Nov 1, 2006
The Great Bear Rainforest, stretching from Vancouver Island to the Alaska Panhandle on the wild, rugged coast of British Columbia, is that rarest of things: an unvarnished environmental victory. But as the groundbreaking agreement signed to protect it comes into force, new challenges are surfacing.
The numbers are stunning: at 15.5 million acres, this rainforest is the size of Switzerland. A third of it, about the size of New Jersey, is now entirely protected from logging (selective cutting is permitted on the rest). The Great Bear is home to only about 25,000 people — and also a fifth of all the wild salmon on the planet. It is a rugged coast of narrow fjords that reach so far in from the sea, the water becomes glassy, as though in a lake. That water reflects steep mountainsides and glacier-smoothed peaks, their flanks cloaked in untouched coastal rainforest marked here and there by lighter patches of alder where rockslides have churned the landscape. Humpback whales breach in the shadow of ancient cedars and rare spirit bears — a local variety of black bear with fine, white fur — scoop salmon from pristine rivers.
