Episode 16
Today it is my pleasure to introduce to you Ken Wu. Ken is the executive director of the Endangered Ecosystems Alliance, a new national Canadian conservation organization advocating the science-based protection of native ecosystems, seeking to engage non-traditional allies of the environmental movement, and working to support Indigenous Protected Areas. He was previously the co-founder and executive director of the Ancient Forest Alliance and the executive director of the Wilderness Committee’s Victoria bureau.

So before we get into good news stories, what are some sad stories that you have seen? 

Here ancient forests with trees that are 2000 years old .. These are some of the oldest and biggest trees that have existed in earth’s history. These trees on Vancouver Island can be as much as 20 feet wide.. as wide as a living room and as tall as a downtown sky scraper. But for all those that we have saved, we have lost 3x as many. This is because there is so much value in these trees. Western red cedar in these days is particularly valuable for cladding houses on the outside and for decks.

That is the green gold right now – propping up the old logging industry. The have already logged 99% of the Douglas Fir. There is only 1% of the old growth Douglas Fir left. The Sitka Spruce is less than 10% now. Cedar is probably around 15-20% of the old growth. So we are getting to end of the old growth forest. But there is some progress too.

So as much as we have lost a lot, I think it is important for people to stay engaged and keep pushing. There has been big progress last week…

Please tell us about that.

Finally the British Columbia government announced deferrals or moratorium on 9 major areas of old growth forest in BC. They started up a process to develop new policies to manage BC’s old growth forests. This was decades of pushing by citizens. But we are not there yet, we have to keep expanding awareness of these ecosystems.

The 9 deferral areas include Clayoquot Sound. I think a lot of your listeners at one time have been to Tofino,  Ucluelet area of Vancouver Island…so just around Tofino is that spectacular set of islands and valleys …that is now on a moratorium for logging. It is the biggest track of coastal old growth temperate rain forest on Vancouver Island. So some good things are happening.

Those huge trees draw in so much carbon.

Yes even more than the tropical rain forest trees. Because all of the nutrients get sucked up so quickly in the tropics, but in the temperate rain forests of British Columbia, Oregon, and California, there is a lot of carbon locked in the wood that is on the forest floor, in the soil, and in the trees. The trees in these temperate forests live longer and get bigger. So that combination means that there is substantially more carbon in Canada’s old growth temperate rain forests than even in the Amazon or in central Africa.

That is one of the best things we can do to avert the climate crisis is to protect not just tropical forests but temperate rain forests and all types of forests.

See transcription at Treesmendus.com