Why there’s a registry looking for the biggest trees in BC

A map of the biggest trees in the province is growing with an increasing number added in the BC Interior in recent years.

Residents in Kamloops and the Okanagan can hit the outdoors in search of the giants and even nominate new ones they find to add to a provincial registry.

Sally Aitken is a professor in the department of Forest and Conservation at UBC who’s overseeing the registry that currently identifies almost 1,600 giant trees in BC.

“There have been a lot of nominations from the Interior in recent years, trees that were not represented to any great extent in the past,” she said. “We’re getting a lot of ponderosa pine and black cottonwood now.”

The original BC Big Tree Registry was initiated by Randy Stoltmann in 1986, who published many registry records in his book Guide to the Record Trees of British Columbia. Records were kept in a couple of boxes in the form of papers and photographs.

After changing hands a few times, the registry found a final home at the Faculty of Forestry at UBC in 2010 and it has since digitized the data and expanded its scope to help monitor and conserve big trees and educate and enlist the help of the public.

“Originally the registry focussed on the ten largest trees of each species but we expanded that,” Aitken said. “The big tree hunters back in the day were looking for the very biggest. There’s a certain amount of competition out there to find the biggest trees.

“After UBC started hosting it, we took the attitude we should get nominations of trees that are large locally, they don’t have to be in the top ten. They can be in a local community, like a big tree people care about or it could be a big tree a kindergarten class can nominate with help.”

While the focus on big trees started with Douglas fir and western red cedar, the registry has expanded to cover all tree species in the province. People can go visit the trees that are on public land and accessible, although exact locations are provided for the ones on private property.

A few years ago the province instituted a new policy around protecting the very largest trees of some species called the Special Tree Protection Regulation.

“It specifies the diameter of trees over which those trees need to be protected,” Aitken said. “They used the registry to some extent to set those limits. The requirement is very large. We’d love to see these sizes be a bit smaller because very few trees actually meet these diameters.”

Big trees that die are documented in an annual report called The Fallen Giants.

“With climate change it’s important we have a record of how long these trees are living for, there’s definitely value in the that,” Aitken said.

The faculty gets nominations from all kinds of people around the province. Aitken said more younger people are taking part.

“It’s growing really fast,” she said. “When we took over there were 310 trees listed, it’s five times larger than it was a decade ago.”

There isn’t a clear answer as to where the biggest tree in the province is located. The trees are given an overall score that takes into account the height, diameter and crown spread. Coastal and interior trees are kept on separate lists.

“You can look at the registry for the biggest that have been found but the tree with the highest score isn’t necessarily the tallest tree,” Aitken said. “Also, we still find trees in the top ten or even the top three, people are still finding them. Have we found the biggest trees out there? We don’t know that.”

Anyone wanting to nominate a tree will have to either know how to measure trees or submit an estimate of its size, get photos of the diameter and provide GPS coordinates so the faculty can send a professional out to measure it.

“If people are not sure if its worth pursuing a tree, they can estimate the diameter of it and look in the registry to see how it fits in with that species,” Aitken said.

Very specific measurement information, detailed instructions and nomination forms are found on the BC Big Tree website, along with details on the largest known trees in the province.

Check out the interactive map to find big trees in your neighbourhood here.