Discovery Islands Primary Forest Inventory

The Discovery Islands are on the northern edge of the Coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone and the southern edge of the Coastal Western Hemlock biogeoclimatic zone. Both of these zones have less than 10 percent old forest remaining, which equates to a high risk of biodiversity loss.

There are still some areas of intact primary forest (with or without large and very large old trees) by which we mean areas that have never had roads built into them and have not been logged. They may have undergone some natural disturbance, such as fire, within the last century. We are creating an inventory of  such areas from drone and ground surveys.

We are concentrating our efforts on the occurrence of such forest in what the ministry of forests calls the "Timber Harvesting Land Base" to ensure that these areas are left intact, including the younger trees interspersed in these areas of primary forest. Almost all Crown land on the Discovery Islands is currently within the THLB. The exception is provincial parks and ecological reserves.

We are also creating a database of large old trees that were left standing after logging.

Please help us map primary forest on all the Discovery Islands, and if you know of individual large trees that don't appear on the map above, please contact us with the details.