Note: It is vital to have a Vancouver Island Backroads Mapbook to access these areas
 This website, created by the Wilderness Committee, aims to become a one-stop information centre for those wishing to visit Vancouver Island’s spectacular ancient forests. The website contains descriptions of many significant ancient forest sites and how to access them. Unlike other wilderness and outdoor recreation websites, however, it includes unprotected ancient forests in need of protection.
The website currently is relatively simple but will be expanded over time to include maps, photos, and more detailed descriptions of each area, as well as covering a wider array of protected and endangered ancient forests.
Satellite photos taken in 2004 revealed that three-fourths of Vancouver Island’s original, productive old-growth forests had already been logged, including 90% of the valley bottoms where the largest trees grow and 87% of southern Vancouver Island’s productive ancient forests (south of Port Alberni).
As such, the Wilderness Committee is calling on the BC government to:
- Enact concrete timelines to quickly end the logging of the remaining old-growth forest on Vancouver Island, as well as in the Lower Mainland, where old-growth forests are scarce.
- Ensure the sustainable logging of the second-growth forests, which now constitute the vast majority of the forested land base.
- Ban raw log exports and assist in the development of second-growth wood processing facilities to sustain forestry jobs.
For more information on our campaign and to see maps of the remaining old-growth forests,
visit our websites www.viforest.org and www.wcwcvictoria.org.
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