british columbia news
Tuesday, Feb 07, 2006

B.C. to declare protected area in Great Bear Rainforest

(CBC) - The B.C. government plans to declare protected an area four times the size of Prince Edward Island on Tuesday.

Premier Gordon Campbell is set to announce that 1.8 million hectares of land, including one of the largest intact temperate rainforests in the world, will be protected on British Columbia's coast.

It's an unprecedented land-use agreement between environmentalist groups, the province, First Nations and the forestry industry.

"I think we can look forward to a world where we are actually going to have one of the cutting-edge models for new forestry, a model that can be looked at elsewhere in the world," said Lisa Matthaus of the Sierra Club of Canada. "I think we will have one of the most amazing success stories."

The land-use plan will allow limited logging, and environmental organizations will contribute $60 million to help fund economic initiatives such as eco-tourism. The province will add $30 million and ask Ottawa to match it.

The deal protects a vast area of B.C.'s central and north coastal forest that environmentalists have dubbed the Great Bear Rainforest.

The area is home to the rare white Kermode bear. Last year, environmentalists spent more than $1 million to buy the trophy-hunting rights in the area.