THE LIFE OF THE GREAT BEAR RAINFOREST

"British Columbian's are very fortunate. It is here that we have the opportunity to protect a forest still brimming with life, a type of forest that has already has been destroyed in so many other parts of the world. The question is: will we seize this opportunity or will we repeat the same wasteful mistakes that have wiped out ancient rainforests in other countries?"

-Tamara Stark, Greenpeace Forest Campaigner

The lush valleys of the Great Bear Rainforest represent one of the world's largest, intact areas of a forest type that has been logged to the brink of extinction elsewhere in the world. Satellite maps show that already half of the world's ancient temperate rainforests have been lost. In most cases they have been cut down for pulp and timber, then transformed into even-aged tree farms with an ensuing dramatic loss in the diversity of plant and animal life forms.

Centuries ago large areas of ancient temperate rainforest stretched along coastal areas of the western United States, Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. Today only British Columbia, Alaska and Chile have significant amounts.

In British Columbia ancient temperate rainforest once blanketed the entire coastline; today half of that original extent is gone.

A spectacular natural legacy....

The very specific set of climatic conditions found on the eastern edge of coastal temperate seas and oceans is what gives the Great Bear Rainforest so much life. Onshore winds meet coastal mountains and drop an abundance of moisture, allowing trees and plant life to prosper. These climatic conditions have nourished one of the richest and spectacular pools of life on the planet.

• Sitka spruce and red cedar trees tower 100 metres high, some as old as 1500 years.
• The Great Bear Rainforest is also home to the world's largest population of orca whales, who return every spring and summer to feast on some of the richest salmon runs in the world.
• Over a hundred species of vertebrates live in the Great Bear Rainforest, the most common large mammals being black-tailed deer, gray wolf, mountain goats and of course bears: grizzly bears, black bears and the black's rare genetic off shoot, Kermode bear or Spirit Bear. In fact, the Great Bear Rainforest contains one the world's densest populations of grizzly bears, a species which is considered vulnerable to extinction.

Because bears are the largest and widest ranging of rainforest species, if enough wilderness is conserved to preserve healthy populations, there is a good chance of protecting healthy populations of many other species as well.

Natural connections destroyed by clearcutting As with all natural systems, life in the Great Bear Rainforest is inextricably connected and interwoven. Any disruption to one part of the system can impact on the whole. For instance, destruction of a fragile salmon stream can have a profound effect on bears, eagles, and even orca whales who depend on the salmon for food. And what looks like a simple Sitka spruce tree may actually serve as a virtual apartment building for a complete spectrum of forest creatures: brown creepers under its bark, pileated woodpeckers living in a cavity, a marbled murrelet nest perched on a tree limb far from the ground.

The pattern of life in the temperate rainforest is stable and undisturbed. Some industrial foresters claim that clearcutting mimics disturbances which naturally occur in the B.C. rainforest. However a natural opening in the Great Bear Rainforest is generally less than one or two tree lengths. On the very rare occasions when large scale disturbances do occur, they never kill all the trees and remove all the wood. Even after fires the forest canopy usually remains intact, maintaining protective shade for young trees.

After a clearcut this growing process is completely disrupted. With the forest canopy eradicated, seedlings are exposed to full sunlight which harms their growth.

Clearcutting removes both dead as well as living trees. At least 56 species of mammals and birds use snags (standing dead trees) as their homes. And when a snag finally falls to the ground it becomes the home for a whole other series of plants, animals, and insects.

Eventually the dead decaying trees provide the moist, nutrient rich spongy nurse bed that new tree seedlings need to germinate and grow. Up to 97 per cent of conifer seedlings in B.C.'s rainforest grow on decaying logs, stumps or snags.

Destroying a life system we barely understand These kinds of ecological facts are the most obvious things scientists know about life in the Great Bear Rainforest, a place which remains one of the least understood forest types on the planet.

Basic scientific and biological inventories have only just begun in areas that have not been logged; but given logging companies' current plans these inventories may never be completed. Only 5.8% of low-elevation ancient temperate rainforest in B.C. is protected; and at current rates of logging most of the remaining undisturbed valleys will be clearcut within the next decade. This has caused some scientists to lament that we are burning the library before we have even read the books.