Big Trees Matter

Big trees are miracles of nature, and should be protected and preserved as such.

In the past we cut gigantic, century (or eons) old trees, sometimes for firewood. We didn't know as much back then as we know now, but how could a person even back then not have reverence for such a tree upon meeting it for the first time?

Who among us, upon seeing one of these incredible beings for the first time, would think, "I want to cut that down"? Even back then it seems odd to a tree enthusiast like myself.

One would think that such miracles of nature would instead be celebrated, honoured, revered, protected and preserved for the miracles that they are. 

Some people and cultures had that approach back then, and still do. In the west we don't (with "we" being non-indigenous residents), or at least we don't enough to stop their destruction once and for all. 

We continue to fell the largest ancients that remain. 

Some is still used for firewood, while old growth fibre ends up supplying ass wipe to the pandemically panicked. 

Who among us today, with what we know about our depleted forests globally, thinks that razing the little old growth that is left benefits people and the planet?

The big trees that are left, wherever they exist on Earth, deserve to be protected and preserved in perpetuity. 

Isn't that what most of us (that don't profit from their destruction) really want?

Big Trees Matter.

Driftwood On The Move

This 30 meter long cedar washed up on a local beach after a winter storm

Winter on the west coast means lot of rain, high water flows in rivers, and the highest tides of the year. That means storm tossed driftwood is on the move. Winter beachcombers are pleasantly surprised by the appearance of new woody debris on local beaches.

Often these drift logs, given up by the fury of the ocean goddesses, become the target of salvage operations. While recovered Douglas-fir is may be used for lumber or firewood, more valuable Western red-cedar, or Yellow-cedar, is valued for shakes, shingles, furniture, and structural wood.

30 meters of usable, if somewhat inaccessible, cedar 

Drift logs on beaches may be accessible to water, or land-based wood recovery efforts. I am amazed by the lengths the professionals will go to salvage beautiful chunks of wood from wherever they come to rest.

Shortly after the cedar washed up, the bole was cut and removed from the beach

I have seen some small scale log salvaging operations near my home on Billings Spit. Drift logs often show up in the Sooke River estuary after being washed down the Sooke River during high water flow events that scour the river and wash out fallen debris. Occasionally really big debris washes down to the sea.

Large drift log in the Sooke River estuary

I have watched small boats carrying salvagers with large chain saws approach drift logs in the Sooke River estuary in order to lay claim to prize woody resources. At high tide they move in, and the chain saw is used to cut the root section off so the log cab be slowly hauled away for processing.

Detail - cedar is very rot-resistant, and is highly sought after. Large cedars are becoming rarer.

Some of the drift logs on beaches are large enough to withstand not only the salvagers, but also the onslaught of years of winter weather. These semi permanent drift logs become lasting features on the otherwise ever-changing beach landscape. Until a really BIG storm comes along.

The storms give it up, the storms take it away, unless the beachcombers get to it first.

The biggest log in the background will only be
moved by the mother of all storms

I recently saw the results of a log salvage operation about 3 km up the Sooke River where a large cedar fell partially into the water. The middle section of the log had been sawed out, leaving the root section on the bank, and the top stranded alone in the middle of the river.

The saw operator had to work suspended over the water for both cuts - I would have liked to witness the skill this must have demanded.

Salvaging a red cedar from the Sooke River

The only way to get the log out is to float it down the river during high water, or high tide (preferably both) then wrangle it, tether it to a boat, and haul it somewhere it could be hoisted from the water.

Big trees and big storms mean big drift logs on the move. It is all part of the beauty of a west coast winter.

Nanaimo Mill Workers Lose To WFP

The  first sawmill in BC, 1848. Sawmill is on the right,
and a grist mill is shown on the other side of Millstream, near Victoria.

British Columbia's old growth forests are not the only victims of years of mayhem in the woods - forestry workers are suffering as well.

Based on data from the BC Ministry of Forests and Range, from 1991 - 2000, the average rate of closure was 3 mills per year. From 2001 - 2009 it rose to 6 mill closures per year. The closures account for the loss of thousands of jobs, and takes millions of dollars out of forestry-based communities.

The following article is a recent example of how forestry workers are suffering from bad policies and corporations looking out for #1 and the bottom line.

Mill workers lose court battle

Labour arbitrator sides with WFP in longstanding fight

By Robert Barron, Daily News April 16, 2012

Hundreds of laid-off workers at Nanaimo's two Western Forest products' sawmills won't receive severance packages after labour arbitrator David McPhillips recently ruled in favour in the forest company in a longstanding dispute.

Darrel Wong, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1-1937 which represents workers at the two mills, said the union sees no point in appealing McPhillips' decision even though it feels many of its arguments in the case are still valid.

WFP spokeswoman MacKenzie Leine said she's not surprised by the arbitrator's decision.

The union began court action against WFP over their concerns that the forest company may have reopened its two sawmills in Nanaimo with skeleton crews in 2010 to avoid having to pay severance packages, totalling more than $6 million, that the company would be mandated to pay if the mills remained closed.

Read full article here.

With old growth forests being rapidly depleted, raw log shipments, lack of government oversight in the woods, and logging companies using questionable business practices to avoid their responsibility to workers, it is hard to see how the citizens of this province are benefiting from the harvesting of our forestry resources.

Multi-Century Cedars: Canada's Largest, Oldest Trees

Bark of an ancient Avatar Grove Cedar

Less than 100 km, as the eagle flies, from Sooke lives Canada's largest known tree, the Cheewhat Lake Cedar.

This Western red cedar (Thuja plicata - thoo-yuh ply-kay-tuh) is 18.34 m/60.2 ft in circumference and 55.5 m/182 ft in height.

It is the second largest known tree of its type on the planet.

The largest cedar is the Quinault Lake Cedar on the Olympic Peninsula, over the Juan de Fuca Strait from Sooke.

After a hike to the Cheewhat Lake Cedar, tree pilgrims are often left feeling speechless. It is difficult to achieve a sense of proportion around such a massive living thing. The Cheewhat Cedar is often described as "a wall of wood." This wall is old, with estimates ranging upwards of 2500 years, and still growing.

Vancouver Island is in the middle of Western red cedar range. The island is prime territory for these slow growing, long lived, droopy, fragrant trees. Fittingly, the Western red cedar is British Columbia's official tree.

Cheewhat Cedar, Pacific Rim Park

In practice, however, the liquidation of this sacred tree continues. British Columbia's business-friendly government is aiding in the demise of its own provincial trees.

In 2007 the B.C. Liberals adopted a new Coastal Forest Action Plan.

The plan reported that "since 1995, the proportion of old-growth harvested on the Coast has declined from 95 per cent of the harvest to 71 per cent."

The plan attributed the decline to the increase in the amount of old growth protection, but is more likely due to the dwindling supply of old growth trees. With only about 25% of original old growth forests left on Vancouver Island, it will not be long before the cathedral-like ancient groves are gone.


Sooke River Ancient Cedars

The Sooke River watershed contains several cedars that are prime specimens. The river valley also contains huge Douglas fir, Sitka spruce, Hemlock, and Fir, but the largest diameter trees in the area are Western red cedars.

They are the oldest, too. In ideal conditions a cedar can live for thousands of years, making it the oldest living tree in the British Columbia rain forest. The oldest trees in the Sooke River valley are easily many hundreds of years old, perhaps close to one thousand.

Sooke River valley Western red cedar

One of the indicators of old growth forests (over 250 years) is an abundance of large diameter woody debris. It includes large fallen logs as well as standing dead trees (snags), and provides habitat and nutrients for the forest ecosystem. Fallen logs also act as "nurse logs", providing nutrients for new trees. Small patches of this type, such as in small ravines, remain along the Sooke River.



A cedar snag can continue to stand for a century after it dies. Once it falls it can lay on the forest floor for centuries more before it fully decays. Because of this rot resistance, cedar is the most valuable, sought after wood of the Pacific forest.

Big tree hunters like Robert Van Pelt think that record breaking cedars still exist on Vancouver Island, although opportunities to identify them are "dwindling." Some may be in unexplored protected areas, and some certainly exist in privately held lands.

All along the river one can also see evidence of logging. Early hand loggers used springboards to raise themselves up the trunk of trees so that they were above the thickest part of the bole (the main stem of the tree). This left tall stumps.







"Cedar Rats", or shake bolt cutters, work in old cut blocks harvesting the large cedar stumps left behind from previous logging. On a good show the cedar stumps can be more valuable than the second growth forest around them.





The massive fluted trunks of ancient cedars are so spectacular that it is easy to forget to look up to admire the equally impressive crowns of these trees. Over hundreds of years they take on a droopy, gnarled, weathered look. The reddish-grey bark is stressed wood at its best, and the crown is a dense confusion of droopy light-seeking branches and scaly leaves.



A 250 year old cedar can be anywhere from .61-2.44 m/2-8 ft in diameter. Much larger trees exist here. The biggest trees, though, aren't until you get to the valley bottom. There you will find very large, very old Western red cedars, accompanied by luxurious mounds of moss and towering ferns.



The atmosphere and towering columns give one the sense of being in a natural cathedral. It is hard, even for professional foresters, to age a tree, but these are Brobdingnagian boles.



Currently, Sooke does not have a tree protection bylaw, even though many tourists come to the area specifically to see big trees.

Who would travel here to see someones siding, roofing, or deck?

Outside of Sooke and up the coast there are very few protected areas and/or parks. Muir Creek represents one choice old growth location for protection and park status. There are nice Western red cedars in the Muir Creek watershed.

That Vancouver Island has any old growth left is something to celebrate. We have protected only 6% of Vancouver Island's productive forest lands in our parks system.

If we are not careful British Columbia will soon have to change its provincial tree from the Western red cedar to the Red alder. Red alder is the "healer tree" of the forest as it fixes nitrogen in the soil and speeds forest regeneration. It is the first tree to grow in clear cuts, and B.C. has plenty of those.

What Happened To The Really Big Trees?

Not so long ago, the Pacific coast was the Land of Humongous Ancient Trees, from the Queen Charlotte Islands to California. They were among the largest trees to ever grace the planet, and they covered all of Vancouver Island. The elders of this forest community were thousands of years old. As a whole, the forest had existed since the retreat of the most recent glaciers, about 10 000 years ago. For many thousands of these years indigenous peoples utilized the trees and other plants of the forest. Even now culturally modified trees can be seen standing in forested areas. Such trees are protected in British Columbia.

When Manuel Quimper sailed into Sooke Bay in 1790 and claimed the area for Spain, he found the Coast Salish T'Sou-ke people living between the ancient forest and the sea. Spain was not in the practice of establishing settlements in North America, but simply viewing the new land entitled them to it. The dripping, impenetrable forest must have been an awe-inspiring, yet threatening, sight to sailors viewing the wall of towering green from the safety of their ships. At the time the forest appeared endless and therefore inexhaustable.

Juan Perez navigated the Spanish Navy ship Santiago into Nootka Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island in 1774. The indigenous Nuu-chah-nulth people came out to greet the Santiago in large dugout canoes made from giant Western red cedar trees. This early contact started the marine fur trade for otter pelts. 235 years later the otters are only now starting to return.

Captain James Cook sailed into Nootka Sound in 1778 representing Britain. He and his crew landed to cut replacement masts from the primeval forest, and thus became the first known Europeans to set foot in what is now British Columbia. Then came Quimper in his little boat to claim the area for Spain. However, before long the entire north Pacific coast would fall into British hands, which would open the door to the Hudson Bay Company, now one of the oldest corporate enterprises in the world (1670-present).

The Hudson Bay Company was granted the colony of Vancouver Island in 1849 and was charged with populating it with settlers from the U.K. At the time a trip around Cape Horn could take up to 6 grueling months. It was the end of First Nations' isolation, and the beginning of the end for the area's ancient forests of giant trees.




In 1848 the HBC built its first saw mill at Mill Falls in what is now Langford. The area was logged to feed the mill. The hill and creek at this location are named after this early mill. This mill was closed in 1855 when a more powerful stream powered mill at Craigflower Farm replaced it. Mill Hill Park now covers the area of the original logging operation and mill.

In the Sooke region, Scottish settler John Muir built the first steam-powered sawmill on Vancouver Island. By 1860 Muir's Victoria lumberyard was shipping more wood world-wide than any other in the Pacific Northwest. Muir and Co. shipped Vancouver Island wood to help rebuild San Francisco after its devastating fires.

Muir and Co. owned the largest private fleet of ships in the north pacific. John Muir is considered by many to be the father of the B.C. forest industry. Today at the Sooke Region Museum a visitor can see Moss Cottage which was built out of trees milled at Muir's sawmill. Moss cottage is one of the oldest standing buildings on Vancouver Island, built in 1869 (by now it must be 80% moss and 20% wood).

Victoria is western Canada's oldest city, and in the 1850's became the centre of the logging industry on Vancouver Island. At this time logging was mostly restricted to exploiting the huge trees close to the tidewater, for ease of transportation. Preferred trees were tall Douglas fir, Western red cedar, and Sitka spruce.

Although the milling and delivery of these giant trees was big business, the actual logging operations were small. One did not need a large amount of capital to get at trees that could be felled directly into waterways using springboards, double-headed axes, and cross-cut saws. The oldest trees were huge and the tools were hand powered so the forest yielded slowly to the hand logger. On some of the larger trees that were taken, dynamite was required to topple the Karnakian giants to the forest floor. Some trees were simply too large to cut, transport, or mill so were left behind.

Up until 1905 British-controlled areas around the Pacific, and as far away as South Africa, were the largest markets. After 1905 the United States became the largest customer for Canadian forest products. Since the White pine forests of eastern Canada were largely decimated by this time, the west coast became the focus of logging operations.

In the 1900's mechanization started to revolutionize the industry. The trees easiest to get at along waterways were largely depleted. These were some of the largest trees growing in rich valley bottom soils. Going deeper into the forest in such rugged terrain required more power and therefore more capital. Teams of oxen were replaced with horses which were then put out to pasture for more efficient steam rail logging operations, several of which penetrated into south Vancouver Island valleys, including the Sooke region. Larger corporations began to take over, and the high balling era began.




Buck saws, spring boards, and double headed axes began to be replaced by chainsaws, harvesting machines, and huge trucks. Selective logging gave way to clearcuts. Now the forests were threatened by a no-holds-barred attitude that continues to this very day. No trees are safe anymore with the advent of helicopter logging which can access areas previously too remote or harsh to log safely.

The south island has been largely logged off, although remnant small ancient groves remain in isolated pockets. Often it is only the occasional large ancient that survives to this day, but very few have any protection. The undisturbed 10 000 year old forest is gone, and the biological secrets have gone with it. We have little idea what we have lost, or what long term impacts this may have.

The logging industry in British Columbia, aided by sympathetic pro-business governments, continues to pillage what little is remaining of the ancient forest. They will carry on with business as usual until the last big tree falls, or until we make them stop.