The Week – We’ve Still Got Wood

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Exciting news for eco lovers and the Ancient Forest Alliance this week: Vancouver Island is still home to Canada’s largest tree — at least for now.

To celebrate Parks Day this past week, the AFA captured a YouTube video of Canada’s largest tree, a western red cedar named the Cheewhat Giant, growing in a remote location near Cheewhat Lake, north of Port Renfrew and west of Lake Cowichan. The tree remains the country’s biggest with a trunk diametre over six metres (20 feet), a height of 56 metres (182 feet) and listing 450 cubic metres in timber volume — or 450 regular telephone poles worth of wood. The tree remains preserved within the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, which was created in 1971. Not all of B.C.’s flora has as successful a story, however. The video clip features new clear cuts and giant stumps of red cedar trees, some adjacent to the reserve that were logged as recently as this year.

“Future generations will look back at the majority of B.C.’s politicians who still sanction the elimination of our last endangered old-growth forests … and see them as lacking vision, compassion and a spine,” says TJ Watt, AFA co-founder. “We desperately need more politicians with courage and wisdom to step forward.”

See the clip “Canada’s Largest Tree — the Cheewhat Cedar” at https://youtu.be/Xw2Im8nSOdg

 

[Original Monday Magazinearticle no longer available]