Facts support full preservation
View of Carmanah cathedral spires.
Until a few short months ago, only a handful of people knew about majestic Carmanah Valley. The Nitinat Indians, who lay aboriginal claim to Carmanah, call the place Khrowbodewah - The Beginning.
Protecting this narrow watershed on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island is a rugged canyon which begins about two kilometers from the open ocean. The canyon blocked early loggers from taking out the valley's prime spruce during the heyday of wooden airplane construction.
Unfortunately, the canyon could not protect Carmanah forever.
In March of 1988 the great spruces of Carmanah came under imminent threat of logging. Two environmentalists, on a weekend trip to explore the valley, discovered massive clearcuts on the edge of Carmanah and a road surveyed into the valley's best spruce groves. The road construction crew was at work, heading into the heart of the valley.
Some thing Carmanah's days are numbered.
The environmentalists were shocked. Logging, without advance public notice or input, had suddenly been pushed 15 years ahead of schedule.
The race was on to save Canada's tallest trees. At that time no one had any idea of the passion and resources which the logging company would invest in the fight to assert its right to log Carmanah Valley.
Sitka spruce, the biggest and the tallest trees in Carmanah, grow on the flat alluvial bottom lands in the lower third of the valley. According to forest inventory statistics, the spruce contribute less than two percent of the wood volume of the entire watershed.
Other species include hemlock at 44 percent; cedar, 30 percent; and balsam fir, 20 percent. Some grow to spectacular proportions, but because Carmanah Valley is still largely unexplored, no one knows for sure whether or not there are record-sized trees of these species there.
Would you trust the company that made this mess to carefully log Carmanah?
- MC Clearcut
off Rosander Main near Carmanah.
While the Carmanah Giant, at 97 metres, is the tallest known tree in Canada and the tallest known Sitka spruce in the world, it is not the oldest living tree in the valley. The giant is estimated to be less than 400 years old. The biggest of the spruces (not as tall as the giant but much bigger around) are estimated to be somewhere between 700 to 800 years old.
Even these spruces are not the oldest living trees in the valley. Gnarled cedars, relics from an ancient time, cling to the side hills. Annual growth rings on cedar stumps in adjacent clear cut valleys indicate that many of the Carmanah cedars must be well over 1,000 years old. It is conceivable that one of these cedars might be nearly twice as old as the oldest living spruce in Carmanah.
