The Great Bear Rainforest

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 The Great Bear Rainforest

 Over half of the earth's original ancient forest cover is gone, much of it destroyed during the past three decades. Canada, Russia and Brazil are the only countries that still have significant areas of original forest. Together these countries house 70% o f the planet's remaining natural forests - and almost all of what remains is threatened with commercial logging. (The Last Frontier Forests: Ecosystems and Economies on the Edge, World Resources Institute, March 1997)

Clearcutting- why is it so bad?

 "Clearcutting causes two kinds of fundemental damage, one long-lasting, the other permanent. The longlasting damage is to the soil, the permanent damage is to biological diversity" Dr. C. Pielou, Professor Mathematical Ecology, ret. Clearcutting is an industrial logging practice in which the trees and plant life in a given area are removed from the forest. The cleared area is then replaced by even-aged tree farms consisting of a few, and sometimes only one, species of tree. Clearc utting is a particularly devastating logging practice in the fragile temperate rainforest. Yet recent investigation shows that 97% of all the logging in the temperate rainforest is done by clearcutting. (British Columbia's Clear Cut Code, Sierra Legal Def ence Fund, November, 1996)

The wildlife......

 British Columbia makes up less than 10% of Canada's land mass but is home to 74% of Canadian land-dwelling mammals such as black-tailed deer, Roosevelt elk, black and grizzly bears, grey wolves and mountain goats, and 70% of breeding birds such as woodpec kers, tree swallows, chickarees and owls (Clayoquot Sound Science Panel). In 1996, the British Columbia Ministry of the Environment stated that one-in- 10 plants and vertebrate animals in British Columbia is vulnerable to extinction. Logging is cited as one of the primary causes of species decline. Grizzly, black and the rare Kermode, or Spirit, bear thrive in the ancient temperate rainforest. The grizzly population in North America has decreased by half in the last century and 99 % of their habitat has been destroyed in United States. B.C. is home to 50% of Canada's grizzly population. In 1992, grizzly bears were listed as vulnerable to extinction by the federal government's Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada. Even so, B.C. has no endangered species act to protect the grizzly bear or the more than 700 other spec ies listed in the province.

The people of the First Nations....

 Archaeological studies and oral traditions show that coastal First Nations have lived in the Pacific rainforest region for at least 9,000 years, creating rich and diverse societies and using the bounty of both the rainforest and the connecting waters f or sustenance. European contact, however, has resulted in the erosion of both First Nations' culture and land. According to Ecotrust International, 44 of 68 language groups believed to have been spoken on North America's west coast at the time of contact are today extinct or spoken by fewer than ten individuals. The pattern of this cultural erosion mirrors the south to north pattern of the Europeans' movements, and reflects where old-growth rainforests have been cleared all along the Pacific coast. Today, clearcutting continues on First Nations lands often without the consent of the First Nations who have resided in these forests for millennia and on land which has never been ceded or signed away in treaty. On the central coast in the Great Bear Rainforest, few First Nations communities receive direct economic benefit from the logging. At times, as much as 90 % of the logging "benefits" have completely bypassed the region.