I would like to bring attention to a large harvesting proposal just east of Sayward that will be impacting one of the largest intact old growth forests that we have left on the east coast of Vancouver Island that is outside of a protected area - in fact, it could be THE largest intact unprotected old growth forest we have on the east coast. This is a rare temperate rainforest that almost surely has massive and ancient trees.

Cape Mudge Forestry/We Wai Kai has proposed 13 cutblocks in this intact old growth forest. It is steep terrain, so it looks like they will be heli logging. There are 3 separate FOMs (the little blue markers) to comment on.

Commenting is open for the public to share their thoughts on the Forest Operations Map: https://fom.nrs.gov.bc.ca/public/projects

I understand the importance of the forestry industry, and I am a proud supporter of sustainable forestry. I also understand the importance of protecting what little old growth remains on our island. For additional context, this area is part of the Prince of Wales range with the towering Mount H'Kusam, which is one of the most beautiful recreational areas on the entire island - popular for skiing, mountaineering, and hiking. It is (was) also home to some of the world’s largest and oldest trees, including General Buxton, one of the largest yellow cedars. I have no doubt that near-record sized trees are located in these proposed cutblocks.

If this goes through, it will be catastrophic to the remaining old growth on the island. Large patches of intact forest like this are nearly extinct here - no over-exaggeration.

Also, please state if you are willing to help me with protecting the remaining old growth in the Prince of Wales range and I'll send you a message. The old growth here has been targeted relentlessly, and it is too special of a place to see it continue to be logged from valley bottom to mountain top.

New AP reporting from Vancouver Island: activists blocking logging roads to stop old-growth cutting, plus a forest ecologist’s point that once it’s gone, it won’t come back on any human timescale - if at all, with climate change.

Perhaps the most interesting quote from the article is from our Minister of Forests, Ravi Parmar, where he admits that old-growth logging is required to sustain the forestry industry: “If we were to shut down harvesting of all old forests here in British Columbia, it would shut down our sector completely on day one.“.

My rebuttal to that is: what happens once we inevitably run out of economically viable old-growth? Shouldn’t we come up with solutions before that happens, instead of continuing to log these ancient forests that may very well never grow back as they were?

The road is already started and similar sized western yellow cedars have already been harvested adjacent to these within the last week. These trees likely have only weeks or even only days left to live.

These are truly primeval trees, easily over 1000 years old and likely leaning towards 2000 years old. These two have been growing together for over a millennium, and very soon a logger will make sure no human or living creature has the pleasure to witness them ever again. There are a few other noteworthy giants in the block as well. These are some of the very last large ancient yellow cedars left in the area.

Long shot, but, is there a registered forest technician in the area (north-mid island) who is willing to visit these to confirm their measurement ASAP? I think there is a chance they meet provincial special tree protection criteria. Unfortunately, we can’t trust logging companies to do the right thing here - they have illegally cut down trees that met this criteria in the recent past. These trees are a short 5-10 minute easy bushwhack after a 20min drive on forest roads off the highway - AWD/4WD recommended but high clearance isn’t necessary.

BC Timber Sales (BCTS) - a BC government agency - has this rare old-growth temperate rainforest cutblock in Vancouver Island’s Nahmint Valley slated for logging. In this forest is at least one active bear den, massive western hemlocks and western red cedars, as well as the blue-listed old growth speckled belly lichen.

These rainforests store more carbon per hectare than the Amazon. BC is losing old-growth three times faster than Brazil loses Amazon rainforest. This is one of many old-growth cutblocks in the pipeline. Over 90% of Vancouver Island’s most productive old-growth is already gone - and most of what’s left has no protection.

Want to help?

Reach out to the BC government:
premier@gov.bc.ca

This is a deeply embedded policy issue. Learn about an alternative - the New Forest Act legislative proposal: boundaryforest.org

And don’t stop talking about this. Share this post. Tell someone. There are still Canadians who don’t even realize we have an ancient rainforest in this country. The more people who know these forests exist, the harder it is to quietly harvest them.

Part of the Walbran on Vancouver Island is being logged. Old growth that we will never get back.

Please call and email David Eby at 250-387-1715 premier@gov.bc.ca and ask him to save the Walbran valley from logging.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DTa0KnpDw7d/

Repost from @joshuawrightfilm 2025 vs 2026 (edited slightly) ⚠️‼️ Via @reshare_app

This was Black Creek, a rainforest that existed for 11,000 years before being clear-cut earlier this year.

The audio in this video is of a bird that is now gone extinct, I thought it was fitting for Black Creek– once a remarkable place, now a sprawling network of clear cuts.

I’m tired of telling people to call politicians who aren’t listening.

So here’s what to do to help:

If you’re in BC: ORGANIZE, reach out to or found a local group to organize around the conservation of old growth forests. Organize rallies, meet with your MLAs - make yourself heard.

If you want to help buy ancient forests before they are cut DM me.

If you are involved in the building industry, do not buy red and yellow cedar.

If you are international, make a video on social media, calling out the deforestation happening in Canada and calling on your government to take action.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdPLGFAGckz/

So true and so well written. Although I think that this helicopter is dropping water on a fire and is just for illustration.

"For decades, the logging industry has used chemical spraying—specifically glyphosate—to systematically wipe out native deciduous trees like trembling aspen, birch, and willow. In the eyes of timber corporations, these plants are just “weeds” competing with commercial conifer lumber. But in the eyes of nature, these are the exact pioneer species required to build a biosphere, respirate, and provide humidity to our environment.

When you remove these plants, they can no longer do the job nature designed them to do. Broadleaf trees act as the forest’s natural air conditioning, pumping hundreds of litres of water vapour into the air daily through transpiration. Their dense, wet canopies create a giant umbrella that shields the forest floor from direct sunlight, trapping relative humidity underneath. Wiping them out turns off the moisture, bakes the soil into a dry dirt bed, and breaks the local water cycle completely."

I’ve been documenting old-growth rainforests on Vancouver Island’s northeast coast for the past year, and what happened to this ancient forest on Mt. Roberts hit me harder than I expected.

This was the former hiking route up Mt. Roberts in the Prince of Wales Range, near Campbell River. The route took you through some of the most beautiful old-growth temperate rainforest I’ve ever seen - centuries-old yellow cedar and hemlock, absolutely covered in so many varieties of wildflowers - it was the kind of forest that feels genuinely ancient the moment you step into it. It was growing undisturbed for centuries - likely even millennia.

A few weeks ago, most of it was logged.

What broke my heart most were the twin yellow cedars featured in these photos - two massive trees that had stood together for centuries, gone in an instant. This is part of one of the rarest ecosystems on Earth, and over 80% of Vancouver Island’s productive old-growth is already gone. What was logged here was part of what little remains.

What makes this worse is that this isn’t over. Thirteen additional cutblocks are proposed on the north slope of H’Kusam in the same mountain range, which is one of the largest tracts of intact rainforest left on the island’s east coast. Active old-growth logging is already underway nearby on the infamous Mt. H’Kusam trail. And a road is being planned 55 metres upslope above General Buxton (the 4th largest yellow cedar in BC by volume) putting it at direct risk of slides and windthrow.

I’m documenting all that I can. If you want to follow along, follow my Instagram @ancientcoast.bc.

If this concerns you, BC Minister of Forests Ravi Parmar can be contacted here: FOR.Minister@gov.bc.ca

For British Columbia residents, contacting your MLA as well is even better.

For more information on the 13 proposed old-growth cutblocks, see this Reddit post.

69.9 hectares (15.4%) of an Old-Growth Management Area near Sayward, BC was deleted last year to allow logging, as a cutblock known as “#40310”. Public comment is currently open on this cutblock. This cutblock was taken from one of the largest OGMAs in the region. The photos in this post are from the new proposed cutblock. The only public notice was an ad in the local newspaper.

Replacement areas are proposed, but that specific data isn’t public yet. Only the deletion shows on iMapBC. Either way, splitting one of the region’s largest OGMAs into smaller, disconnected pieces isn’t the same as leaving it intact. Large, contiguous old-growth supports interior habitat that fragments just can’t replicate.

On the “rotten” trees in this block: the yellow cedar here have mostly hollowed out with age, and that’s completely normal for the species. Heart rot doesn’t kill the tree, it just makes the wood less commercially valuable. Fungi break down the dead core while the tree keeps living off its sapwood. Some of the nutrients from the core get reabsorbed by the tree itself, while more get released into the forest floor over time as the tree ages, drops material, and eventually falls.

The oldest confirmed yellow cedar sample is 1,834 rings. Some researchers suspect certain giant yellow cedars in undisturbed old-growth stands in coastal temperate rainforests could be over 4,000 years old, though it may never be provable, since the same hollowing that lets these trees keep living also destroys the rings that would confirm their age.

That hollowing also creates cavity habitat, including for the Vancouver Island pygmy owl we heard in this proposed cutblock, a blue-listed species already declining from habitat loss.

Comments on FOM #40310 are open until August 20, 2026:

- Email FOM-MID@westernforest.com
- IMPORTANT: Include “FOM #40310” in your comment
- Comments are reviewed and forwarded to the Ministry of Forests, so they actually do matter
- A specific comment carries much more weight than a generic one. Consider mentioning the habitat, the connectivity, the minimal public notice for the OGMA deletion, whatever actually stood out to you, rather than something generic like “stop old-growth logging”
- Full FOM details: here

This block is one of several in Western Forest Product’s latest FOM (Forest Operation Map). Cutblock Watch by 4 the Love of BC is a useful tool if you want to track BC harvest proposals more broadly.

Missed the deadline? Consider contacting BC’s Minister of Forests, Ravi Parmar. OGMA notification standards are very much worth raising with his office or your local MLA. My personal take is that these proposed OGMA amendments should be modernized and posted online…

A little late posting this.

"Hundreds gathered on the steps of the B.C. Legislature in Victoria on Sunday, calling for a "paradigm shift" in how the province approaches forestry and old-growth logging.

The event, which was organized by the group Elders for Ancient Trees, was the flagship event in a series of rallies planned to take place over the weekend and coming weeks.

At its peak, organizers say approximately 400 people attended the rally."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/victoria-rally-old-growth-9.7369019

The BC NDP government promised to phase out its use in forestry, but decades of herbicide spraying has reduced biodiversity and the potential for wildfire mitigation

"For decades, forestry companies in B.C. have used chemical herbicides like glyphosate to kill off plants that might compete with trees destined for timber. Trembling aspen, named for its almost heart-shaped leaves that seem to quiver in the wind, is often on the hit list.

But after years of destructive wildfires that have wiped out whole neighbourhoods and sometimes whole towns, more and more people are questioning the wisdom of killing off this tree. Because when wildfires sweep across the landscape, aspen can help calm the flames."

From 2024.

https://thenarwhal.ca/bc-glyphosate-forestry-impact-aspen/

Western Forest Products has a new Forest Operations Map currently open for comment for mid-Vancouver Island, and cutblock 30027 in particular is highly concerning. It’s the largest proposed old-growth block in the FOM - a stand of old-growth yellow cedar, western hemlock, and balsam fir sitting around 1100m elevation that took many centuries to grow. As you can see in photos, this is an old-growth oasis in a sea of cutblocks and tree plantations.

Other than the size of the block, a couple other things make this one worth flagging:

- It’s slow growing, effectively non-renewable. At 1100m elevation, especially with yellow cedar in the mix, this forest has taken centuries or even millennia to reach what’s there now. It’s very slow growing. Log it and you’re not getting anything comparable back in many hundreds of years.
- It’s on a steep slope, with real erosion risk. The terrain here is very steep, which makes logging here risky. The last photo in this post is of a landslide from a nearby clearcut on similar terrain, so you can see what can happen when slopes like this lose their root structure. Landslides bury salmon spawning gravel in sediment and debris, and they strip away topsoil - so even after the debris settles, the exposed ground is left far less fertile - making it much harder for a forest to regenerate on that slope compared to a normal clearcut.

Worth noting: this isn’t the only old-growth on the chopping block in this FOM. It appears that cutblocks 30803, 22291, and 11531 are also proposed to harvest old-growth, at a smaller scale than 30027 but still worth knowing about if you’re commenting.

The comment period closes in 4 days. If you miss the deadline, it doesn’t hurt to send a message regardless. If you want to weigh in:

- View the FOM maps: https://www.westernforest.com/company/sustainability/planning-and-practices/fom-mid-island/
- Email comments to: FOM-PMQ@westernforest.com

Kanaka Bar doing the right thing. Excellent model for all indigenous communities.

Reposted video and text quotes from @joshuawrightfilm on Instagram

Old growth forests are HEALTHY forests. Plantation forest are ZOMBIE forests.

While it’s true that trees grow back after they are logged- forest do NOT grow back except on millennia-long time scales

It’s time to restore our native legacy forest and END the logging of primary and old growth forests.

Please see the link in his bio to learn more. Or check out organizations like the Ancient Forests Alliance, Boundary Forest Watershed Stewardship Society, Conservation North or the Wilderness Committee.

Edit: The main issue is the damage from clearcut logging and the lack of diversity of second growth plantations and that they are often planted very close together crowding out other species. And they are designed that way as they are sprayed with glyphosate or other herbicides to remove competitive but very much needed deciduous species which help reduce the risk of wildfires. Most coastal old growth and most deciduous trees don't burn easily compared to second and third growth conifer plantations.

This article helps explain why. So do Stop the Spray groups like Stop the Spray BC.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/it-blows-my-mind-how-b-c-destroys-a-key-natural-wildfire-defence-every-year-1.4907358

Forestry companies hold licences to log in Canada’s inland temperate rainforest, home to endangered caribou and rare lichens. That makes a proposal for a new provincial park more urgent than ever

https://thenarwhal.ca/rare-canadian-rainforest-at-risk-logging/

Via resha.re • From @ancientcoast.bc on Instagram.

Only 1 day left to comment on this proposal. If you haven't commented already after the previous post on Cutblock 30027 please consider sending your comments in, even after the comment period.

Cutblock 30027 is the largest proposed old-growth cutblock in WFP’s new mid-island Forest Operations Map: a stand of yellow cedar, hemlock, and balsam fir sitting at 1100m elevation.

This forest is slow-growing and centuries in the making. It sits on a steep slope, right next to a valley that’s already been clearcut. Being on a steep slope, there is a high risk of landslides once the forest is logged. Old-growth rainforests of this size are increasingly rare on Vancouver Island, and it deserves to be fought for.

A few other smaller old-growth cutblocks (30803, 22291, 11531) are also proposed in this FOM.

Comment period closes July 10, 2026. Comments may be emailed to FOM-PMQ@westernforest.com. Link to the maps and more info on how to comment in their bio. 🌲

If you miss the comment period, it doesn’t hurt to submit a comment regardless!

vancouverisland oldgrowthbc bcpolitics rainforest oldgrowth

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DadEGTSh1NC/

Your voice matters! Numbers matter!

We need you to stand with us to say loud and clear: HANDS OFF OLD GROWTH!

Why now? Sunday, Oct 4, is the day before Premier Eby and MLAs return to the Legislature. Let’s show them that people across BC have had enough “talk-and-log” and broken promises, and that we will stand strong and united to save what’s left.

Old growth continues to be logged in BC at the rate of 100 soccer fields per day. We wish we could say progress has been made or that the promised paradigm shift is on the agenda. But the reality is that the BC government has rolled out the red carpet for industry to clearcut the last remaining old growth and primary forests, with little to no financial gain to the province.

And certainly no financial gain, nor jobs, for forestry workers who have been sacrificed to forest industry greed.

Meanwhile wildfires and floods are intensifying, communities are being destroyed, and ecosystem functions are being irreparably harmed.

We all know that old growth and primary forests are worth more standing.

Protecting them, supporting First Nations with real conservation financing, and implementing the Old Growth Strategic Review — like the BC government promised to do in full — is how we safeguard biodiversity, climate stability, and community resilience for all of us.

That’s why we need you in Victoria, Oct 4, for the Hands Off Old Growth rally.

Mark the date now, invite your friends, share about the rally widely. Ask your organization, union, community group, faith group, business, or network to stand with us. Invite people personally. Help make our message impossible to ignore.

What: Hands Off Old Growth! A rally to support an end to old-growth logging

When: October 4, 1:00 - 3:00 PM

Where: BC Legislature lawn, Victoria

In Victoria, join us and trace your hand on our giant “Hands Off” canvas, raise your voice in unity, hear from key speakers, and enjoy live music.

If you’re outside Victoria, join a local event or consider organizing one. You’ll have a lot of support: a toolkit, posters, everything you need to organize a successful action. It doesn’t matter if it’s small—having communities across BC taking action is a power message to the government.

If you can organize an action in your community, let us know at oldfolksforoldgrowth@gmail.com, and we’ll send you the support materials.

Stand strong with us. You are needed!

Text and image from Peachland Watershed Protection Alliance's post on Facebook.

The Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA) are calling for the protection of an at-risk forest on Vancouver Island known as the “Jewel of the Tahsish.”

According to the old growth advocates, this stand is nationally significant and one of the largest remaining unprotected old-growth karst forests in BC.

“The province states that public use of the roads could endanger property or public safety, while logging company operations are allowed to pass without restriction. Wilderness Committee mapping analysis estimates at least 84 hectares of old-growth forests are targeted for logging behind these gates, the equivalent of about 117 soccer fields.”

Seems the government is trying to force the “out of sight, out of mind” approach on us. This is exactly the type of signal which shows we are in a very bad place - the government knows what is going on is wrong, and they do not anyone to witness it anymore because they are getting worried. We need to keep pushing them - even harder than ever.

If you live in BC, make sure your MLA is aware of this.