Save Fairy Creek: The battle over Western Canada's ancient forests

A woman, who is among activists trying to stop the logging of old growth timber, sits in a tripod perch in order to hinder her arrest on a blockade at Waterfall camp in the Fairy Creek area of Vancouver Island, near Port Renfrew, British Columbia, Canada May 27, 2021. Picture taken May 27, 2021. REUTERS/Jen Osborne

CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - Nolan Paquette started working part-time at his local sawmill more than 20 years ago while still at school, pushing a broom on the clean-up team. Now 38, Paquette drives trucks and operates machinery at the same Western Forest Products-owned mill in Duke Point, Nanaimo, the third generation of his family to work in forestry on British Columbia's Vancouver Island.

He is one of 38,000 workers in Canada's westernmost province whose job, according to the industry, depends on the logging of towering old-growth trees, such as cedars, Douglas firs and western hemlocks aged at least 250 years, and in some cases more than a thousand.