Great Bear Rainforest

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Grizzly cub at Knight Inlet, British Columbia, Canada

The Great Bear Rainforest is the name given by environmental groups in the 1990s to a region of temperate rain forest, specifically Pacific temperate rain forest located on the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada. The forest is 64,000 sq km (25,000 sq mile) in size, twice the size of Belgium. It spans the Pacific Coast from Vancouver Island north to Alaska. [1] It features 1,000 year old cedar trees and 90 metre tall Sitka spruce trees. [2]

Coastal rainforests are characterized by having proximity to both ocean and mountains. The offshore ocean flow into the mountain ranges causes abundant precipitation to fall on the land in between the mountains and the ocean.

The Great Bear rainforest is one of the largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest left in the world. A February 2006 agreement between the provincial government and a wide coalition of conservationists, loggers, hunters, and First Nations established a series of conservancies stretching 400 kilometres (250 miles) along the coast. The protected areas will contain 18,000 km² (4.4 million acres), twice the size of Yellowstone, and another 46,900 km² (11.6 million acres) that is to be run under a management plan that is expected to ensure sustainable forest management.

The area is home to hundreds of species, including cougars, wolves, salmon, grizzly bears, and the Kermode ("spirit") bear, a unique subspecies of the black bear, in which one in ten cubs display a recessive white colored coat .

The Canadian Government announced on 21 January 2007 that it will spend CAN$30m (US$26m, £13m) to protect this rainforest. [3] This matches a pledge made previously by the British Columbia provincial government, as well as private donations of $60 million, making the total funding for the new reserve $120 million.

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