A Promise Becomes Reality in the GBR

The promise made three years ago to protect one-third of the Great Bear Rainforest has been fulfilled!  Sierra Club BC played a key role in bringing about the March 31 final agreement, which lays the foundation for a conservation-based economy in the world's largest intact temperate rainforest.

"The Great Bear Rainforest is now the most protected forest region of British Columbia," said Jens Wieting, coastal forest campaigner for Sierra Club BC. "But we must continue to meet key milestones we've set to achieve our long-term goals of full ecosystem health and thriving local communities." Read the backgrounder.

Sierra Club BC and two other environmental groups worked with the BC government, First Nations and industry leaders to ensure that agreements made in 2006 to protect the Great Bear Rainforest would be kept. In 2006, Premier Gordon Campbell announced that two million hectares of the Great Bear would be protected. He promised that his government would implement lighter-touch logging, known as ecosystem-based management, in another four million hectares by March 31, 2009.

Major Milestones

Major milestones achieved in the final agreement, after weeks of intense negotiations, are:

1. 2.1 million hectares, or 5 million acres, an area half the size of Switzerland, have been legally protected from logging;
2. $120 million is available to First Nation communities to help kick-start a new conservation economy as an alternative to logging throughout the rainforest, and;
3. A new system of ‘lighter touch’ logging, based on Ecosystem-based Management (EBM), has been legislated. This system maintains 50 per cent of the natural level of old growth forest in the region. This translates to an additional 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of forest set aside from logging.

See a map of the Great Bear Rainforest that shows protected areas.

Five-Year Plan

All parties involved in the negotiations agreed that the transition from a resource-based economy to a conservation-based economy will take more time than anticipated. Accordingly, the parties endorsed a five-year plan. Annual reports will assess progress.

The five-year plan includes:

1. Milestones for reaching 70 per cent old growth maintained over time, from 50 per cent; 
2. Ongoing science-based collaborative planning, and; 
3. Development of a reserve network outside of the protected areas.

Read our press release.

Read the Los Angeles Times story.