clearcut

Caycuse Before & After Old-Growth Logging

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This is not a series I ever hoped to complete but the following are before and after images of giant ancient cedars cut in the Caycuse watershed in Ditidaht territory on southern Vancouver Island. Earlier this month I revisited a magnificent grove that I had explored and photographed earlier this year, only this time it was the stumps of those same trees that would be my focus. Gone were the vibrant flourishes of red, green, and gold. Instead, a bleak, grey landscape lay before, utterly unrecognizable from what I remembered. Heart wrenching as they are, I hope these images stand as stark example of what is still happening everyday across BC everyday and what needs to end now.

We need everyone to SPEAK UP!! Contact Premier John Horgan and demand that the BC NDP show they're serious about saving old-growth by immediately halting logging in the most endangered forests and allocating funding in Budget 2021 for Indigenous protected areas and economic alternatives to old-growth logging.

• Email John Horgan here: premier@gov.bc.ca or here: www.ancientforestalliance.org/send-a-message
• Phone him at: 250-387-1715

• CBC News: Conservationists demand fast action from B.C.'s new forestry minister on protection for old-growth trees
• The Guardian: Photography campaign shows the grim aftermath of logging in Canada's fragile forests
• The Narwhal: In photos: see old-growth go from stand to stump on B.C.’s Vancouver Island
• Outside Magazine: Forest Selfies Are Helping Save BC’s Old-Growth Trees
• Treehugger: Photos Raise Alarm Over Old-Growth Logging in British Columbia

Exposed: New Old-Growth Logging on Edinburgh Mt. Near Port Renfrew

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Below are images featuring recent old-growth logging on Edinburgh Mt. near Port Renfrew. It took a 17km round-trip hike up the steepest roads I've encountered on the island to access the area, which is on the mountainside above Big Lonely Doug. What we found were two old-growth clearcuts, totaling 34 hectares (almost 40 football fields) in size. Dozens of old-growth western redcedars - some of them 8 feet in diameter -, yellow cedar, western and mountain hemlocks, and very rare, old Douglas-firs (between 500 to 1000 years in age) have been logged. How much further will the BC government allow this industry to go? Plans for four new old-growth clearcuts, one approved and three pending approval, and an expanded road network are also underway. It would seem that no place is currently deemed too rare or important in the destructive race to log the island's last endangered old-growth forests before we have a chance to see them saved. Ecosystems that have taken millennia to form, erased in a blink of an eye, never to be seen again.

A giant old-growth western redcedar log in a Teal-Jones clearcut on Edinburgh Mt. near Port Renfrew - TFL 46.

Standing among three ancient cedar trees on the edge of new logging operations by Teal-Jones. Edinburgh Mountain is one of the largest contiguous tracts of largely unprotected old-growth forest left on southern Vancouver Island, along with the nearby contentious Central Walbran Valley. It is within the traditional territory of the Pacheedaht First Nation band.

Drone Video - Climbing Big Lonely Doug: Round 2

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Today I'm excited to have launched a new video which I filmed and edited featuring the Ancient Forest Alliance and Arboreal Collective's second climb up Big Lonely Doug, Canada's 2nd largest Douglas-fir tree! Doug has become the educational mascot of BC’s endangered old-growth forests - his massive size highlights their grandeur, while the dramatic contrast of the surrounding clearcut highlights the threat to them posed by industrial logging. The drone footage, captured using the DJI Phantom 3 Pro, of tree climbers (thanks to Matthew, Aaron, and Elliot!) in this sobering setting will help us raise the public awareness needed to pressure the BC government to protect what remains of the adjacent Eden Grove and endangered old-growth forests across British Columbia, and to ensure a sustainable second-growth forest industry instead.