Poaching British Columbia's Last Big Trees

Stump of stolen cedar in Carmanah/Walbran Park
Photo by: Torrance Coste, Times Colonist

A recent poaching incident in Vancouver Island's remote Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park highlights what is at stake in our forests as we continue to consume the last of British Columbia's big trees. In the most recent publicized incident, poachers cut and hauled out of the remote coastal park, a large (and valuable) 800 year old, 3 meter wide, Western red cedar.

Unfortunately it was not an uncommon incident. The poaching of BC's last big trees is big business, and a daily event, for both legal and illegal old growth tree liquidators.

No one can poach a tree like the government of BC. That is why they won't take the unofficial poaching seriously. If they did they would have to admit that they condone the cutting of trees exactly like this one as a matter of doing business.

Just outside the park boundaries of Carmanah/Walbran and Cathedral Grove, magnificent thousand year old trees like the ones in the parks, share the old growth forests. Yet these equally magnificent unprotected trees are being quietly converted by the logging industry into 'value-added' building materials.

When the last of the accessible big trees are gone, the government and their industry 'partners' will be coming for the trees in the parks (something already proposed for the interior of BC), just like the 'illegal' poachers.

End ALL poaching of our last old growth trees now, official and otherwise.