolls around on the map so I can see the two dozen or so planned cut blocks marring the valley. “If you put them all together, we’re talking more than 600 football fields of old-growth trees that are intended to be logged.”
Watt first visited the cut blocks of Nahmint Valley in 2018, to photograph the old-growth logging in progress. His photos went viral. One of them, of his colleague Andrea standing on a patio-sized cedar stump with its massive trunk lying on the ground behind her, appeared in Reddit’s World News section. The photo, with the headline, “Canada’s Largest Trees Cut Down in Nahmint Valley,” ran alongside stories on Brexit and President Trump.
The public outcry was fierce, a crescendo to the momentum the AFA had been building for years. Around the same time, the BC Chamber of Commerce (representing 36,000 businesses) called on the provincial government to improve old-growth protection for the purpose of tourism, using Port Renfrew as an example. In response, the government of British Columbia appointed an independent panel to undertake public engagement on old growth and provide a report to the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. The report was expected to drastically alter the way British Columbia manages old-growth trees.
Watt pulls up a link to the 72-page report, “A New Future for Old Forests,” published on April 30, 2020. One of the panel’s 14 recommendations is to immediately defer development (translation: logging) in old-growth forests until the province can improve the way it manages them. Watt hopes the report will end the logging of endangered old growth in British Columbia once and for all—the top-down protection he’s been fighting for. “It’s no longer just environmentalists calling for this change,” he says. “It includes all kinds of non-traditional allies. It’s businesses and unions and scientists and faith groups and outdoor recreationalists.”
But a year later, Watt, Wu and all those who’d hoped for positive change are still waiting. The BC government, despite claiming full commitment to implementing all 14 of the report’s recommendations, is moving at what Watt calls “a snail’s pace.” Meanwhile, industrial logging continues to clear-cut old growth on Vancouver Island and beyond. Which means Watt is still out there with his camera.
Watt knows that Canada will lose many of the groves he photographed—no matter how ancient or charismatic the trees. Logging is just too profitable for the forestry industry, and without a new business model or government support, there’s little incentive for them to change. Ten years in, Watt says it doesn’t get any easier. He recently returned to a favorite find in the Caycuse River watershed—a monumental stand of red cedars likely 1,000-years-old—to find the entire forest clear-cut. The experience was devastating. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone,” Watt says. “Second-growth forests are logged every 50 to 80 years, never to become old growth again.” Intellectually, he knows his role isn’t to save every tree—it’s to give voice to the trees and use his photography to motivate people to get and pressure elected officials to enact greater protection for old-growth forests. That’s ultimately Watt’s (and AFA’s) goal: science-based legislation that protects old growth from the top down and a shift to a sustainable, value added second-growth forest industry instead. But emotionally, it’s tough. “I think for somebody whose greatest love is old-growth trees and forests, I have the best job in the world and the worst job in the world,” Watt says.
When we last spoke, on June 2, 2021, he was fresh off an ancient tree hunt in Fairy Creek Valley, which is adjacent to Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew. Fairy Creek is the last unprotected old-growth valley in southern Vancouver Island that’s still intact. But it’s hanging by a string. At this very minute, logging giant Teal-Jones is bulldozing the roads to access the 12.8 hectares (almost 32 acres) of mostly old growth that it plans to harvest within the Fairy Creek watershed. Environmental activists are on-site, chaining themselves to anything they can, occupying trees and staging road blockades. As of early June 2021, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) has arrested 185 activists. Watt is trying a new technique—aerial photography. He took his photos of Fairy Creek by helicopter. He hopes to convey the grandeur of this singular river valley by showing it in its entirety, much the way a bald eagle sees it.
Watt’s dreadlocks may be gone, and his heart has been broken by this fight too many times, but he still jumps at the chance to document the lives of the world’s most awe-inspiring trees.
Join us and the AFA to demand that the BC government:
1. Work with Indigenous governments to immediately halt logging in BC’s most at-risk old-growth forests, as recommended by the independent panel.
2. Implement all of the Old Growth Strategic Review panel’s recommendations within the proposed three-year timeline.
3. Allocate funding to support Indigenous-led protected areas, land-use planning, and economic alternatives to old-growth logging.
4. Create a provincial land acquisition fund to purchase and protect endangered ecosystems on private lands.
5. Develop a strategy to support the transition to a sustainable, value-added, second-growth forest sector.
6. Enact legislation that places ecosystem integrity, biodiversity, and ecosystem services over timber values.
Act Now
Read the original article
Thank you to our recent business supporters!
/in Thank YouA big shout out to the following groups supporting the AFA’s ancient forest campaign:
For their August fundraiser, M!LA Plant Based in Vancouver is donating $1 from each sale of two menu features: the Stand By Me cocktail and Spring Pea Tart
Anthex and collaborators organized a digital music fundraiser inspired by the majestic Avatar Grove while bringing awareness to BC’s endangered ancient forests: https://avatargrovealbum.com
MAiiZ Nixtamal is donating 16% from tortilla sales throughout August as part of their community fundraising efforts.
Cove Continuity Advisors for supporting the AFA as part of their 1% for the Planet commitment.
And, Cork it Wine Making for donating $5 from every wine kit sold during a recent promotion.
Thank you again to each of you! We appreciate your generosity
Federal Liberals and NDP make election promises to help fund protection of old-growth forests
/in AnnouncementsOn August 21st, 2021, the federal Liberal Party made an election commitment to establish a $50 million BC Old Growth Nature Fund and develop a nature agreement with the province of British Columbia to protect more of BC’s old-growth forests and expand protected areas.
The Liberals’ $50 million pledge is part of the $2.3 billion allocated in this year’s federal budget to expand protected areas across Canada over the next five years, which, among other programs, includes $340 million for Indigenous Protected Areas and Guardians Programs and $377 million for the protection of endangered species habitats.
Two days later, while on the campaign trail, federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh pledged $500 million toward Indigenous-led stewardship programs to protect Canada’s lands, waters, and forests – including old-growth.
These funding commitments come at a critical time, as the last remnants of at-risk ancient forest continue to be liquidated across BC, British Columbians grow increasingly outraged by the lack of government action to protect at-risk forest ecosystems, and as police enforcement of Teal Jones’s injunction at the Fairy Creek blockades in Pacheedaht territory on Vancouver Island becomes increasingly violent.
For years, the AFA, the environmental community, scientists, First Nations leaders including the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, and the BC and federal Green Parties have been calling for significant funding to support First Nations-led old-growth conservation in BC, help communities and workers transition away from destructive old-growth logging, and create sustainable, conservation-based economies.
While it’s unknown at this stage how much of the NDP’s promised $500 million will go to protecting old-growth forests in BC, the Liberals’ $50 million commitment doesn’t go far enough.
But these funding pledges represent a start, which must be leveraged to access more federal funding from the incoming Canadian government, and must be matched – and exceeded – by the BC government, philanthropists, and the private sector to create approximately $600 million for old-growth protection.
Specifically, this funding must go to supporting:
The Ancient Forest Alliance is calling on the BC NDP to commit significant provincial funds in order to deliver on their promise to implement the Old Growth Panel’s 14 recommendations before it’s too late for remaining at-risk old-growth.
All eyes are on BC Premier John Horgan – especially now that the federal NDP is stepping up to the plate with potential funding – to see whether he’ll keep his old-growth promises or condemn BC’s remaining ancient forest ecosystems to the chainsaw.
Photos: Lower Caycuse River
/in Photo GalleryThese ‘before’ photos were captured last week in the Lower Caycuse River in Ditidaht territory. Teal-Jones has plans to log 31 hectares of mature and old forest, virtually the last remaining unlogged remnants along the river.
Scattered throughout this forest are ancient, giant western redcedar and Sitka spruce trees slated for destruction if the pending cutblock applications are approved by the BC NDP. Despite promising a paradigm shift to protect endangered old-growth forests, the BC government is still delaying action, defending the status quo, and have failed to commit any substantial funding to support First Nations-led old-growth conservation.
Send a message to BC government decision-makers now to demand swift action to save these forests before it’s too late.
The Ancient Tree Hunter
/in News CoveragePatagonia
July 23, 2021
As the old-growth logging crisis heats up in Canada, a photographer goes searching for trees to save them.
TJ Watt stands on a 12-foot-wide stump, a former old-growth Western red cedar, overlooking a recent clear cut in the Caycuse watershed on southern Vancouver Island. Photo: Jeremy Koreski
There are no trails in the old-growth coastal temperate rainforests of Canada’s southern Vancouver Island. As I follow TJ Watt through another grabby thicket of stink currant, I offer silent thanks that I’m not the one lugging the camera equipment. We plough through underbrush, wade across streams, climb over moss-covered boulders and fallen logs, and circumvent the trunks of massive trees. It takes us an hour to gain a single kilometer.
Watt moves with the dogged determination of a hunter. He doesn’t seem to tire. His purpose is to locate groves of old-growth trees—giants the size of grain silos that are hundreds or even thousands of years old—and photograph them in order to rally people to their defense through his nonprofit, Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA). He’s been building conservation campaigns this way for over a decade, nearly one-third of his life, but the stakes have suddenly gone up.
The latest science shows that old-growth coastal temperate rainforests are among the world’s best natural defenses against global warming, absorbing and storing even more carbon from the atmosphere than the Amazon tropical rainforest in South America. Yet logging companies in British Columbia continue to harvest old-growth trees, with no signs of stopping. Depending on the species, trees from this region will be turned into a variety of building materials ranging from airplane-frame components to roof shingles. Others will be made into furniture, cabinets and interior woodwork. Some will be sent to specialty mills to create components for musical instruments, like guitar soundboards. On southern Vancouver Island where Watt lives and works, 96 percent of the productive old-growth forests along the valley bottoms—where the largest trees grow—have already been logged. “Big trees are big money for the logging industry, but at a high cost to the environment,” Watt says.
In some ways, Watt is a relative newcomer to old-growth conservation efforts in British Columbia. In the ’90s, Vancouver Island was famously the epicenter of the “War in the Woods,” where mass civil disobedience arrests eventually led to the protection of Clayoquot Sound on the island’s west coast. In the last few months, hundreds of protestors have amassed at Fairy Creek in what is quickly becoming the biggest act of civil disobedience over logging in decades. Watt is taking a different approach to save these last groves: building support among diverse demographics and creating a clear, photogenic message that can ripple through the media. His vision is for the British Columbia government to implement science-based legislation that protects endangered old-growth forests across the province.
“You can’t win this one grove at a time” he says. “It has to be bigger.”
Watt didn’t know what an old-growth forest was until the age of 20. His father was among the first cold-water surfers on southern Vancouver Island, and Watt spent his youth watching waves and entering local skateboarding competitions. “I’m sure I’d seen old growth by that point in my life but just didn’t understand what I was looking at,” Watt says.
In 2005, he signed up for a public outing to the Walbran Valley, home to Canada’s most majestic red cedar forests, that was organized by the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria office. The trip opened his eyes to the grandeur of trees and their plight. “There were all these rivers and beautiful waterfalls and trees probably 16 feet in diameter, 4 or 5 meters wide,” Watt recalls, switching between metric and Imperial measurements in typical Canadian fashion. “To learn that they were at risk of being cut down just totally shocked me.”
Watt’s interest in photography started in high school when he began borrowing his mom’s camera. After graduation, he spent three months backpacking and photographing his way through Southeast Asia but wasn’t sure how to make a career out of it. He ended up back in his hometown working for his dad building houses. Once Watt started taking photos for the Wilderness Committee, he was inspired to enroll at the Western Academy of Photography. He completed the program in 2007.
Ken Wu, then the executive director of the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria office, remembers the day Watt walked into his office and volunteered to take photos. “He was this skateboarding hippie with dreadlocks down to his waist,” Wu recalls. “I looked through his photos and thought, yeah these are pretty good.” Wu initially sent Watt to photograph environmental demonstrations in the city, but it was soon clear that Watt’s skills and interests were stronger in the wild. “He has a tremendous sense of balance, which is really important out there—old-growth forests are among the most rugged landscapes in the world,” Wu says. Wu hired Watt on contract to explore old-growth groves and take photos for marketing materials and press releases. The two men would go on, in 2010, to cofound a new environmental nonprofit, Ancient Forest Alliance, devoted to protecting Vancouver Island’s old-growth forests.
“It just was a perfect fit,” says Watt. “I loved adventure, and I loved the outdoors. And maybe because I came from a skateboarding background the jumping around through the forest part felt like a fun game.”
“That’s a nurse log,” Watt says, pointing out a fallen tree with new saplings starting to grow out of it. I stop, marveling at how much old-growth trees give back to the ecosystem even in death. We’re traipsing through Avatar Grove, a stand of highly photogenic red cedar and Douglas fir that Watt first came across while tree hunting in Pacheedaht territory, in the Gordon River Valley not far from the hamlet of Port Renfrew. In 2012, he worked with the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce to save these 50 hectares (about 124 acres) from being logged. AFA rallied volunteers to build boardwalks and viewing platforms for the trees, and in a stroke of marketing genius, they nicknamed the site Avatar Grove after the blockbuster film. Soon after, in the same region, Watt encountered a 230-foot-tall Douglas fir with a 39-foot circumference—the second-largest Douglas fir tree in Canada—standing alone in a recent clear-cut. Watt’s photos of “Big Lonely Doug” were heartbreaking and effective. Following countless news stories, Canadian journalist Harley Rustad wrote a book, Big Lonely Doug: The Story of One of Canada’s Last Great Trees, in 2018. The BC Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development enacted permanent protection for the tree and 53 others identified by the University of British Columbia’s BC Big Tree Registry.
Port Renfrew, a former logging town, rebranded itself as Canada’s Tall Tree Capital. The results are encouraging. In non-pandemic years, local hotels and B and Bs reported a surge in demand between 75 and 100 percent each year since 2012. New businesses are opening and thriving, like Wild Renfrew, an ecotourism resort and outfitter, and Pacheedaht Pit Stop, the town’s first gas station in two decades. In a place where clear-cutting was once the only means of economic growth, residents now recognize that old-growth trees can provide just as much, if not more, value as part of a tourism-based economy. “When you cut down an old-growth tree, it’s a one-time payout,” Watt says as we climb stairs built into a fern-covered slope to reach the viewing platform for what’s called Canada’s gnarliest tree. “But this,” he says, gesturing toward the whimsical tree, a nearly 200-foot-tall cedar with big knotty burls covering its trunk, “this can provide a sustainable economy for the town indefinitely.”
As affirming as AFA’s early success with Avatar Grove was for Watt, it was also sobering. The feat took two years of nonstop effort for Watt and Wu, who led dozens of hikes to the site and generated hundereds of news articles calling for its protection—plus what Watt calls “a heroic effort” by the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce and local business leaders. “It would be impossible to replicate this for every place,” Watt says as we walk back to his van. “This is one grove out of thousands that are being cut across the province at any given time. It just happened to be one we were able to showcase.”
On a sunny summer day in 2020, Watt sits at his computer at the AFA office, a modest window-lined room in the Central Building in downtown Victoria. Through iMapBC, the government’s free web-mapping application, Watt can access publicly available geographic data like pending cut blocks, active cut blocks and protected Old Growth Management Areas (places such as Avatar Grove). The application enables him to overlay the data onto satellite images, providing Watt the same bird’s-eye view as the logging industry.
We’re looking at a zoomed-in section of southern Vancouver Island’s Nahmint Valley, near the small town of Port Alberni. Watt’s been analyzing satellite images for so long that he can tell the type of forest by the shape and contour of the treetops. Second growth has a lighter green coloring and appears uniform, almost like a lawn. Old growth is darker green, scruffy and rough, with conical shapes and dark shadows that Watt says indicate the tops of very tall, very old trees. “Anything outlined in green is a planned BC Timber Sales cut block,” he says as he scrolls around on the map so I can see the two dozen or so planned cut blocks marring the valley. “If you put them all together, we’re talking more than 600 football fields of old-growth trees that are intended to be logged.”
Watt first visited the cut blocks of Nahmint Valley in 2018, to photograph the old-growth logging in progress. His photos went viral. One of them, of his colleague Andrea standing on a patio-sized cedar stump with its massive trunk lying on the ground behind her, appeared in Reddit’s World News section. The photo, with the headline, “Canada’s Largest Trees Cut Down in Nahmint Valley,” ran alongside stories on Brexit and President Trump.
The public outcry was fierce, a crescendo to the momentum the AFA had been building for years. Around the same time, the BC Chamber of Commerce (representing 36,000 businesses) called on the provincial government to improve old-growth protection for the purpose of tourism, using Port Renfrew as an example. In response, the government of British Columbia appointed an independent panel to undertake public engagement on old growth and provide a report to the Minister of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development. The report was expected to drastically alter the way British Columbia manages old-growth trees.
Watt pulls up a link to the 72-page report, “A New Future for Old Forests,” published on April 30, 2020. One of the panel’s 14 recommendations is to immediately defer development (translation: logging) in old-growth forests until the province can improve the way it manages them. Watt hopes the report will end the logging of endangered old growth in British Columbia once and for all—the top-down protection he’s been fighting for. “It’s no longer just environmentalists calling for this change,” he says. “It includes all kinds of non-traditional allies. It’s businesses and unions and scientists and faith groups and outdoor recreationalists.”
But a year later, Watt, Wu and all those who’d hoped for positive change are still waiting. The BC government, despite claiming full commitment to implementing all 14 of the report’s recommendations, is moving at what Watt calls “a snail’s pace.” Meanwhile, industrial logging continues to clear-cut old growth on Vancouver Island and beyond. Which means Watt is still out there with his camera.
Watt knows that Canada will lose many of the groves he photographed—no matter how ancient or charismatic the trees. Logging is just too profitable for the forestry industry, and without a new business model or government support, there’s little incentive for them to change. Ten years in, Watt says it doesn’t get any easier. He recently returned to a favorite find in the Caycuse River watershed—a monumental stand of red cedars likely 1,000-years-old—to find the entire forest clear-cut. The experience was devastating. “Once they’re gone, they’re gone,” Watt says. “Second-growth forests are logged every 50 to 80 years, never to become old growth again.” Intellectually, he knows his role isn’t to save every tree—it’s to give voice to the trees and use his photography to motivate people to get and pressure elected officials to enact greater protection for old-growth forests. That’s ultimately Watt’s (and AFA’s) goal: science-based legislation that protects old growth from the top down and a shift to a sustainable, value added second-growth forest industry instead. But emotionally, it’s tough. “I think for somebody whose greatest love is old-growth trees and forests, I have the best job in the world and the worst job in the world,” Watt says.
When we last spoke, on June 2, 2021, he was fresh off an ancient tree hunt in Fairy Creek Valley, which is adjacent to Avatar Grove near Port Renfrew. Fairy Creek is the last unprotected old-growth valley in southern Vancouver Island that’s still intact. But it’s hanging by a string. At this very minute, logging giant Teal-Jones is bulldozing the roads to access the 12.8 hectares (almost 32 acres) of mostly old growth that it plans to harvest within the Fairy Creek watershed. Environmental activists are on-site, chaining themselves to anything they can, occupying trees and staging road blockades. As of early June 2021, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) has arrested 185 activists. Watt is trying a new technique—aerial photography. He took his photos of Fairy Creek by helicopter. He hopes to convey the grandeur of this singular river valley by showing it in its entirety, much the way a bald eagle sees it.
Watt’s dreadlocks may be gone, and his heart has been broken by this fight too many times, but he still jumps at the chance to document the lives of the world’s most awe-inspiring trees.
Join us and the AFA to demand that the BC government:
1. Work with Indigenous governments to immediately halt logging in BC’s most at-risk old-growth forests, as recommended by the independent panel.
2. Implement all of the Old Growth Strategic Review panel’s recommendations within the proposed three-year timeline.
3. Allocate funding to support Indigenous-led protected areas, land-use planning, and economic alternatives to old-growth logging.
4. Create a provincial land acquisition fund to purchase and protect endangered ecosystems on private lands.
5. Develop a strategy to support the transition to a sustainable, value-added, second-growth forest sector.
6. Enact legislation that places ecosystem integrity, biodiversity, and ecosystem services over timber values.
Act Now
Read the original article
Union of BC Indian Chiefs passes a new resolution endorsing Protect Our Elder Trees Declaration
/in AnnouncementsThe Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC) has passed a resolution endorsing the Protect Our Elder Trees Declaration, which aims to unite First Nations around the need to protect ancient forests in BC. The declaration calls on the province to immediately halt logging in at-risk old-growth forests, implement the Old Growth Panel’s 14 recommendations, and advance Indigenous-led old-growth conservation.
The resolution comes on the heels of BC’s record-breaking heatwave and in the midst of intense wildfires, worsening climate change impacts, and mounting pressure on the province to address the destructive mismanagement and overharvesting of BC’s forests.
“The Protect Our Elder Trees Declaration describes the critical relationship First Nations have with old growth forests and strengthens a sustainable, First Nations-led approach to old growth conservation that supports our ancestral laws and responsibilities.” – UBCIC president Grand Chief Stewart Phillip.
Read the full press release
Green coalition challenges certification claims that Canada’s forestry products are sustainable
/in News CoverageCanada’s National Observer
July 21, 2021
The certification of wood products from logging operations — including in B.C.’s old-growth forests such as the Caycuse watershed (above) — as sustainable is misleading, say complainants pushing the Consumer Bureau to investigate. Photo by TJ Watt
The fact clear-cutting at-risk ancient forests continues apace in British Columbia indicates Canadian forestry certification standards assuring consumers lumber products are sustainable are a mockery and need to be investigated, says a coalition of environmentalists.
Six individuals backed by a trio of environmental organizations have formally requested the federal Competition Bureau to investigate the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) for labelling Canada’s forestry goods sustainable as false and misleading.
Under the CSA’s current certification regime, the logging of B.C. forests such as hotly contested regions of old-growth on southwest Vancouver Island would be deemed sustainable — including unprotected areas of the Fairy Creek watershed, the epicentre of activist logging blockades for close to a year.
“What serious standards organization would certify the logging of the remaining three per cent of (B.C.’s) most valuable big tree forests as sustainable?” asked Vicky Husband, one of the complaint signatories and a renowned environmentalist.
“This certification is meaningless, designed to fool consumers into thinking they’re doing the right thing by buying these products.”
The investigation request to the Competition Bureau on behalf of the signatories was filed by Ecojustice, a non-profit environmental law firm, with the support of environmental groups Stand.earth and the Ancient Forest Alliance.
The complainants also want the CSA to pay a $10-million fine towards conservation projects should the bureau — responsible for the administration and enforcement of the federal Competition Act — deem the CSA’s forestry sustainable labelling is false.
The coalition also recommended the CSA be ordered to publicly retract certification claims of forestry sustainability if the case is verified.
Canada’s weak environmental laws give logging companies control over the forests, and allow the industry the discretion to shape a certification process that allows it to flog destructive logging products in domestic and international markets as sustainable, said Devon Page, executive director of Ecojustice.
“Of course, it makes no sense that industry sets the certification standard,” Page said.
“What serious standards organization would certify the logging of the remaining three per cent of (B.C.’s) most valuable big tree forests as sustainable?” said environmentalist Vicky Husband, who wants the Canadian Standards Association investigated.
And weaknesses in the CSA’s forest certification system make it incapable of guaranteeing that forest management is sustainable, he added.
Nobody — not the CSA, the federal or provincial governments, or the logging companies themselves — is required to verify that the parameters of the sustainable certification are met in practice on the ground, he added.
CSA’s certification scheme includes language on conserving biological diversity, the recognition of environmental, economic, social or cultural values, and input from the public, but it’s a matter of form over substance, Page said.
“You could call it a process standard, not a performance standard,” he said. “CSA uses sustainable forest management language throughout their certification scheme, but at the end of day, they don’t require it.
“They give industry the discretion to determine whether they will do anything.”
The complaint establishes how the CSA’s claims are false and materially misleading based on a review of the wording of the association’s standards and in the context of old-growth logging in British Columbia’s forests, said Page.
While there have been few changes to the status quo logging practice, sustainable forestry certification systems have expanded rapidly in Canada, Page said.
Canada has 13 million hectares of forest certified to the CSA standard, two million of which are in B.C. And Canada has more certified forest area than any other country in the world, mostly to industry-led systems, according to the complaint.
Governments see forest certification as a means to reduce their role in forest industry oversight, pointing to independent third-party audits as evidence of compliance with regulations, the coalition stated.
It’s unacceptable that the continued logging of ancient forests is deemed sustainable, said Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, and another individual in the complaint.
The practice also infringes on Indigenous rights and title as First Nations seek to sustainably protect, manage, and steward the forests they hold jurisdiction over, Phillip said.
“In these times of renewed focus on the need to protect old-growth forests and their crucial importance for biodiversity and the climate, it’s clear that this logging is not remotely sustainable and is at odds with B.C.’s commitment to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act.”
A spokesperson from the CSA was unavailable for immediate comment before publication deadline.
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Thank you from the AFA!
/in Thank YouThank you to the following groups for supporting the AFA:
Art for Ancient Trees and Merit Motion Pictures have teamed up to offer a digital screening of the documentary “Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees”. Watch it online from July 28-July 31, $10 per ticket. In addition to this viewing, you can also support the AFA and local artists by purchasing a piece of art online. Learn more at https://watch.showandtell.film/watch/art-for-ancient-trees and https://www.artforancienttrees.com/
April Lavine and Amelie Drewitz are publishing a children’s book, “Fairy Flurries” to increase awareness about protecting old-growth forests and to highlight the AFA’s ancient forest campaign.
Ziptrek Eco Tours and staff for choosing the AFA for a workplace donation and for donating 10% of proceeds of Ziptrek merchandise for the month of July.
To the tree planters of Brinkman & Associates Reforestation in Fernie, BC, for donating a day’s worth of trees to the AFA and to their family and friends for their additional contributions.
Laurie Jones-Canta is donating proceeds from a handmade bark carving on display at the Blackberry Gift shop in Port Moody Arts Centre: www.lauriejc.com
We sincerely appreciate your time, creativity, and generosity.
“Sustainable” forestry claims are false and misleading: citizen complaint
/in Media ReleaseCanadian citizens call for an investigation into Canadian Standards Association’s Sustainable Forest Management Standard, say it misleads buyers of forest products
VANCOUVER/UNCEDED xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (MUSQUEAM), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (SQUAMISH) AND səlilwətaɬ (TSLEIL-WAUTUTH) TERRITORIES – As forestry companies continue to log endangered old-growth forests in British Columbia, six Canadians today requested the federal Competition Bureau to investigate the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) for promoting its forestry certification standard as an assurance of sustainability.
The “Sustainable Forest Management” standard (CSA SFM) certifies and promotes wood products from logging operations – including in BC’s old-growth forests – as sustainable, which the citizens call patently false and misleading.
The signatories on the complaint come from diverse backgrounds and vocations, but all have had their lives and livelihoods impacted by unsustainable forestry practices in Canada. They are foresters, scientists, First Nations leaders, tourism operators, environmentalists, and municipal leaders, with first-hand knowledge of CSA-certified logging.
“CSA is certifying the logging of our last ancient forests and calling it sustainable, and this is only possible because of its incredibly weak standards. This is completely unacceptable and will not only lead to the extinction of our ancient forests, but infringements and violations of Indigenous Title and Rights as First Nations seek to sustainably protect, manage, and steward the forests they hold jurisdiction over. In these times of renewed focus on the need to protect old-growth forests and their crucial importance for biodiversity and the climate, it’s clear that this logging is not remotely sustainable and is at odds with B.C.’s commitment to implement the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act,” says Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs.
CSA has certified as “sustainable” the logging of some of BC’s most contentious old-growth forests, including Fairy Creek and the surrounding tenure on southwest Vancouver Island, the site of Canada’s longest-running logging blockade.
“What serious standards organization would certify the logging of the remaining three per cent of our most valuable, big tree forests as “sustainable”? This certification is meaningless, designed to fool consumers into thinking they’re doing the right thing by buying these products,” says environmentalist and conservation advocate Vicky Husband, another signatory.
Ecojustice, a non-profit environmental law firm, filed the request for an investigation with the federal Competition Bureau at the request of the signatories, supported by Stand.earth and Ancient Forest Alliance. The complainants seek an investigation and, if the Bureau finds the CSA’s sustainability claims are indeed false, recommend the organization be required to publicly retract the sustainability claims, and pay a $10 million fine, which could go towards supporting conservation projects such as the Indigenous Leadership Initiative for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas.
The CSA, most often associated with consumer product safety and quality control, ventured into certifying logging practices in Canada in 1996 at the request of provincial and national forest industry associations. Canada currently has 13 million hectares of forest certified to the CSA standard, two million of which are in BC. Canada has more certified forest area than any other country in the world, mostly to industry-led systems.
The complaint sets out how CSA certified companies are using the term “sustainable” to promote wood products, even though the CSA Standard does not require logging practices to meet any definition of “sustainable” nor “sustainable forest management.”
“Canada’s weak forestry laws give logging companies control over the forests, and they justify this by saying that the logging is ‘certified sustainable.’ This complaint clearly demonstrates that’s not true,” says Devon Page, Executive Director at Ecojustice. “Weaknesses in the CSA’s forest certification system make it incapable of guaranteeing that forest management is sustainable, resulting in destructive logging practices being sold as sustainable to consumers.”
Click here to see the inquiry submission.
About
Ecojustice: Ecojustice uses the power of the law to defend nature, combat climate change, and fight for a healthy environment. Its strategic, public interest lawsuits and advocacy lead to precedent-setting court decisions and law and policy that deliver lasting solutions to Canada’s most urgent environmental problems. As Canada’s largest environmental law charity, Ecojustice operates offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and Halifax.
Stand.earth: Stand is an advocacy organization that brings people together to demand that corporations and governments put people and the environment first.
Ancient Forest Alliance: The Ancient Forest Alliance is a non-profit organization working to protect BC’s endangered old-growth forests and to ensure sustainable, second-growth forestry jobs.
For media inquiries:
Thais Freitas, communications specialist at Ecojustice
tfreitas@ecojustice.ca, 1-800-926-7744 ext. 277
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs
250-490-5314
Tegan Hansen, forest campaigner at Stand
tegan@stand.earth
TJ Watt, campaigner and photographer at Ancient Forest Alliance
tj@15.222.255.145
Andrea Inness, campaigner-executive team at Ancient Forest Alliance
andrea@15.222.255.145
Profiles of Complainants
Anthony Britneff, RPF (Ret), worked for the B.C. Forest Service for 40 years, holding senior professional positions in inventory, silviculture and forest health. Now, he is devoted to replacing the status quo in B.C.’s forestry with a new paradigm based on the principles of conservation of soil, water, biodiversity, and carbon to address the dual crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.
Grand Chief Stewart Phillip has served as the President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs for 23 years. During his presidency, and his previous 24 years on the Penticton Indian Band Council, Phillip has dedicated himself to advancing and safeguarding inherent Indigenous Title and Rights, including in the context of forest management.
Vicky Husband, Conservation advocate, is one of British Columbia’s best-known environmentalists. She has long fought for the protection of the ancient rainforests of BC, including Clayoquot Sound, and played a lead role in establishing Canada’s first grizzly bear sanctuary in the Khutzeymateen Valley. Her work has earned her numerous honours, including the Order of Canada, Order of BC, and a United Nations Global 500 Award for environmental achievement.
Dr Andy MacKinnon is a University of Victoria professor in Botany, following a 30-year career as an ecologist in the BC Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resources. He is the co-author of six guidebooks to BC plants, and is a councillor in Metchosin on Vancouver Island.
Ben Geselbracht is a Nanaimo City Councillor, and currently co-chairs the Environment Committee. He also serves as a Director of the Nanaimo Regional District, Director-at-Large for the Union of BC municipalities; and on the Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities Climate Leadership Strategy Steering Committee.
Natasha Baert is the owner of Tofino Sea Kayaking, a business operated by her family in Clayoquot Sound for more than 30 years. She has been involved in conservation efforts throughout this time, and supports the work of local First Nations to establish a Tribal Park. Her family played a major role in building the local non-extractive economy, and can speak to the value of old growth forests in light of this.
Background information for media
The complaint
Desired Outcome
FAQ
What is forest certification?
Who funds the CSA?
How much certified forest is there in Canada? How much of that is CSA?
Old-growth in contentious Fairy Creek region could be worth more standing than logged
/in News CoverageCanada’s National Observer
June 30th, 2021
Ancient forests at the centre of a dispute around old-growth logging in B.C. are worth more standing in terms of tourism and ecosystem services, a new study finds. Photo by TJ Watt.
A new economic study shows ancient trees in the contentious Fairy Creek region on southern Vancouver Island are worth considerably more standing to nearby communities than if they were cut down.
And it confirms investments and efforts by the former forestry hub of Port Renfrew to rebrand itself as an ecotourism hot spot are right on track, business leaders say.
Protecting all the old-growth forests in the study area near Port Renfrew could result in an additional $40 million in net economic benefits over the next 100 years compared to logging as usual, said Andrea Inness of the Ancient Forest Alliance, which commissioned the independent research.
The cost-benefit analysis indicates carbon storage or sequestration, recreation, tourism, coho salmon habitat, non-timber forest products like floral greenery and mushrooms, along with research or education opportunities are worth more than timber extraction alone, Inness said.
“The findings are significant because they tell us that old-growth forests are not being managed in the broader public’s best interest,” Inness said.
“We need to see the province start making decisions around old-growth management that are in the best interest of all British Columbians — and not just the forest sector.”
The two-and-a-half-year study focused on the province’s Arrowsmith Timber Supply area in Pacheedaht and Ditidaht First Nations’ territories within a 35-kilometre radius of Port Renfrew, said Inness.
As only a portion of harvestable forests near Port Renfrew were analyzed, the study actually underestimates the overall value of standing old-growth, she said.
Ancient forests in the Port Renfrew region have been at the centre of old-growth logging blockades by Rainforest Flying Squad (RFS) activists since August.
Both the Pacheedaht and Ditidaht have asked the protesters to leave the region so they can develop a regional integrated resource management plan, but protesters have remained, with close to 350 people arrested as of Monday.
And the NDP government is under increasing public pressure at home and abroad to take more action to protect remaining at-risk, old-growth forests throughout the province.
The new study reflects the economic changes that Port Renfrew is experiencing on the ground, said Karl Ablack, president of the Port Renfrew Chamber of Commerce.
If all old-growth forests examined were protected, tourism itself would nearly make up for losses associated with timber extraction by adding an equivalent number of jobs and covering 66 per cent of the losses to GDP, the study said.
The economy of Port Renfrew, formerly a thriving resource community until the 1970s and ’80s, stalled with severe declines in forestry and the commercial fishing industry, Ablack said.
But the small community has revived itself over the last 20 to 25 years, first as a result of recreational fishing, and has since diversified into other ecotourism activities, including big tree tourism, he said.
In 2016, the community’s chamber put forth a resolution to the BC Chamber to support the protection of old-growth forests in areas where these forests had greater tourism value left standing. The resolution was unanimously adopted, noted Ablack.
Selling itself as the Tall Tree Capital of Canada, people flock from around the globe to visit the gnarly giants in the now-protected Avatar Grove, or Big Lonely Doug, a massive Douglas fir that stands alone in a clear-cut.
A strict visitor count has yet to be done, but approximately 5,000 cars a day travel to Port Renfrew during the height of summer via the Pacific Marine Circle Route — a loop on southern Vancouver Island featuring the region’s wild beaches and majestic forests, Ablack said.
“And there are days at Avatar Grove or at Lonely Doug where you can have 200 cars lined up on the side of the road,” he said.
“The numbers in the recent study have been very important to help quantify some of that data.”
Tourism is a core industry across the province, and virtually every community relies on revenue and employment generated from visitors, especially as pandemic travel restrictions ease, said Walt Judas, CEO of the Tourism Industry Association of BC (TIABC), in a statement.
International tourists in particular are keen to experience B.C.’s natural beauty not found anywhere else, he said.
“With much existing and potential tourism value to be gained from old-growth, it makes economic sense to keep what’s left standing,” Judas added.
Beyond a focus on tourism revenue, traditional economic analyses typically don’t tally up the valuable ecosystem services old-growth forests provide for free, and which are increasingly important as climate change intensifies, Inness said.
“If you only consider short-term job creation, revenues and impacts to GDP, the economics aren’t telling the whole story,” Inness said, adding old rainforests store large amounts of carbon above and below ground and release carbon slowly as they decay.
And harvesting ancient groves sends more carbon into the atmosphere than can be compensated for by tree-planting or creating secondary wood products, she said.
Carbon storage is the biggest economic benefit to justify leaving old-growth standing and to reduce the massive financial burdens climate change is having, she added.
If old-growth in the study region was left alone, forest carbon emissions would be reduced by 569,250 tonnes, she said.
“This fact seems particularly timely, given B.C. is hitting record high temperatures,” Inness said.
Though the Pacheedahts recently asserted their right to determine how forest resources should be used in their territory, the nation is also heavily invested in ecotourism — owning a gas station, general store, and a resort, as well as recently securing $1 million in COVID-19 relief funding to expand and upgrade its campsite.
Mike Hicks, director for the Juan de Fuca Electoral Area, which includes Port Renfrew, said logging will likely remain part of the region’s economy no matter what decisions are eventually made around old-growth.
Even if some old-growth logging continues, Hicks believes Port Renfrew’s economy is diversified enough to weather any limited damage to the community’s brand.
The area still boasts world-class recreational fishing, numerous beaches, surfing at Jordan River, excellent accommodations and restaurants, and Port Renfrew is still an entry point for the iconic West Coast Trail, he said.
And now with the availability of satellite internet services and the province’s recent commitment to extend cell service along Highway 14 between Sooke and Port Renfrew, the town has everything it needs to consolidate its reputation as a destination location, Hicks said.
“There is no stopping Port Renfrew,” Hicks said.
“It’s not going to live or die on old-growth logging because it’s got so much going for it.”
But keeping old-growth in the region has greater inherent value economically, Ablack said, adding second- or third-growth logging is likely to continue.
“Do I see logging going away? Absolutely not,” Ablack said.
“Do we need to redirect it to better serve sustainability? Certainly, we can look at that.”
[Editor’s Note: This story was updated Friday, July 2 to clarify the study examined harvestable old-growth in the provincial timber supply area within 35 kilometres of Port Renfrew – not all harvestable forests in that radius.]
Read the original article
Thank you to our generous business supporters!
/in Thank YouWe’re humbled by the support we receive from the local community, including the following businesses for organizing independent fundraisers in support of the ancient forest campaign:
Patagonia Vancouver for donating proceeds from hemp masks.
The organizers of the Ancient Trees 30-Day Art Challenge & Fundraiser. Each day until the end of May, a unique piece of nature-themed art was available for purchase with 50% of the proceeds designated for the AFA.
Spirit Roots Company teamed up with Mountain Moon Studio to raise awareness about BC’s ancient forests and raise funds for the AFA.
Windfall Carvings is donating proceeds from handmade artwork made from reclaimed wood, available at the Old School House Art Centre in Qualicum Beach. Visit their Facebook page to learn more.
MW Motor Werke for their generous monthly donations
The staff at Later for choosing the AFA for a workplace prize donation
Heart & Hands Health Collective for their generous support
Sarah Pike Pottery for donating partial proceeds from recent pottery sales
Heart & Hands Health Collective for their generous support.
To the organizers of the Ancient Trees 30-Day Art Challenge & Fundraiser. Unique nature-themed art is available for purchase with 50% of the proceeds designated for the AFA.
and Tantalus Design for generously donating year after year
Thank you again for your support! If you or your business would like to organize a fundraiser to support the AFA, please contact us at info@staging.ancientforestalliance.org to learn more.