Great Bear Rainforest

The Great Bear Rainforest is a temperate rain forest on the Pacific coast of British Columbia, comprising 6.4 million hectares. It is part of the larger Pacific temperate rainforest ecoregion, which is the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the world.

The Great Bear Rainforest was officially recognized by the Government of British Columbia in February 2016, when it announced an agreement to permanently protect 85% of the old-growth forested area from industrial logging. The forest was admitted to the Queen's Commonwealth Canopy in September of the same year.

Geography


The size of the Great Bear Rainforest, also called the North and Central Coast land use planning area or the Central and North Coast LRMP area, is roughly 32000 km2. As part of the 2006 North and Central Coast Land Use Decision three new land use zones were created: Protected Areas; Biodiversity, Mining, and Tourism Areas (BMTAs); and Ecosystem-based Management Operating Areas (EBMs). As of 2009, approximately 16000 km2 of the region has been designated as protected areas (in a form called conservancies ), and 3000 km2 as BMTAs. Commercial timber harvesting and commercial hydro-electric power projects are prohibited within BMTAs.

The Great Bear Rainforest extends from the Discovery Islands in the south to the BC-Alaska boundary in the north,. It includes all offshore islands within this range except Vancouver Island and the archipelago of Haida Gwaii. Its northern end reaches up Portland Canal to the vicinity of Stewart. To the south it includes Prince Rupert, most of Douglas Channel, half of Hawkesbury Island, and part of Gardner Canal. Kitimat is outside the region, to the east. Farther south, the region includes all of the coast west and south of the Fiordland Conservancy, Kitlope Heritage Conservancy Protected Area, Tweedsmuir North and Tweedsmuir South Provincial Parks—which includes Dean Channel, Burke Channel, Rivers Inlet, and the communities of Bella Bella, Bella Coola, and Hagensborg. The southern end of the region includes Knight Inlet and Bute Inlet.

Ecology
The Great Bear Rainforest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest left in the world. The area is home to species such as cougars, wolves, salmon, grizzly bears, and the Kermode ("spirit") bear, a unique subspecies of the black bear, in which one in ten cubs displays a recessive white coloured coat.

The forest features 1,000-year-old western red cedar and 90-metre tall Sitka Spruce.

Coastal temperate rainforests are characterized by their proximity to both ocean and mountains. Abundant rainfall results when the atmospheric flow of moist air off the ocean collides with mountain ranges. Much of the Pacific coastline of North America shares this climate pattern, including portions of Alaska, British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and Northern California.

Campaign for Protection
The temperate rainforests of the Central and North Coast of mainland BC were largely unknown to conservationists as late as the 1980’s. Then Peter McAllister, an ex-chair of the Sierra Club of Western Canada, veteran forest campaigner and early advocate for boycotts against the timber industry     chartered a two-masted ship, the North Star of Herschel Island and sailed north from Victoria in the summer of 1990 with a crew of environmentalists. Their mission was to begin exploring, researching and bringing recognition to the ecological and cultural values of a significant expanse of the earth’s temperate rainforest. They alone conducted the campaign to bring protection to the Great Bear Rainforest until 1996 when many of the environmental organizations involved in the struggle to save Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island began to join the campaign.

The first order of business on every voyage was to offer support to the coastal First Nations in their struggle to take back their traditional territory from the timber industry. The inaugural expedition led immediately to the protection of the threatened Koeye River watershed, one of the most ecologically and culturally significant river systems on the Central Coast.

The expedition voyages took on board an international array of journalists, filmmakers, photographers, scientists and conservationists. Commencing with the third expedition in 1993, Peter’s family including Ian McAllister, Karen McAllister, and Bernadette Mertens McAllister became valuable team members. Mike Humphries, a WWII fighter pilot flew aerial reconnaissance, enhancing the documentation of remote logging operations while offering a birds eye view of a landscape as large as Switzerland. (“Raincoast: North Among the Fjords”). In 1994 evidence of a grizzly bear slaughter precipitated an expose of the threatened bear population.

Stories of these first years of the campaign were presented in slide shows in Western North America and Europe while those on board spread the word in newspapers, articles, journals and magazines. Articles and film documentaries brought international condemnation and the cancellation of contracts with pulp and paper producers. ("Battle for the Trees"). In 1994 Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club with a circulation 500,000 went public with the headlines “Magazine wants no part of B.C. pulp”, Excerpts from an award winning film festival documentary depicting massive clearcutting were picked up by Turner Broadcasting (CNN) and PBS. (“Legacy: Killing a Temperate Rainforest”). Hon. Jup Weber, MP of Luxembourg, a leader of the Greens, and an outspoken critic of the province’s logging practices, invited Peter McAllister to the European Parliament in Strasbourg to present evidence of the relentless over-cutting of the coastal temperate rainforest countering decades of denials by the provincial government and the timber industry.

Evolution of the name “Great Bear Rainforest”. First it was publicized as the Hidden Coast” and the “Raincoast.” In 1993 the flagship organization representing their campaign was registered as the “Raincoast Conservation Society.” Expeditions became known as “Raincoast Expeditions.”  In 1993 after the third expedition Peter McAllister came up with the first use of the “Great Bear” name in honour of the coastal grizzlies that held dominion over the unlogged salmon rivers. “Great Bear Wilderness” made its appearance in a 1994 Raincoast Conservation Society publication. In 1996 Ian McAllister added “Rainforest” to the “Great Bear” name when the Raincoast Conservation Society met with Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco to develop their international market campaign strategy.

Subsequently Raincoast’s aerial reconnaissance photography was used to convince major home building suppliers to threaten logging companies invading Heiltsuk territory with boycotts. This action was a catalyst forcing the provincial government and the timber industry to come to the table for the beginning of a long process of negotiations involving the protection of the Great Bear Rainforest. “Watershed: Canada’s Threatened Rainforest” (“Great Bear Rainforest- Ethan Sing / Peter Mcallister”).

In May 2004, after years of conflict and negotiation, the various stakeholders agreed to recommend the BC government that about 3500000 acre, about 33% of the Great Bear Rainforest, be put under some form of protection, and that new forms of ecosystem-based forestry be required throughout the rainforest. This fell short of the scientific recommendations, which had concluded that 44%–70% should be protected. The recommendation given to the BC government was a compromise solution agreed to by the many stakeholders after years of difficult negotiations. The stakeholders include provincial and local governments; many BC First Nations such as the Heiltsuk and Homalco; the ENGOs Greenpeace, ForestEthics, Rainforest Action Network, Pacific Wild, and Sierra Club BC and forestry corporations such as Canadian Forest Products, Catalyst Paper Corporation, International Forest Products, Western Forest Products; and many others.

On 7 February 2006 a comprehensive protection package was announced for the Great Bear Rainforest, which was defined to include the central and north coasts of BC and Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands). The Great Bear Rainforest Agreement included four key elements: rainforest protection, improved logging practices, the involvement of First Nations in decision making, and conservation financing to enable economic diversification. The final agreement banned logging in 33% of the Great Bear Rainforest and made a commitment to implement ecosystem-based forestry management for the entire Great Bear Rainforest by 2009.

The 2006 agreement between the BC government and a wide coalition of conservationists, loggers, hunters, and First Nations established a series of conservancies stretching 400 km along the coast. The proposed protected areas will contain 18000 km2, and another 46900 km2 that is to be run under a management plan that is expected to ensure sustainable forest management.

The Canadian government announced on 21 January 2007 that it will spend CA$30 million for protection of this rainforest. This matches a pledge made previously by the British Columbia provincial government, as well as private donations of $60 million, making the total funding for the new reserve $120 million.

In the autumn of 2008, Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC and ForestEthics (jointly known as Rainforest Solutions Project) launched an online campaign titled, "Keep the Promise," to put public pressure on Gordon Campbell, then Premier of British Columbia, to honour the Great Bear Rainforest agreement in its entirety. The groups were concerned certain aspects of the agreement, including implementation of ecosystem-based management (EBM), would not materialize in time for the government's own final implementation deadline of March 31, 2009.

Government recognition and protection


Premier Christy Clark announced on February 1, 2016, that an agreement had been reached between the government of British Columbia, First Nations, environmentalists, and the forestry industry to protect 85% of the 6.4 million hectare Great Bear Rainforest from industrial logging. The remaining 15% would still be subject to logging under stringent conditions. The agreement also recognizes aboriginal rights to shared decision-making and provides a greater economic share of timber rights and $15-million in funding to 26 First Nations in the area.

The Great Bear Rainforest (Forest Management) Act was introduced by cabinet on March 1, 2016. In September, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, visited and unveiled a plaque in the forest acknowledging its admission into The Queen's Commonwealth Canopy.

Fuel Spill
On 13 October 2016, a tugboat hauling an empty tanker barge ran aground on a reef just off the coast of Athlone Island in Seaforth Channel (52.14133°N, -128.19806°W). The reef was located in the traditional territorial waters of the Heiltsuk First Nation and within the larger Great Bear Rainforest. The tug leaked over 100,000 litres of diesel fuel and sank into the channel. By 26 October, the fuel tanks of the tug were emptied and about 101,131 litres of oily water was recovered. The fuel spill was the last major incident to occur in the region since BC Ferries' Queen of the North ran aground and sank off the coast of Gill Island on 21 March 2006.

Public outcry over the incident coupled with increased interest in preserving the ecological integrity of the rainforest helped to spur the passage of the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act on 21 June 2019, which prohibits any oil tanker from docking at any port along the North Coast of British Columbia.