On Canada's Pacific coast, between the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the Alaska border, lies one of the earth's largest remaining tracts of temperate rainforest: the 19-million-acre Great Bear Rainforest. Great Bear's amazingly diverse ecosystem is home to salmon, sea lions, eagles, wolves and bears, including the rare white Spirit Bear. It boasts gorgeous lakes and magnificent waterfalls, as well as giant cedars, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and balsam fir.

In April 2001, the government of British Columbia announced a historic agreement to establish an ecologically sound approach to land use in the Great Bear Rainforest. The agreement proposed the protection of 20 rainforest valleys untouched by logging, and a temporary ban on logging in 68 others. A remarkable collaborative effort by environmental groups, logging companies, First Nations and government officials, the agreement was largely the product of consumer pressure that environmental activists, including NRDC BioGems Defenders, put on timber companies and their large corporate lumber customers.

In February 2006, the government of British Columbia finally made good on the agreement by granting formal protection to 5 million acres of the Great Bear Rainforest. Environmental groups including NRDC continue to work toward making the Great Bear Rainforest both a model of collaborative conservation, with permanently protected areas large enough to support British Columbia's unique coastal wildlife and biodiversity, and, on a limited scale, a commercially productive forest, strictly managed according to principles of ecologically sound forestry.

Photos and adapted text are from The Great Bear Rainforest: Canada's Forgotten Coast, by Ian McAllister, Karen McAllister and Cameron Young, published by Harbour Publishing in Canada.

last revised 3.14.06