In the News - Great Bear Rainforest, Canada

Richer in terrestrial and aquatic life than any other region on Earth, Canada’s remote Great Bear Rainforest is a magical, and threatened, land.

Situated on Canada’s British Columbia coast between Vancouver Island and the Alaska Panhandle, the Great Bear Rainforest is the largest tract of temperate rainforest left on Earth. The 27,027 square mile territory, roughly the size of Ireland, contains some of the richest terrestrial and aquatic life on the planet, including killer whales, mountain goat, coastal wolves and sea otters.

An Uncertain Future
In 2006, a landmark agreement was passed to protect up to a third of the rainforest from logging. But the region is still threatened by those who log in unprotected areas, trophy hunt bears and over-fish the salmon and Pacific herring. Plans have also been drafted to allow supertankers carrying fossil fuels to transit Great Bear Waters – a move that opponents say will further disturb marine life and raise the specter of an ecological disaster. 

An Ancient Human Habitat
The Great Bear Rainforest has long been home to First Nation groups, with archeological evidence dating human settlement back to the end of the last Ice Age, more than 10,000 years ago. Today, the territories of 27 First Nations fall within the boundary of Great Bear Rainforest. As a marker of their history, rock art and petroglyphs are not uncommon. 

Community Revival
As the logging and fishing industries decline, a new trend towards sustainable industries can be seen, with hiking, whale watching, bear viewing and photography excursions drawing travelers to the region. 

Spirit Bear Lodge, a bear viewing operation in the Swindle Island town of Klemtu, is an ecotourism success story. Owned and operated by the Kitasoo-Xai’xais First Nation, the lodge is tied to a community-driven wildlife research project that monitors salmon numbers and bear distribution in the territory. 

Tree Kingdom 
A few of Great Bear’s forests contain as much as four times the biomass of their tropical counterparts, including the Amazon. The area is home to some of the oldest and largest tree species found anywhere, including western red cedar, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and Douglas fir, some are more than 1,000 years old. Large conifers uphold the ecosystem by capturing rain, providing a home for animals, preventing soil erosion and creating stable conditions for salmon eggs to hatch. 

Wildlife

Both grizzly and black bears live in many of the region’s river systems and estuaries, including a rare variety of black bear known as the Kermode or “Spirit Bear” – so named because of a recessive gene that gives it a white or off-white coat. The sea abutting the rainforest has a enormous amount of terrestrial species in it. The shallows of the Pacific contain a plethora of life, including dozens of fish species, marine mammals like sea otters and sea lions, and plants and kelps so numerous and thick they could comprise their own forests. Low tide often reveals a cacophony of clams, mussels, barnacles, sea stars and anemones. Let’s not forget that some of the largest mammals on Earth – humpback, fin, grey and blue whales – travel through the waters of Great Bear. 

Following the advent of whaling, the animals suffered a sharp decline and were almost hunted to extinction. But thanks to international whaling bans that began in the latter part of the 20th Century, these creatures have made a comeback. 

"Wells Gray Provincial Park, British Columbia" by Wrin at en.wikipedia. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wells_Gray_Provincial_Park,_British_Columbia.jpg#/media/File:Wells_Gray_Provincial_Park,_British_Columbia.jpg

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