In the Summer of 2023, Ancient Forest Alliance members TJ Watt and Ian Thomas documented road construction, giant stumps from recently felled trees, and ancient forests flagged for imminent logging in a remote area of Quatsino Sound where Western Forest Products has approval to cut 36.5 hectares (roughly 68 football fields) worth of endangered old-growth forest. This threatened area, located on Crown/public lands within Tree Farm Licence 6, is just a few kilometers away from where the pair captured shocking images and videos of old-growth logging in 2022, sparking outrage and garnering international media coverage.
The logging of this forest highlights the urgent need for the BC government to proactively identify likely thousands of hectares of at-risk old-growth forests that were missed during the deferral process due to forest inventory errors and therefore left open for logging and ensure the addition of these forests for deferral where identified by scientists, citizens, and industry. Immediate provincial funding to help enable Indigenous-led logging deferrals and protected areas initiatives linked to sustainable economic alternatives is still urgently needed from the BC government.
Home to scores of big trees, many of which are likely 500+ years old, this particular grove — and surely hundreds of others — was not included in Technical Advisory Panel’s original deferral recommendations due to the forest being incorrectly labelled as 212 years old in the province’s forest inventory database (38 years younger than the province’s 250-year-old threshold for being considered old-growth on the coast and to be included in deferral mapping).
Much of the forest that was standing when these photos were captured is now sadly on the ground. See our media release for further details.
Speak up! Send-a-message to the BC government calling for the protection of endangered old-growth forests.
