Great Bear Rainforest

B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest is a global ecological treasure. It is home to 1,000-year-old western red cedars, trees as tall as 30-storey buildings and the rare white Kermode bear—or  “Spirit” Bear. This dazzling coastal forest is intricately linked to the ocean in a maze of fjords and inlets. It stretches from Bute Inlet on B.C.’s south coast to the Alaskan border to the north and is the traditional territory of First Nations who have lived in this ecosystem for thousands of years. Covering 6.4 million hectares, the Great Bear Rainforest represents 25 per cent of the earth’s remaining ancient coastal temperate rainforests.

Until 2006, the Great Bear Rainforest was threatened by industrial logging. Following a prolonged international campaign, an historic land use consensus was achieved in February 2006 by the B.C. government, First Nations, the forest industry, environmental groups and other stakeholders. The agreements legally protect two million hectares of the Great Bear Rainforest from logging—an area about the size of Belize. They also commit forestry companies to switch to lighter touch logging practices in the remainder of the forest. Sierra Club BC played a key role in achieving the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements. Learn about the history of this important campaign.

As Sierra Club BC and other conservation groups work towards achieving full implementation of the five-year plan agreed to by stakeholders in 2009, the Great Bear Rainforest is facing new threats. Enbridge Inc. is proposing to build a pipeline from the tar sands of northern Alberta to Kitimat, B.C. The pipeline would transport tar sands crude to Kitimat, where it would be loaded onto supertankers destined for Asia and the US. More than 200 tankers a year—two to three per week—would weave a hazardous path through an obstacle course of narrow, reef-studded channels and inlets of B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest. Learn more about the proposed pipeline and other threats to this world-renowned protected area.