page_title: Ancient Forest Alliance
section_title: Campaigns
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Forest Alliance / Campaigns
caption_attribution_description: English: The Refugee Tree is the largest known redcedar growing in the CRD. It measures 14 m around its gigantic base and could be well over 500 years old.
context_page_description: The Ancient Forest Alliance is a grassroots environmental organization in British Columbia, Canada. It was founded in January, 2010, and is dedicated to protecting British Columbia's old growth forests in areas where they are scarce, and ensuring sustainable forestry jobs in that province.
context_section_description: Documenting ancient forests and giant trees
  The Ancient Forest Alliance has stated that they will "explore and document endangered ancient forests, record-sized heritage trees, and areas destroyed by old-growth logging."  Photographer TJ Watt has been exploring and documenting old growth forests and giant trees for the Ancient Forest Alliance.
  Protecting the Red Creek Douglas Fir trees
  The approximately 1000-year old Red Creek Fir is 73.8 m (242 ft) tall and 4.2m (13' 9") wide, is located near Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island and is one of the largest Douglas-fir in the world. (In 2010, it was thought to be the world's largest.)  In February 2010 the Ancient Forest Alliance announced that they had discovered new logging tape within a few hundred meters of the Red Creek Fir, and that they feared it might soon be surrounded by a clearcut, making it susceptible to blowdown and reducing its tourism value.  The Ministry of Forests has stated that the area immediately surrounding the Red Creek Fir is protected from logging, and that there are no plans to log the surrounding area in the immediate future.  TimberWest, which owns the surrounding area, has confirmed this, stating that the logging tape does not necessarily mean that it will be logged, and that they are not planning on logging the area within the next year or two.  The Red Creek Fir is an important tourist attraction for the nearby town of Port Renfrew, according to the local Chamber of Commerce.  TimberWest has said that they recognize the value of the tree, and are looking at improving access to it for tourists.  The Ancient Forest Alliance installed a new sign at the Red Creek Fir,  and were asking the British Columbia government to establish a Provincial Heritage Trees designation that will identify and protect the 100 largest and oldest specimens of each of the province's tree species.
  The Alliance helped to publicize the issue of clearcutting of old-growth forests on Vancouver Island with a September 2016 article by Harley Rustad on their web site about that same Red Creek Fir tree, which by then, had been named Big Lonely Doug and declared to be Canada's second largest Douglas-fir tree. According to the Rustad article, the tree had been saved in 2011 by surveyor Dennis Cronin in an area that was scheduled for clearcutting. (Cutblock number 7190, twelve hectares on the north bank of the Gordon River.) Originally published by The Walrus, where the article won a silver National Magazine Award (2018), the story helped to re-ignite interest in the clearcutting issue and attracted additional coverage by the major news media. Several publications subsequently ran similar articles about clear-cutting, featuring photos of the Big Lonely Doug tree in an area with no other remaining old-growth trees. Most recently, in early September 2019, the Toronto Star published a feature about the issue, titled He lived in a forest for hundreds of Years, Now he must live in a clear-cut. Doug had become a tourist attraction by then, marked on Google Maps. 
  The Alliance has remained active in the clearcutting issue on Vancouver Island. In April 2019, it was one of the groups lobbying to prevent additional logging of a 109 hectare old-growth forest adjacent to the Juan de Fuca Provincial Park in the Port Renfrew area, known as the Tall Tree Capital of Canada. In May 2019, the logging plan was postponed by the provincial government.
  Protecting Avatar Grove
  The Ancient Forest Alliance is campaigning to protect a 10-hectare stand of 80-meter tall old growth Douglas-fir and western red cedar that is 15 minutes outside of Port Renfrew on Vancouver Island, Canada.  It was discovered by TJ Watt and has been nicknamed Avatar Grove.  The Ancient Forest Alliance claims that this is one of the most spectacular and most accessible stands of ancient trees in a wilderness setting that remains on southern Vancouver Island, and that it is one of the only examples in the region of old growth forest on a valley bottom.  One of the giant cedars in Avatar Grove has numerous huge burls and has been dubbed
caption: The Refugee Tree, the largest red cedar in the Capital Regional District, BC
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "Image (c) TJ Watt\nPhoto taken for Westen Canada Wilderness Committee\nUsage without prior consent will result in charges 3 times regular usage amount.", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS-1D Mark II", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS2 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:05:18 14:48:05", "Image Artist": "TJ Watt", "Image ExifOffset": "396", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "898", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10503", "EXIF ExposureTime": "13/10", "EXIF FNumber": "11", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2009:11:11 05:23:59", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2009:11:11 05:23:59", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "-23657/62500", "EXIF ApertureValue": "6918863/1000000", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "4", "EXIF MeteringMode": "CenterWeightedAverage", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "24", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "418", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "220000/71", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "585500/189", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Manual", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}