Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland Primal Forests Almost Gone

Pre-1800s

The Ancient Forest Alliance released a recent survey of old growth forests on Vancouver Island and the southwest mainland.  The before and after maps show the pre-European primal forest, and what is left 165 years later.

The most productive temperate coastal rainforest in the world reduced to clear cuts and tree farms in less than two centuries.

What is left of some of the biggest trees the planet has ever seen continue to be cut, both 'legally' and illegally. While what the government and logging companies have been doing may be technically legal, it is certainly not moral.

I don't think we have the right to destroy an entire ecosystem. I believe the word for it is ecocide, and as far as I'm concerned, all the "cides" are pretty horrible and should be avoided at all costs.

What was left in 2012 

The statistics are sobering and indicate the necessity of ending old growth logging in British Columbia immediately. The following numbers tell the sad tale of resource depletion in our forests.


Old-Growth (OG) Forest Statistics - SOUTHERN COAST (ie. Vancouver Island and SW Mainland)
From: Ancient Forest Alliance

Original Total OG: 5.5 million hectares
Low Productivity OG: 2.2 million hectares
Original Productive OG: 3.3 million hectares
Remaining Productive OG: 860,000 hectares (26% of original)
In Parks - Productive OG: 200,000 hectares (6% of original)
In Parks and OGMA's - Productive OG: 260,000 hectares (8% of original)


Valley Bottom*, Highest Productivity Old-Growth - SOUTHERN COAST (ie. Vancouver Island and SW Mainland)

Original: 360,000 hectares
Remaining: 31,000 hectares (9% of original)
In Parks: 9,400 hectares (2.6% of original)
In Parks and OGMA's: 11,700 hectares (3.2% or original)

* Low, Flat Terrain Under 300 meters elevation, under 17% slope

The primal forests on Vancouver Island and the lower mainland are just about gone. Along with them went an entire ecosystem that is unlikely to return as long as profit is the only guide in forestry decision making.

The magnificent old growth forests have been industrialized. Although theses areas remain rugged, they are not really wilderness any more. The second and third and fourth growth trees in the plantations will be laid down on a 60 year cycle in perpetuity by companies with headquarters in New York, where all the profits and benefits will fall.

In these parts it takes about 250 years for a productive valley bottom forest to acquire the characteristics of an old growth regime. Barring fire (rare in the coastal forest) or human greed, such forests can continue for thousands of years.

The primal forest here began after the last glaciers retreated about 10,000 years ago. It survived in all its majesty until the 1800s when Europeans arrived.

Can we save the little bits that remain?


Visit the Ancient Forest Alliance website to donate, write a letter, and/or sign their petition.

Devonian Park Ancient Douglas-fir

A gentle trail leads to this fine specimen in Devonian Regional Park, Metchosin

Devonian Regional Park in Metchosin contains one tree in particular that makes me think of the primordial forest. Standing next to its wrinkly girth my mind is spring-boarded into the past.

During the Devonian period (417-354 million years ago), the North American and European land masses were situated at the equator. It is fitting that during the 'age of fish' that these land areas were mostly covered in a shallow sea.

However, by the end of the Devonian, the land was populated by ferns, horsetails, and the first seed plants appeared which produced the first trees and forests. In 2005 the world's oldest known tree species was identified as Wattieza. 

Gilboa, New York has the distinction of having fossils that represent the world's earliest forest. It was the "Devonian Explosion" and trees began to dominate the landscape.

The trail continues to a cobble beach on Parry Bay

Devonian Regional Park is a nature sanctuary situated in an area that eventually became covered in one of the planet's greatest forests.

While the tree featured in this post may 'only' be 500 - 800 years old, it is a link to the beginning of the Pacific Coastal Forest which started 10,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

Looking even further back, the forest in Devonian Park is the result of millions of years of evolution linking it to the Devonian Period and the initial colonization of the land by plants.

Visit and feel millions of years of nature's tinkering evidenced in every fern, horsetail, seed plant, and tree. 

A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization

5000 years of the Wood Age

John Perlin's, "A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization," is book of epic proportions. This monumental story does justice to both the beauty, and the importance of trees. In it, Perlin weaves together a 5000 year history of the Wood Age, as well as the history of greed, selfishness, and hubris that accompanied it.

The availability of wood has affected civilization from the start. There is some question as to whether civilization would even be possible without trees. Perlin would say it is not. Tragically, the planet's forests would have been enough to meet everyone's needs, within environmental limits.

Unfortunately, civilization has never recognized limits of any kind. Repeated waves of forest over-exploitation, followed by erosion and loss of soil, then heavy silting of waterways and harbours, caused cycles of unbelievable wealth and luxury, followed by environmental collapse and abandonment. Perlin records the peaks and troughs from Mesopotamia to 18th century America.

Even 5000 years ago, the Mesopotamian writers of Gilgamesh knew that once civilization gained access to the deep, dark, primeval forest, trees would never be safe again. This proved to be true as Gilgamesh entered the cedar forest, "abode of the gods", and started the war on forests which has continued to this very day. Mesopotamian cedar forests were replaced with agriculture, which was followed by reduced soil productivity, famine, and the desertification that we are familiar with today.

Forest Journey describes how forests across the ages were transformed into fuel for industry, from smelting to glass-making. Vast amounts of wood were also required for firing pottery and making bricks. Seemingly endless global forests were the source of timber for shipbuilding, which for centuries was the main pathway to wealth and power. For this reason, repeated efforts to curb forest exploitation (starting 5000 years ago) were met with threats and death.

In the Wood Age trees were the primary energy resource and building material, and empires crumbled as their sources of timber disappeared. Parallels for us as deforestation continues unabated, and as we reach Peak Oil simultaneously, are obvious.

A Forest Journey is a good read with a good message - our forests are critically important, and as we destroy them, we destroy ourselves.

"The American Colossus was fiercely intent on appropriating and exploiting the riches of the richest continents - grasping with both hands, reaping where he had not sown, wasting what he had thought would last forever. At long last, however, the reaction began, and lovers of their country, bewailing its baldness, are now crying aloud, 'Save what is left of the forests!'" - Gifford Pinchot, 1890

Forest Primeval: The natural history of an ancient forest

What is the next best thing to hanging out in the trees? Reading about trees, of course. In between excursions to the forest I like to absorb as much information about trees as I can. And there is a lot of great information out there.

I just finished reading Chris Maser's fantastic book Forest Primeval: The Natural History of an Ancient Forest. In it he describes a small patch of forest in the Pacific Northwest as it grows from its birth (after a lightning strike fire) in 988 to the beautiful old growth forest that he has known and loved since childhood.

Over the thousand years of this small grove, Maser describes many of the creatures and processes that work together to create one of the most diverse and majestic ecosystems in the world.

The author knows the forest in intricate detail, and we are introduced to a long list of characters, each one of them performing a small, but necessary task in the web of life.

Threatened Avatar Grove big trees

From fungus in the soil that grows on the roots of Douglas-fir, to voles, cougar, wildflowers and massive 900 year old trees, the author makes the small grove he is describing leap off the page with a green fecundity. But catastrophic changes are coming to the ancient grove.

Along with describing the characters and changes in the forest, the book also describes the characters and changes in the human world. In the 17th century, as the small grove grows into old age, one thing is certain - invaders are coming, and they view the earth and its resources quite differently than the native people that lived with the forest for about as long as it existed.

Of his own people, Chief Seattle said, "Every part of all this soil is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove has been hollowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished." He warned that what we do to the earth, we do to ourselves.

The prescient Chief had the newcomers pegged, and was saddened by what he saw. "We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers' graves, and his children's birthright is forgotten."

Forest Primeval is written equally as much from the viewpoints of a poet, an artist, a philosopher, and a scientist. Maser knows the ancient forest and its denizens well, and he has a deep respect and love for each and every one of them.

He invites us to consider, and says, "As we journey through the forest of a thousand years, keep in mind that as the forest is growing and changing, so is humanity, and they will ultimately converge at a time and in a way that will forever change them both."

Maser concludes by asking whether we can overcome our inherited myth of human superiority over Nature in time to halt the destruction, and begin the healing.

We haven't been able to so far, and time is running out. The primeval forest is almost gone.