Qualla: Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park

Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park: Introduction

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Stepney, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1988, the chainsaws were about to enter the Carmanah Valley. MacMillan Bloedel, the logging company that held the timber rights, was preparing to clear-cut the lower watershed -- a valley that contained the tallest Sitka spruce in the world and western red cedars more than a thousand years old. Two conservationists, Randy Stoltmann and Clinton Webb, were camped out in the grove. Peter McAllister, chair of the Sierra Club of Western Canada, was helicoptered in to make the case directly to MacMillan Bloedel executives. He found that the company did not even know what their chainsaws were about to destroy. McAllister won a four-week moratorium. It was enough.

Image: Colin Stepney | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park: Cathedral of Green

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ademoor, CC BY 2.5. Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park protects some of the most extraordinary Pacific temperate rainforest remaining on Earth. The park sits on the southwestern coast of Vancouver Island, immediately adjacent to Pacific Rim National Park Reserve's West Coast Trail, within the traditio...

Image: Ademoor | CC BY 2.5

Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park: The Fight for the Valley

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Isochrone, CC BY-SA 4.0. Randy Stoltmann first saw the towering spruce of the Carmanah Valley in the early 1980s. By 1985, he was calling for the grove's protection as a National Park Centennial gift to Canada, while the Western Canada Wilderness Committee lobbied for a 500-acre landmark park. But it too...

Image: Isochrone | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park: Blockades and Chainsaws

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Stepney, CC BY-SA 4.0. The campaign was not polite. Civil disobedience led by the Ditidaht kwaabaaduw7aa7tx hereditary chief Peter Knighton, alongside conservationists and members of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, stretched well into the early 1990s. Logging company workers were caught cuttin...

Image: Colin Stepney | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park: A Park in Disrepair

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aidanwhiteley, CC BY-SA 4.0. Winning protection was only the first battle. By 2014, the extensive boardwalk trail system that allows hikers to explore the park without damaging its delicate ecosystem had fallen into dangerous disrepair. BC's provincial government repeatedly cut funding to BC Parks, leaving t...

Image: Aidanwhiteley | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park: Twice the Biomass of a Jungle

Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Stepney, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three distinct ecological subzones converge within the park. Along the coast, the spruce fringe forest is dominated by Sitka spruce adapted to withstand the magnesium salts of sea spray, alongside leatherleaf polypody fern and evergreen huckleberry. Inland, the submontane zone su...

Image: Colin Stepney | CC BY-SA 4.0