Springtime in the luscious Mossy Maple Grove west of Lake Cowichan in Hul’q’umi'num territory. This rare and spectacular grove is home to super shaggy old-growth bigleaf maple trees adorned with thick mats of hanging moss. Bigleaf maple trees have the unique ability to tap into nutrient-rich soil that develops over time in the canopy through aerial roots that sprout from their branches.

The forest is home to wildlife such as Roosevelt-elk, cougars, wolves, bears, deer, and more, while diverse plants carpet the forest floor. Due to its fantasy-like appearance, the grove has also been nicknamed ‘Fangorn Forest’ after the forest in The Lord of the Rings.

The Ancient Forest Alliance first drew attention to the need to protect this grove, which is found on private lands, in 2011. Most recently, the forest was deferred from logging for at least 25 years through logging company Mosaic’s BigCoast Forest Climate Initiative - a good step forward.

Now it’s up to the BC government to create a Provincial Land Acquisition Fund to help purchase and protect these scarce and valuable old-growth forests found on private lands in perpetuity.

An ancient cedar tree lies prone amidst the destruction of an old-growth clearcut with myself on the trunk for scale. Likely 700+ years old, this tree and scores of others like it would have been standing just before we arrived that day.

However, in 2022, Western Forest Products began clearcutting 25 hectares (roughly 50 football fields) from an incredible old-growth cedar grove in Quatsino territory on northwestern Vancouver Island, BC.

I was floored by the sheer number of monumental redcedars cut down, some nearly 10 feet (3 m) wide. It’s the most shocking example of industrial old-growth logging I’ve witnessed since the logging in the Caycuse and Nahmint Valleys.

Despite being home to scores of giant trees, this particular grove — and likely hundreds of others — was not included in the BC government’s independent old-growth science panel, the Technical Advisory Panel’s (TAP) original logging deferral recommendations due to the forest being incorrectly labeled as 210 years old in the province’s forest inventory database (40 years younger than the province’s 250-year-old threshold for being considered old-growth on the coast).

The TAP made clear recommendations to the BC government that on-the-ground assessments should be used to identify and defer big-tree old-growth forests that were missed in their preliminary analysis. So far, despite requests from us and others, that has not been happening.

As the BC government moves to protect 30% of BC by 2030, it’s imperative that they set ecosystem-based targets based on science that prioritize the most at-risk old-growth forests, such as those with big trees, for protection.

They must also commit significant provincial funding and conjoin it with major federal funds to support sustainable economic alternatives for First Nations linked to deferrals and new protected areas.

Otherwise, irreplaceable ancient forests like this one will continue to fall.

This photo series was created with support from the Trebek Initiative.

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