(Christine Chourmouzis photo of large western red cedar in Municipal Forest Reserve).
Chemainus River old-growth cedar takes its place among champions
Only a few giant trees remain in North Cowichan’s Municipal Forest Reserve
An ancient western red cedar tree — thought to be the biggest and oldest of its kind in North Cowichan’s Municipal Forest Reserve — has been officially measured on the banks of the Chemainus River.
And soon the cedar will take its place in the BC Big Tree Registry, maintained by the University of British Columbia Faculty of Forestry.
The cedar stands 53.1 metres tall, has a crown spread of 13.1 metres and a breast-height diameter of 2.12 metres.
Those three calculations represent a total score of 441.
“Quite a handsome tree,” declared forest researcher Jon Degner, who led the official measurements. “It appears to be healthy; really, quite a vigorous tree.”
Degner estimated the age at 200 to 400 years.
There are thought to be only a handful of trees of this magnitude left in the heavily logged, 5,000-hectare Municipal Forest Reserve. Exact locations are not being publicized to reduce the chance of damage to the trees.
This “veteran” cedar leans out towards the river to access more sunlight. Its location on the riverbank guarantees year-round access to water and prime growing conditions.
Passed over by loggers a century or so ago, the cedar today cannot be legally harvested because it is located within a 30-metre riparian buffer of a salmon-bearing stream.
A second cedar, also notable, not far from the first attained a score of 393 points.
(Christine Chourmouzis photo of Jon Degner measuring a second cedar in MFR.)
Those numbers are no match for the old-growth trees found on the rain-drenched west coast of Vancouver Island, but remain impressive in our region.
The two trees rank ninth and 11th, respectively, among western red cedars that have been fully measured on the east coast of Vancouver Island.
The 5,000-hectare Municipal Forest Reserve — popularly known as the Six Mountains — falls within the coastal Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone, the smallest and rarest forest type in BC.
Logging and development are largely responsible for putting the forest at risk.
The Coastal Douglas-Fir Conservation Partnership is a coalition of more than 40 conservation groups and levels of government — including the BC Ministry of Forests, but not North Cowichan — committed to “promoting and protecting” the coastal Douglas-fir forest and its associated ecosystems.
This forest is found in Canada only on southeastern Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and pockets of the south-coast mainland and “contains more species at risk than any other ecological zone in BC (25 globally imperilled species and >225 species that are provincially imperilled or threatened),” the partnership says.
sixmountains.ca and Nature Cowichan president Bruce Coates originally documented the big cedar trees in January 2023.
(Christine Chourmouzis photo of towering coastal Douglas-fir near Chemainus River)
This past Easter long weekend, sixmountains.ca returned to the site with a team of experts to verify and officially record the measurement.
In addition to Degner, the team included Christine Chourmouzis, registrar for the registry, as well as Mick Bailey, a retired arborist who is a committee member of the BC Big Tree Registry and who publishes the blog, https://bctreehunter.wordpress.com/.
In addition to the cedars, the team measured a coastal Douglas-fir not far away atop a steep bluff at 452 points, including a height of 65.1 metres.
Chourmouzis also discovered a yew tree with a height of 17.1 metres.
(sixmountains.ca photo of large Pacific yew)
“This is the biggest I’ve seen on this side of the island,” Degner said. “They are a very cool tree. They can live for hundreds of years in the shade of everything else.” Bailey added: “They always seem to be hiding in plain sight…since they grow beneath the giants.”
The slow-growing Pacific yew was once over harvested as a source of the anti-cancer drug Taxol. The chemical derived from the tree’s bark has since been synthesized and it is no longer necessary to harvest wild yews.
(sixmountains.ca photo of Jon Degner using a hypsometer to measure trees).
Degner used a measuring tape to determine the circumference and calculate the diameter of the trees, and a hypsometer to estimate the height and crown spread. A hypsometer employs a laser rangefinder and clinometer to measure distances and angles.
The four trees measured by Degner’s team are expected to be posted to the BC Big Tree Registry in the fall. Learn more about the registry and how trees are measured: https://bigtrees.forestry.ubc.ca/bc-bigtree-registry/ .
In Hul’q’umi’num,’ the language of the Quw’utsun, western red cedar is xpey’, Douglas-fir is ts’sey’, and yew is tuxwa’tsulhp.
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— Larry Pynn, April 23, 2025
