Wild Coast Magazine / Spring 08
Download a PDF version of the article here. Photos courtesy Norm Evans.
When some friends visited Gerhardt Lepp on Vancouver Island, they asked to see some old-growth trees. So Lepp, having heard about them, took the visitors in search of the Koksilah River ancient forest.
But the trip was a bust – the grove couldn’t be found. It took a second trip, and wading up the Koksilah for three kilometres, to finally meet the old trees.
Lepp, a seasoned hiker and kayaker who has traveled most of Vancouver Island, was astounded at what he found – not just for the beauty, but for the fact the bid to protect the grove had faded into obscurity.
“I was very surprised that this stand had essentially been forgotten,” he said.
Property owners TimberWest had remembered the area, though. The stand first came to the forefront in 1989 when two Fletcher Challenge loggers, Louie Van Beers and Don Hughes, refused to cut down the trees. Fletcher Challenge, the owner of the property at the time, put the grove into a voluntary reserve.
The reserve remains in place, but when Lepp returned a few years ago, the surrounding area had been flagged by the new owners, TimberWest.
“I figured TimberWest thought that no one was looking and was going to whack them down before anyone noticed.”
Lepp tried to raise the alarm, but it had little impact until another activist, Warrick Whitehead, and the Wilderness Committee (formerly Western Canada Wilderness Committee) picked up the gauntlet and launched the Loggers and Friends of the Koksilah Ancient Forest initiative.
Whitehead first visited the grove shortly after the loggers laid down the chainsaws and it was first protected in 1989. At the time Whitehead was one of the thousands involved in the protests to protect the Carmanah Valley, where environmentalists were pitted against loggers. But having loggers risk their jobs to protect this grove made the Koksilah River old-growth particularly unique, Whitehead said.
He’s returned every few years to bring visitors or to just see them again himself, and was also alarmed when ribbons appeared along a logging road previously abandoned in about 1990.
“We found a big percentage of trees marked and ribbons and tape,” he said. “It was quite obvious this area was going to be logged.”
Whitehead and other volunteers mounted a publicity campaign that has been somewhat successful. TimberWest has taken down the ribbons and backed off on its immediate logging plans, and the province is examining the possibility of purchasing the area as a park.
But there are no guarantees. TimberWest has no current plans to log the area in the short term, but that’s a window that could change in several months. And while Whitehead said the province has voiced a commitment to the grove, nothing concrete is on the table. A wish list of possible properties for park acquisitions is drawn up each year, and the grove may be on this year’s list when it is completed in the spring. But even then it may not make the cut. Kate Thompson of the BC Environment Ministry said each property must be prioritized based on a number of criteria such as unique ecosystems.
For Lepp the protection of the grove is a no-brainer, considering it contains an 81-metre Douglas-fir and a 71-metre grand fir. (The record-holding Douglas-fir, in the Coquitlam watershed, is 94.3 metres, while the tallest grand fir in the upper Chilliwack River is 75.29 metres.)
“This is probably the best stand of old-growth fir south of Carmanah, and some of the tallest trees in Canada,” he said. “It’s what Vancouver Island is famous for – big trees. People come here to see them, and it sounds stupid to say, ‘sorry, we didn’t save any. Go to California to see them, because they did a better job than us.’”
The grove’s main appeal for protection is its perfect representation of something almost completely lost on southern Vancouver Island: an original forest.
Specifically, it’s an untouched example of the eastern very dry maritime variant of the coastal western hemlock forest, a system under-represented in BC Parks because so much of the original forest is on private property and so much has been logged.
The Koksilah River grove is particularly appealing due to its accessibility. Valley bottoms were usually the first old-growth to be logged due to the convenience, meaning most of the rest of the few stands of old-growth remaining are most likely on mountainsides and tucked away in inaccessible locations.
But the Koksilah stand is in a valley bottom just an hour or so from Victoria. Supporters believe this makes it as valuable to Vancouver Island as Cathedral Grove is today.
The Wilderness Committee estimates only about 13 per cent of the original old-growth forest remains on southern Vancouver Island, and less – only about 10 per cent – is on valley bottoms.
But the group is most alarmed over the lack of protection of what remains, particularly that only one per cent of the original old-growth coastal Douglas-fir zone is protected, and two per cent of the original very dry coastal western hemlock forest.
The Wilderness Committee has mounted a campaign to phase out old-growth logging, but Ken Wu, the Victoria campaign director for the committee, said so far the official response has been talk only, as the government has indicated a shift from logging old-growth to second-growth forest but without policies to back it up.
“We’ve got the rhetoric of shifting from old-growth to second-growth, but without concrete restrictions and timelines they’ll log old-growth and second-growth,” he said.
How to get here: The Koksilah River old-growth is on private property. While road access is possible for a fair distance to the trailhead, there is a ‘Notice of Trespass’ sign at the end of Renfrew Road just past the west segment of Koksilah River Provincial Park.
The private property designation is cheerfully ignored by most visitors, and Whitehead believes access is defensible.
“Literally thousands of people go through this area, mostly on motorbikes, trail bikes and quads, hiking, horseback riding – every type of activity you can think,” he said. “When the company said to me and others you are trespassing, we said it’s very unfair to single out one group of people when so many other groups of people are there, people impacting the area in huge amounts, especially the motorbikes and quads and so forth.”
He added visitors can even be unofficial custodians, reporting improper activity and even cleaning up by taking out garbage.
Visitors can call TimberWest to ask for permission. The Nanaimo office is 250-729-3700.
Where the big ones are:
The Koksilah River old-growth may be ancient, but it’s certainly not the largest trees on southern Vancouver Island. Here are the south island’s record-setters:
• Largest western redcedar: the Cheewhat Lake Cedar, east of Cheewhat Lake in Pacific Rim National Park.
• World champion Douglas-fir: Red Creek Tree at the San Juan River.
• Largest Sitka: Maxine’s Tree, West Walbran Creek, Walbran Valley.
For more information:
• Visit the Wilderness Committee’s Koksilah River website at www.wildernesscommitteevictoria.org/index.php?action=fullnews&showcomments=1&id=622
• Visit the Wilderness Committee’s old-growth campaign website at www.wcwcvictoria.org/vipetition
• Get detailed directions, photos and additional information about the ancient Koksilah River grove at http://koksilah.blogspot.com/
• Find the Big Tree Registry at http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bigtree/register.html
Copyright Wild Coast Magazine
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