Port Renfrew · Vancouver Island
Before it is cut.
You can see the forest. You can't see who decides to cut it, or why.
What the public data already shows about logging around
Port Renfrew, San Juan, Gordon, Fairy, Walbran and Harris. And what is still hidden.
01 · The place
This is the forest, by watershed.
The green areas are old forest the province's own mapping treats as priority: ancient stands and big-treed old growth, drained by the San Juan, Gordon, Fairy, Walbran and Harris systems.
Salmon, drinking water, recreation and the last big trees all live downstream of how this land is managed.
02 · What has been logged
This much has been cut.
Across 0 recorded cutblocks, spread through every watershed shown. Drag the timeline to watch it fill in.
Official data only. It can miss private-land and older harvest, so the real footprint may be larger, not smaller.
03 · And it is not slowing down
The heaviest cutting is recent.
The 2010s were the biggest recorded decade at 10,905 ha. The 2020s already show 5,958 ha, and the decade is not finished.
04 · Where it should have been protected
Cut inside the deferral lines.
The province's own expert panel flagged these areas as priority to defer from logging. 0 ha of that overlap is harvest recorded in 2021 or later, after the flag.
Deferral is a recommendation, not a law, so cutting here is not proof of wrongdoing. What is missing is any public record of why it was approved.
05 · What grows back
Replanted is not restored.
cut and re-cut
Replanting is real: 0% of openings were replanted. But 0% were clearcut, and 0% of the stands with a recorded age were old or mature forest before they were cut.
Replanting grows trees, not old forest. On a normal rotation the stand is cut again long before it could become old growth, so a plantation never replaces what was removed.
06 · What you cannot see
For a single block, the public record stops here.
All of it exists somewhere inside government, just not in anything the public can open.
07 · The bill you cannot see
The timber is counted. The costs are not.
A 2021 economic study of this area found that protecting its old growth is worth about $40 million more to the public than logging it, once carbon and tourism are counted. The costs above would only widen that gap.
"But the company pays for that." Maybe. Some costs are covered through stumpage, bonds, or reforestation rules. Others, like lost recreation, carbon, and long-term fish and wildfire risk, often are not.
The point is not that nobody pays. It is that the public is never shown the full ledger, so no one outside government can tell who pays, how much, or whether the cut was worth it.
The data shows enough to ask.
Not enough to judge.
That gap is the accountability problem. Before old-growth or high-risk forest is approved, sold or cut, the public should be able to see the full cost beside the timber value. Here is where to start.
Built from official public datasets: BC Consolidated Cutblocks, the Old Growth Technical Advisory Panel priority layers, legal OGMAs, the Freshwater Atlas and BC Timber Sales schedules. No causation, illegality, or harm is claimed. Overlaps are reasons to ask for records, not proof of harm. Prepared 2026.