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British Columbia Grants Permanent Protection to Costal Raiforest

The government of British Columbia has agreed to formally protect more than five million acres of the Great Bear Rainforest -- one of NRDC's first BioGems and home to the world's last white-colored Spirit Bears. The decision caps a decade-long campaign waged by NRDC and our partners to safeguard this vast ancient woodland against rampant clearcutting. Nestled on Canada's Pacific Coast, between the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the Alaska border, the 19-million-acre Great Bear Rainforest is one of the Earth's largest remaining tracts of temperate rainforest. The thousand-year-old red cedars, Sitka spruce, western hemlock and balsam blanketing this swath of rugged coastline provide vital habitat for wolves, eagles, grizzlies and several hundred Spirit Bears. Found only in the Great Bear Rainforest, the Spirit Bear gets its white color from a recessive gene occurring in roughly one of every ten black bears born in the forest. The Spirit Bear figures prominently in the mythology and culture of several indigenous communities -- known as First Nations in Canada -- that have inhabited the Great Bear Rainforest for thousands of years.

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