Hummingbird Lake Forest (peninsula)

The peninsula at issue

The peninsula between Waiatt Creek (left) and Hummingbird Lake (on right) is covered with an old-growth Douglas fir forest with trees around 350 years of age. 

On the north side of Hummingbird Lake, a peninsula juts to the southwest. Surrounded almost entirely by water, the striking feature contains one of Quadra Island’s finest examples of an intact old-growth Douglas-fir forest. A ring count of a recently fallen tree suggests the older trees in this forest are about 350 years old. The forest is on publicly-owned land on which a licence to cut trees was granted to Okisollo Resources. When the company was awarded a woodlot licence (WL 2031) in 2007, the company refused to put any kind of reserve on the area.

But the old-growth forest in this area is supposed to be protected under provisions of the Vancouver Island Land Use Plan’s Special Management Zone 19. That provision is still in legal effect but is being ignored by the ministry of forests and the woodlot tenure holder.

Sadly, in 2019, Okisollo began logging the old-growth forest along the north side of the lake, to the west of the peninsula.

Old-growth Douglas-fir on the peninsula

Old growth on the peninsula are as dense as can be found anywhere on the Discovery Islands

View of the peninsula old growth and Waiatt Creek from above.

A blue-listed Northern Red-Legged Frog observed in the forest on the peninsula

A healthy understory of Western Hemlock grows between the Douglas fir veterans

Growth rings on this fallen Douglas fir indicate the older trees on the peninsula are 350 years old

Hummingbird Lake empties into Waiatt Bay through Waiatt Creek, a salmon-bearing stream

The east end of Hummingbird Lake, as seen from the peninsula