Tuesday, February 25, 2014

900 years to Grow old; 800 years to Go for North Shore trees

on the way UP to Brother Creek (UPDATED 2019-06-10)
900 year old trees were cut down, North Shore of Burrard Inlet, shipped off to foreign ports 100 years ago.   Doesn't look like the "newbies" will make it to 150 years.

PDF  BIG Tree Registry
UPDATE 2019-06-10 BC LEG Library   Big Tree 

   
UPDATE 2019-06-10 UBC Website
UPDATE 2019-06-10 Gallery

There's our Post on Vancouver Landscape Resources 41 Trees (2011)

Vancouver Landscape Resources 41 Trees SOURCE 2019-06-10

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Scotty on Denman:

Vancouver Island Big Trees with  Champion Tree Society

Maybe the trees in the article aren't actually the biggest of their kind. One story I heard was that when representatives of the Champion Tree Society went to verify the size of a candidate for biggest Sitka spruce (somewhere in Washington, I think), there was initial disappointment that the specimen was somewhat smaller than the biggest spruce known. Then they just happened to find a vine maple nearby: four feet in diameter! Lucky or what?
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Are you longing to go back to Metro Vancouver's ROOTS, the Burke Mountain Naturalists (BMN) have Walk Events like this recently one:

 First Spring Walking Tour of Riverview's Trees (UPDATED 2019-06-10)
Join the Riverview Horticultural Centre Society for their first tree tour of 2014. This is an ideal season to view the architectural structure of the deciduous trees before they come out in full leaf. Walks are led by a volunteer arborist, and last about two hours, depending on weather and walkers’ preference. Free. Dress for the weather, and wear comfy…
Just in time to catch this one on the fly:

 Birds in Focus – Photography Workshop (UPDATED 2019-06-10)
This workshop explores basic to advanced photography skills, techniques, digital aspects, equipment, places to go and more. Bring camera for practice in the park – captive raptors may be present.
Cammidge House, BOUNDARY BAY REGIONAL PARK
Sunday, March 30 | 9 am – 1 pm
Ages 15+
$20/person
Min 6 – Max 20
Registration required, phone 604-432-6359.



1 comment:

scotty on denman said...

The Champion Tree Society's field crew were checking a reported monster Sitka spruce in Washington State---gigantic but not a record-breaker--when, about to leave, they spotted a four-foot diameter vine maple they'd initially mistaken as a big-leaf maple. That's by far the biggest vine maple ever seen.

The Forest Act's prime directive is to liquidate old-growth and replace it with thrifty forest. When the elimination of OG was protested, industry promised to manage "sustainably", which really meant they'd take, say, 700 cubes per hectare at 100 years, not 1800 cubes at 800 years--it's more efficient by crude measure, yes, but OG is still eventually liquidated, along with the type of products it supplied and the diverse habitat it maintained synecologically. Sustainability never meant 800-year rotations, although, in the final operations of Mac & Blo, now defunct, the company pledged, on an experimental basis, to maintain at least 10% of its charter as OG--really, small clumps of OG, two or three big old trees and attendant shrubs, around which several rotations would be harvested every 100 years. Still not really sustaining OG.

OG coincidentally preserved in the expanded riparian buffer zones enforced by Harcourt's Forest Practices Code is considered a "loss" by industry, even though it helps sustain other important, non-forest values. But those peripheral refuges, as important as they are, represent mere skeletons of what once existed (the "loss" they represent to industry is equally meagre).

Parks and ecological preserves are the only places where real OG is sustained--i.e., where no logging happens at all. Still the BC Liberals recently entertained "opening up" some of these areas to logging to "compensate" for the "loss" of beetle-killed lodgepole pine. That really meant trading high-value, OG conifer species for low-value lodgepole nobody wanted anyway.

Industry and friendly governments continue to win the shell game they play with the real owners of our forests.