Catchacoma
The Catchacoma forest is a unique, unprotected area of Crown land buttressed against Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park located at the north end of Catchacoma Lake. Watch our Wilderness Committee video here.
AFER has done a great deal of work here in the summer of 2019 and 2020, concluding that this area is the largest known old-growth Eastern Hemlock stand remaining in Canada.
This area is not currently protected, and more studies are required to fully understand the extent of its value as a unique old-growth stand in Canada, but what we have seen so far is definitely exceptional! There are a large number of very old Eastern Hemlock trees greater than 140 yrs old, a late-successional species indicative of an old-growth forest. We have located one Eastern Hemlock that is 375 years old! This is only one of many large Eastern Hemlocks in the Catchacoma Forest and we hope to study many more of them!
This stand is slated for another round of logging, which began in 2019 by the Bancroft Minden Forest Company. Logging is expected to begin again in 2020 at any time after mid-October. AFER is currently working with partners to develop an Ancient Forest Conservation Strategy for this special old-growth forest landscape.
