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Just over a month ago I was privileged to go on a whale-watching jaunt off Tofino, BC, in the Canadian Pacific Rim National Park. The park is home to what is said to be the world's second largest old-growth temperate rain forest. Even so, according to our guide, the park's "protected" ecology is very much under threat from logging and other developments outside the park.

For example, he pointed out that up until about 10 years ago the average yearly rainfall amount in Tofino was 12 feet. Over the last several years, as more logging and development have threatened Western Vancouver Island, that amount has dropped one quarter to 9 feet annually. Most of the logging, sadly, was clear cutting, which raises other issues of erosion and riches of biodiversity lost--likely never to be replaced--in the logging process. But it also illustrates how interdependent our world is. Protecting species only within certain boundaries is not enough to ensure their survival. And micro-climates are very much affected by what happens outside those boundaries.

That same weekend I visited a very small reserve (probably fewer than 20 acres) back toward the east side of Vancouver Island. In the reserve I encountered the shell of a tree a nearby interpretative sign explained had been the victim of arson in the 1970s. The tree, at the time of the fire, had been more than 300 years old. It broke my heart realizing that anyone could be so cruel to deliberately set fire to such a grand monument of life.

Long-lived forests are important for watersheds, erosion prevention, plant diversity, wildlife habitat, and ever-present reminders to humanity of our part, our intregration in life systems locally and globally. No matter how carefully a timber company manages a logging area, it can never restore a logged area to what it was before "harvesting." It's no accident old-growth forests are referred to as "virgin."

posted 4 years, 6 months ago
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