At May 18 – Ancient Trees in the Expanded Elphinstone Forest Protected Area
In response to strong public and regional government pressure, the BC Government created Mount Elphinstone Provincial Park in 2000. As created, only 139 ha of the mostly primary (unlogged) forest found in this area was included in the park, and this small total was further subdivided into three smaller parcels (Figure 2.1). As a result, only 7% of the 2,137 ha of the expansion proposal is currently protected.
Elphinstone Logging Focus (ELF) has been working for many years to protect more old forests, old trees, and recruitment old growth in the expanded Elphinstone Forest Protected Area. The total area in the proposed expansion is 2,137 ha, over 15 times the area currently protected in the park. An ELF study calculated that only 2% of primary forests remained unlogged in the Biogeoclimatic Subzone in which the expansion proposal is located (CWHdm), and further demonstrated the importance of protecting the full expansion proposal.
The tree coring results documented in the report add compelling evidence to support the full expansion proposal, including:
- The exceptional age of veteran Douglas-firs (from 414 to 617 years old);
- The presence of old-growth western red cedars;
- The minimum age of well over 80 years (the youngest tree cored in tentative cohort 5 was 109 years old); and,
- Much greater age and structural diversity than shown in the Province’s VRI database.
This is the first confirmation of the antiquity of many of the Douglas-fir veterans, and also provides the first evidence of old- growth western red cedar in the study area. Even the youngest trees cored for this study were well over 100 years old and therefore older than most remaining stands on the Sunshine Coast. Stands in the expansion proposal area therefore have a wider range of ages and a more complex age structure than previously known or mapped.
This report provides additional and compelling evidence to protect the expanded Elphinstone Forest Protected Area from logging. Protection of the area would meet many of the recommendation from the Province’s Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel, including their call to defer harvest in (among other priority areas):
- Old forests with significant cultural importance to First Nations;
- Recruitment forests; and,
- Scattered big and ancient trees.
The ancient trees and unlogged stands described in this report are very rare in the Sunshine Coast Region. After consultation with First Nations, the protection of the whole expansion area within a Class A Park and/or as an Indigenous Protected Conservation Area (IPCA) would provide an important step towards addressing the deficit of intact, older forests on the Sunshine Coast. read more
In October of 2021, the Technical Advisory Panel (TAP) to the BC Government released a “Brief Overview of the Spatial Data, Maps and Methods to Identify At-Risk Old Growth.” utilizing Province of British Columbia data Version 2, October 24, 2021 (Vegetation Resource Inventory Data (VRI) and ancillary data) that included 8 Maps. Map 7 of that series identified “Recruitment Forest” defined as the following:
“Where insufficient big-treed old forest remains to fill minimum targets, we identified
recruitment forest using the same methods but choosing forest from a younger age-class
(age 80 and older- AC 5 – 9). Ecosystems with little or no remaining old forest face the
highest risk in the province. Reducing risk in these highest risk ecosystems requires
recruiting appropriate younger forest to grow old.” Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel’s October 2021 report, “Priority Deferrals: An Ecological Approach”.
The mapping analysis accompanying this report shows younger forests (over 80 years) in the Elphinstone Proposed Park where the provincial inventory identifies the largest trees that could “recruit” into large-structured old forest in the shortest time frames. The provincial inventory mapping does not identify stands with veteran trees that are older than the main forest canopy. Forests with veterans may be important for recruitment and should be included in deferral as the 80-year-old forests have numerous old-growth and ancient growth trees up to 500+ and older that survived the 1860s wildfire but they have never been inventoried but are highly significant to biodiversity.
Additional areas (25 polygons) were identified within the Park Proposal as possible additions to the Old Growth Recruitment Forest areas identified on the TAP Map 7 indicated above. The identification of these additional areas was based on a simpler analysis of VRI data involving age class 5 – 8, (80 – 150 years old of 1st and 2nd leading species, their % polygon coverage, site index, and 1st species height age class. A simple rating system was included to help assist in prioritizing areas to ground truth, as per the following:
Rating value = (site index x age class 1 x age class 2 x height class)/100. This resulted in values ranging from 29 to 88. Higher values indicate higher priority for evaluation and prioritization for conservation as additional Old Growth Recruitment Forest and possible identification of areas containing any veterans as identified above through close up ground- truthing… read more