Parks Stewardship Forum

A veteran forester refuses to cut down a mammoth, millennium-old Douglas fir on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island. The city council in nearby Victoria designates the stately Empress Hotel as heritage property. The former was an act of environmental conservation; the latter, of built heritage conservation. This essay looks at the two events in the contexts of forest management, historic preservation, climate change, and sustainability. It describes the increasing threats to old-growth and heritage trees, discusses the mitigative tools that are available, and reflects on analogies between safeguarding natural heritage and built heritage. A new management and legislative approach is needed, one that balances science with Indigenous Traditional Knowledge. Until then, advocacy will continue to lead the way. The theme may have been expressed best by an Aboriginal writer from Australia, who reacted to a proposed freeway’s threat to destroy dozens of 800-year-old trees: “Their survival and our fight to keep them alive and safe are a cultural obligation and an assertion of our sovereignty.” The present article unpacks the issues, focusing on stories from British Columbia and California, while looking at parallel experiences elsewhere.