Why was ‘incredible’ giant cedar cut down, despite B.C.’s big-tree protection law?

Joshua Wright says a yellow cedar tree he photographed last year was "incredible," the largest he'd ever seen in a decade of hiking around Vancouver Island.

Joshua Wright says a yellow cedar tree he photographed last year was “incredible,” the largest he’d ever seen in a decade of hiking around Vancouver Island.

The monumental cedar stood in what was one of the few intact or nearly intact old-growth valleys left on the island, says Wright, an advocate who also recorded the sounds of marbled murrelets — a threatened species under federal law — within the same forest.

Wright measured the cedar’s diameter at 2.79 metres, a size that should have ensured protection for the tree, along with a one-hectare buffer under provincial law.

But when he returned to the area south of Gold River in June, Wright says the tree had been felled as part of a logging operation approved by the province.

“It was clearly above the threshold for what the government is supposed to be protecting and what industry is supposed to be protecting,” he said in an interview.

The tree was cut down under a system that partly relies on logging operators to report the existence of trees large enough to warrant protection. When Wright saw the yellow cedar standing, it had already been marked with spray paint. But the apparent marking did not save the tree from being cut sometime in the last year.

The Forests Ministry said it was investigating the felling after Wright’s complaint. It did not respond in time for publication when asked if it was aware of the tree before Wright’s complaint.

Rachel Holt, an independent ecologist who has advised the British Columbia government, said it is “very disturbing to see example after example” of forests with the oldest, biggest trees continue to be logged, especially those identified as containing the most at-risk and irreplaceable old-growth left in the province.