Photographer TJ Watt has seen more than his fair share of clearcuts through his work for the Ancient Forest Alliance. Still, the sudden transformation of an old-growth forest in the Caycuse watershed on Vancouver Island into a “bleak grey landscape” caught Watt off guard.His before and after photos, published on Instagram and featured in The Guardian, also struck a nerve with the public. “I think it’s just with the before and after it’s very plain and simple: you can clearly see what was there and what was lost,” Watt told The Narwhal. “These photos are going around the world now,” he said, adding he’d just sent a gallery off to a newspaper in France.In an Instagram post that has received more than 8,900 likes, Watt noted the photos are a series he hoped to never complete. The Ancient Forest Alliance has campaigned for months, asking the province to introduce immediate and long-term measures to protect the last remaining old-growth in the Caycuse watershed around Haddon Creek, south of Lake Cowichan.Watt said the Caycuse watershed was heavily logged in the 80s and 90s, “save for a few last groves on these slopes in the upper regions of the valley, where there they’ve kind of stood, alone, for the past 10 years or so.”Now that those groves have been logged by company Teal-Jones and he has completed the photo series, Watt said he hopes the images will serve as a stark reminder of what is at stake when endangered old-growth forests are left without protection.“This is essentially what we stand to lose, every time there is more talk and log and delays from the government,” Watt said.
Source: Photos reveal scope of old-growth forest logging in B.C. | The Narwhal
