Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/118157
to join a guided, interpretive hike like this one, organized by either the UBC Ancient Forest Committee (AFC) or Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance (AFA), which counts members from around the province. Both organizations believe that getting more folks into old-growth forests is the best way to build momentum for big-tree conservation and so offer excursions free of charge or for a minimal fee. The UBC organization rotates through a half-dozen Vancouver-area sites easily reached by public transit, with options ranging from the somewhat demanding and nearly all-day Seymour expedition to a Stanley Park outing that is literally a walk in the park (even so, among other wonders the latter takes in Canada's largest red alder and bigleaf maple). AFA treks showcase such attractions as Manning Park's Summalo Grove (with some of the most diverse oldgrowth in the province) and the gnarly, otherworldly monsters of Vancouver Island's Avatar Grove (see Westworld's "Gnarly by Nature" Landmark at bcaa.com/avatar). Just last fall, in fact, the Avatar Grove was saved from logging in large part due to the lobbying efforts of the AFA, which came up with the grove's catchy name and marshalled 30 W E S T W O R L D p26-37_Summer101.indd 30 >> biggest in the world thing – and the walks take on a whole new, shall we say, dimension. T HE THE SEYMOUR VALLEY, aka the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, once nurtured some of the biggest cedars that ever lived, but all were logged early in the 20th century; (top) AFC guide Ira Sutherland on one of the massive, remaining stumps. (above) The Seymour River supplies one-third of Vancouver's water. lots of public support – partly through hikes such as these. As more and more Pacific Northwest residents and travellers are realizing, such sites are remarkable if for no other reason than the notion that old-growth rainforests are a natural wonder, or the fact that as little as one per cent of some of B.C.'s lowelevation biogeoclimatic zones remain unlogged. But throw in that other thing – the STUMPS WE ' VE DESCENDED upon beside the Seymour River are western red cedars. So, no, says our guide, they wouldn't have been taller than Douglas firs, but they would have been bigger in girth – and not much thinner, in fact, than coastal and sierra redwoods. Meanwhile, the Douglas firs might have been taller than their California rivals. So is, or was, B.C. home to the biggest trees in the world? The question is open to debate, obviously. Usually the mantle of World's Biggest Trees goes to California's coastal redwoods, which reign as the planet's largest still-extant plants (assuming, of course, that bigger trees aren't still to be found in B.C., as some hope). But science suggests that Douglas firs are genetically capable of reaching the same height as redwoods. The tallest redwood ever measured, for example, appears to have been only 116 metres, whereas a B.C. Douglas fir logged in 1902 measured 127 metres. (To throw another wrench into the debate, a eucalyptus that blew down more than a century ago in Australia apparently stretched 132 metres.) SUMMER 2012 4/19/12 7:17:22 AM