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Call to protect B.C.‘s 100 top heritage trees
B.C.'s biggest and oldest trees have pretty much seen it all over the centuries -- except the respect of formal protection.
Conservationists are hoping to change that by demanding the provincial government protect B.C.'s 100 most important heritage trees of each species and phase out old-growth logging on the south coast.
"How many jurisdictions on earth have trees as tall as skyscrapers and trunks as wide as your living room?" asked Ken Wu, campaign director for the Western Canada Wilderness Committee in Victoria. "This is a globally rare heritage that we have here and there is no official designation for the biggest and oldest trees."
Wu said in an interview Friday the "vast majority" of the top 100 trees of each species are located outside parks and protected areas, including the San Juan Sitka spruce near Port Renfrew, the biggest in Canada at 62.5 metres tall and 11.6 metres in circumference.
"It's just at a recreation site, which can disappear, come and go as the province wants."
A Red Creek Douglas fir -- largest in the world, at 73.8 metres tall and 13.2 metres in circumference -- stands not far from the San Juan spruce in part of the industrial forest land base. "There are active cut blocks all around that area," Wu said, noting the forest industry has currently left a buffer around the tree.
The government maintains a Register of Big Trees in B.C. (www.env.gov.bc.ca/bigtree) that seeks to document the biggest 10 trees of each species in the province, a calculation based on height, circumference and crown spread.
Forests and Range Minister Pat Bell said the register amounts to de facto protection because the biggest trees are all documented and known to forest managers throughout B.C.
"We're confident these trees won't be harvested. They're tagged, they're named, we know exactly where they are and we're keeping track of them," Bell said.
"It's a practical approach. No district manager would dare approve a cutting plan or permit that would allow for the harvesting of any of these trees."
Rick Jeffery, president of the Coast Forest Products Association, said there are more than enough big trees already protected in parks and protected areas on Vancouver Island and that the phasing out of old-growth logging would represent the ruination of the industry.
"If they want to continue politics of exclusion, the economic consequences will unnecessarily put the industry out of work," he said.
But Wu said magnificent old-growth trees are important for tourism and the environment, including providing a home for endangered species. Yet some of the biggest trees remain virtually unknown, are not promoted on provincial tourism maps, and lack protection.
Wu accused the province of deliberately not making a fuss about the trees for fear it will lead to more demands to conserve dwindling low-elevation old-growth forests.
"It's not just the monumental trees, incredible parts of our heritage, but it's the ecosystem that fundamentally matters," he said. "We're asking for a phase-out of old-growth logging on the south coast, the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island, where old growth is scarce."
Conservationist Randy Stoltmann established the register in 1986. He copied most of the registry records into a report for the B.C. Conservation Data Centre before his death in 1994.
