Greenpeace Virtual Boat Tour Continues - International Delegatio

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GREENPEACE `VIRTUAL BOAT TOUR' CONTINUES
International delegation visits threatened home of rare white
Spirit Bear

(Vancouver, British Columbia) Wednesday, Sept. 23, 1998 - The
`virtual boat tour' of BC's endangered rainforests continues
today as the 52 foot sailing yacht `Freedom Dancer' visits
Princess Royal Island. Live images and reports from the site are
being transmitted daily via satellite to Greenpeace web sites
around the world.  Princess Royal, and the adjacent valleys on
the mainland coast, are key habitat for the rare white Kermode
bear, and are also scheduled for clearcut logging by Western
Forest Products in the near future.  Many scientists feel that
clearcut logging of this area poses a grave threat to the
survival of this rare subs-species of the black bear, in which
approximately 1 in 8 bears has a white coat.

"In my professional opinion,"  said bear biologist Wayne
McCrory, today at Princess Royal Island, "clearcut logging
anywhere in the rainforest will be devastating to Spirit Bear
populations over the long-term."

Western Forest Products however, denies that their logging plans
for the area present any threat to the bears.  In May of 1997 a
scientific study commissioned by WFP was released in which they
concluded, "Forest Practices Code requirements and special
management measures should ensure that logging does not cause
any decline in bear population levels.  Long term survival of
Kermode bears is not believed to be dependent upon establishment
of large wilderness reserves."

Dr. Paul Paquet, large carnivore biologist with the University
of Calgary , also spoke from Princess Royal today. "The Forest
Practices Code is enormously unsatisfactory for the conservation
of bears.  There is no doubt in my mind that we will see a
decline in populations of bear as a result of current logging
practices."

WFP has recently applied to the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
for an eco-certification label in an effort to bolster its
tarnished reputation internationally, claiming, as Chief
Forester Bill Dumont did in a June 1998 CBC interview,  that
they expect WFP operations to be certified without any
significant changes to their activities on the ground. 

The Forest Stewardship Council has never certified an old-growth
clearcutting operation, and WFP is blatantly attempting to
mislead consumers by claiming that their current operations are
FSC-certifiable. FSC Criteria 6.2 would seem to apply directly
to the Princess Royal area - "safeguards shall exists which
protect rare, threatened and endangered species and their
habitat (eg, nesting and feeding areas.)  Conservation zones and
protection areas shall be established, appropriate to the scale
and intensity of forest management and the uniqueness of the
affected resources."  

A recent analysis of WPF's forest development plans by the
Valhalla Wilderness Society shows that virtually all of the key
Spirit Bear and grizzly habitat, as well as the habitat of the
salmon these bears depend on is scheduled to be logged over the
next 20 years.

On the coast of BC, eighty per cent of the large rainforest
valleys have already been clearcut or logged. Only 20 per cent
remain untouched and half of those are scheduled to be roaded or
logged within the next 5 years.  Greenpeace is calling on the
B.C. government to place a moratorium on logging and road-
building in the remaining intact rainforest valleys of the Great
Bear Rainforest.

The virtual tour is ongoing through to October 2nd.  It can be
visited  at  http://www.greenpeacecanada.org  Photos and
interviews of both Dr. Paquet and Wayne McCrory, currently
researching Spirit Bears in the Princess Royal area, will be
uploaded to the site today.