The park is named after the Anglicized diitiid?aatx[3] word kwaabaaduw7aa7tx, or Carmanah, meaning "as far up as a canoe can go"[5] and John Thomas Walbran, a colonial explorer and ship's captain.

Whole portions of the trails are inaccessible due to the ecosystem's dwindling ecological integrity; both the protected reserve and non-protected adjacent areas are affected by industrial resource extraction projects such as clearcutting.

The rugged road into the main entrance of the remote park is currently being boxed in due to the rapid growth of alder trees that effectively narrow the single dirt lane from either side.

The constant traffic of fast-moving, heavy machinery disrupts the uneven road-bed, which then becomes laden with sharp rocks, potholes and washboard ripples; spare tires are a must when travelling to the park.

With that McAllister, accompanied by the Victoria office's Sharon Chow were helicoptered into the valley to show MacMillan Bloedel's Regional Forester and a couple of their executives the exceptional trees.

[18][19] With the help of Tony Gooch[20] the Sierra Club raised the money to commission a preliminary environmental assessment to alert the premier and cabinet ministers of the ecological values of the valley.

He brought up National Geographic to photograph the celebrity sitka spruce grove and show off Vancouver Island as the worst clear-cut devastation in all of the Pacific Northwest.

[21] Consequently, Nat Geo's Jim Blair photograph of Mt Paxton, clear-cut entirely right down to the sea near Kyuquot was featured as a triple page foldout in their Old Growth Forests issue.

[21][19] After climbing out of the Carmanah the Nat Geo photographer and McAllister were marooned as close to hurricane-force winds and torrential rains caused massive mudslides on the steep slope of the big clear-cut.

[18] Immediately after the moratorium was announced, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee and the Carmanah Forest Society, led by Sid Haskell, began a race to build trails into the valley while arranging transportation for the public to come and see the giant trees for themselves.

[17] The protests worked to garner more public support and fought to gain provincial funding that would enable the area to become a park and thus be protected against the long lasting and detrimental effects of deforestation.