Way back in the ‘dirty thirties’ a Ladysmith-area logger and landowner began searching for a better way to harvest trees, make a living, and give back to nature.

Today, nearly 70 years after Merv Wilkinson cut his first tree on his property near Yellow Point, those questions are still being asked. It’s an ongoing process reminding us that, when it comes to natural processes, the more we learn, the more we discover how much there is to know.

Merv Wilkinson is now in his mid-90s. Although he still lives on the property, he’s no longer active in its management. That torch, and the legacy of his Wildwood Forest, was passed over a decade ago to the Victoria-based The Land Conservancy—which is buying the property, and The Ecoforestry Institute, which makes the management decisions.

To the untrained eye of a non-forester there’s little to distinguish the 77 acres of the Wildwood from the second-growth forest on the properties around it, although it does includes a significant number of large Douglas fir that mark their ages in centuries, not decades. There are also other common Vancouver Island trees—red cedar, grand fir, red alder, bigleaf maple, and a few rarities, such as yew.

And plenty of stumps. That’s because, for more than a half century, Merv Wilkinson logged the forest on a five year rotation, providing him with what he described in a QuantumShift.tv interview as "A third of my income for 20 percent of my work." His other income sources included stonemasonry and building log homes, including his own.

In stark contrast to the clearcutting that dominates forestry practice in British Columbia, Merv selected single trees for harvest, an approach to forestry inspired by Scandinavian techniques he learned about from a Danish professor, Paul Boving, while taking an agriculture course at the University of British Columbia.

The single tree selection system, commonly used in other parts of Canada such as Central Ontario’s mixed hardwood forests, enables woodlot owners to manage for timber quality, biodiversity and the needs of wildlife. It’s an approach that maintains a viable forest ecosystem while putting money in its owner’s pocket.

The results of this approach are evident at Wildwood today and include those large Douglas firs mentioned earlier, which Merv retained to provide seeds for new growth and wind protection for trees coming up. He also kept numerous old ‘snags’—dead trees riddled with woodpecker holes that provide habitat for a host of birds and animals.

Jay Rastogi, employed by The Land Conservancy as Wildwood’s manager, first started helping Merv Wilkinson in the late 1990s. He explains that, over the decades, Merv changed his management strategies and priorities.

The initial priority was sustainable timber production but Merv soon became concerned about wildlife, specifically the pileated woodpecker, so he began leaving dead standing trees for their benefit. A more recent change was leaving fallen trees and branches on the ground, where they decompose and provide nutrients for future trees.

Few trees have been harvested in recent years, which Jay Rastogi explains is a conscious management decision. He points out that Wildwood’s inventory currently includes some very large, old trees, and many, many younger trees. For the time being, these younger trees will be allowed to grow, eventually yielding higher value, larger diameter timber while contributing to the overall goal of a forest composed of trees of many ages.

The purpose of the Wildwood Forest continues to evolve. Once managed primarily as a sustainable woodlot, it’s more and more becoming a place of research and education.

Jay Rastogi says one of the benefits of protecting Wildwood, through its purchase by The Land Conservancy, is "it gives us the luxury of being able to do things at a biological time scale."

"Personally, what I’m most impressed with are the changes over time," comments Jay. "A lot of it is just to get people to think in a different way. My personal goal is to get people to look at the forest in as many ways possible."

On the hot August afternoon after the interview for this story, he was doing just that—leading a dozen or so visitors through a plant identification workshop, covering such basics as using a guidebook and telling the difference between simple and compound leaves, Douglas and grand fir (in a grand fir the needles are notched and arranged horizontally while in the Douglas they’re pointed and arranged in spirals), before taking the group out for a field hike to practice their newfound skills.

The opportunities for learning at Wildwood range from such basics as helping visitors attach names to plant species to considering much more complex questions of human interaction with the environment.

A good example of this complexity is the role modern firefighting has played in the change of forest composition. Like much of the forest around it, Wildwood now includes a relatively large component of younger red cedar, a species which researchers believe comprised less of the forest before Europeans arrived on Vancouver Island.

The difference? Fire suppression. Because of their thick bark, Douglas fir are relatively protected from fire—in fact, the larger Dougas fir in Wildwood show typical scorch marks from having endured fire in their past. Red cedar, by contrast, are vulnerable to fire. They’ve been protected by efficient modern firefighting techniques and their numbers have increased.

"Fire suppression has played such a role," comments Jay Rastogi. "We are only now getting a sense of the impact on diversity. These are interesting questions to contemplate. Just the process of thinking about it influences the decisions one makes."

Although individual foresters have shown interest in what’s happening at Wildwood, the industry as a whole has not come looking for advice. As Jay Rastogi sees it, that’s because "Our economic system doesn’t have a biological basis. The challenge is not that we don’t know what to do. The challenge is that the economic system says it’s not worth doing."

Citing the recent increase in interest about sustainable local agriculture on Vancouver Island, he asks the question, "Shouldn’t we try to be wood self-sufficient too? There’s no reason the two (wood and food self-sufficiency) couldn’t go together."

If you’d like to think about such questions in the calm beauty of the Wildwood Forest you’ll find information about regular tours and workshops led by Jay Rastogi at www.ecoforestry.ca/wildwood. The website also provides a wealth of information of interest to naturalists,ww such as maps and plant lists.

To read the interview with Merv Wilkinson in Patterns of Choice, go online to www.managingwholes.com/merve.htm. To view the interview on Quantumshift.tv go to www.quantumshift.tv and search on his name.