Copy link Copied Copy link Copied Subscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Already a subscriber? Login This is a tree that demands attention. Thrusting 70 metres into the sky – about the height of a 20-storey building – the towering Douglas fir has a diameter of almost four metres.
That sort of girth doesn’t develop overnight: this specimen has been sinking its roots into the rich earth of Canada’s Vancouver Island for around 1000 years. There is another reason this tree stands out. It stands alone.
A climber scales Big Lonely Doug, Canada’s second-largest Douglas fir tree near Port Renfrew, BC. © T J Watt Once sheltered by the old-growth forest that enveloped it on all sides, its sheer verticality is cast into stark relief by the stump-studded scrublands that surround it. Fourteen years ago loggers razed the entire forest save for this one survivor, dubbed Big Lonely Doug.
Doug owes his survival to a logging company surveyor who – for reasons unknown – wrapped a ribbon around its massive trunk on which were written the words “Leave tree”. “Big Lonely Doug represents both incredible beauty and incredible destruction,” says conservation photographer T.J.
Watt. Describing himself as a “big-tree hunter”, Watt spends much of his time exploring remote parts of Vancouver Island in search of the region’s last arboreal giants. Photographer and co-founder of the Ancient Forest Alliance, T J Watt.
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