Good News For BC’s Great Bear Rainforest

A while back I posted about the Save the Great Bear project, which was a campaign to bring awareness to the public about the Great Bear Rainforest and put pressure on the government to keep a promise to protect the region. Well on the 31st of March (I know I’m slow getting to posting about this) some great news was announced. From the Vancouver Sun article:

After over a decade of eco-protests that tarnished the province’s forest products image, first nations, forest companies and environmentalists joined Tuesday in supporting the new approach, called ecosystem-based management.

Agriculture and Lands Minister Ron Cantelon said the Great Bear plan is an example to the world on managing human activity while protecting biodiversity.

“The war is over. Now we can move on in a positive way,” he said in an interview.

The 6.4-million-hectare area is roughly the size of Ireland. The plan sets aside 2.1 million hectares of land as parks and conservancies. Over the rest of the land, resource development, specifically logging, is to be based on ecosystem-based management.

Environmentalists say the new logging rules will require streams, grizzly bear habitat and half the old-growth timber to be protected.

“That adds up to another 700,000 hectares being off-limits to logging,” said Valerie Langer, of ForestEthics. Along with Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, ForestEthics negotiated the new management deal with a consortium of five forest companies and the B.C. government.

And a recap from the Eco Worldly states:

The plan’s strategy includes:

A combined land use planning area of approximately 6.4 million hectares (15.8 million acres).

A total of approximately two million hectares of protected areas are now in place, or more than twice the size of Yellowstone National Park.

$120 million Coast Opportunity Funds established, aimed at preserving the integrity of the Great Bear Rainforest for generations to come and promoting economic development opportunities for First Nations.

One-hundred-and-fourteen conservancies have been established across the Central Coast and North Coast planning regions.

A new land use zone with 21 designated Biodiversity, Mining and Tourism Areas (BMTAs) has also been established, comprising 300,000 hectares where commercial forestry and hydro-electric generation linked to the power grid are prohibited.

Low-impact logging regulations that will conserve 50 per cent of the natural range of old growth forests.

An Adaptive Management framework that will continually test and improve the EBM system.