Wildwood

The Pileated Woodpecker was Merve Wilkinson’s favorite bird at Wildwood and is prominently featured in the Wildwood logo.

Wildwood is an 83-acre ecoforest nestled along the shores of Quennell Lake just north of Ladysmith, British Columbia.  It lies within the traditional territories of the Stz’uminus and Snuneymuxw Coast Salish First Nations.

A rare and unique demonstration ecoforest, Wildwood is home to a good many original Coastal Douglas-firs, representing a vanishing ecosystem once abundant on Vancouver Island.  Less than .3% of these forests remain. These ancient, original trees stand among a profusion of western red-cedar, bigleaf maple, flowering dogwood and arbutus trees, and bring an amazing presence to the forest, stately in their towering height and size. 

The trees of Wildwood have been selectively harvested since 1945 in a manner that respects the needs of the forest and its species.  Yet, Wildwood represents a fully functioning ecosystem that provides purified air, water filtration, carbon sequestration and other services in an ongoing cycle of life. There has never been a need to plant replacement trees for those that were harvested –  enough seed trees are always retained, and natural regeneration is another one of those free services offered by Mother Nature.   

Wildwood also boasts a richness of wildlife, including a rare and protected colony of Little Brown Bats, giant anthills, banana and albino slugs, eagles, osprey, pileated woodpeckers, great horned owls, great blue herons, wrens, warblers and towhees.  Many indigenous plants also enrich the forest, including coralroot and rattlesnake plantain orchids, wild roses, oceanspray, salal, Oregon-grape and salmonberry, along with a myriad of mosses, lichens and fungi.