800-year-old tree at Vancouver Island park falls to illegal loggers

[xchrom]

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/18/11756204-800-year-old-tree-at-vancouver-island-park-falls-to-illegal-loggers?lite


Torrance Coste, an activist with the Wilderness Committee on Canada's Vancouver Island, surveys the stump of an 800-year-old red cedar that poachers cut up and hauled out of Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park.

The death of an ancient cedar tree inside a remote park on Canada's Vancouver Island is being showcased by an environmental group seeking more protection against illegal loggers.

The 800-year-old tree was attacked by poachers with power saws over time at Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park, the Wilderness Committee reported Thursday. Cedar is valuable as material for roofing shingles.

The poachers, still at large, were able to cut through 80 percent of the base of the tree -- which had a diameter of nine feet -- before park staff finally noticed what was going on, Wilderness Committee campaigner Torrance Coste told msnbc.com. The damage was so severe that park staff had to fell the entire tree for safety reasons.

The park left the fallen tree at the site so that it could decompose, returning nutrients to the soil, Coste said, but since then poachers "have returned at their leisure without fear of consequence and cut up, hauled out, and taken away the tree in sections.

[cindyperry2010]

1. godamnit

[intaglio]

2. I read this headline as "...Falls ON illegal loggers"

and I make no apology for thinking "Good!"

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. This really makes me deeply sad and very pissed

I spent most of my childhood and young adult life in and around the forests of the Pac. NW, learned a deep reverance for the trees, esp. the cedars.
To me, the sound of chain saws cutting down healthy trees was always very painful.

[Magoo48]

4. Very sad indeed