After roughly two decades of protests and negotiations, foresters, environmental organizations, aboriginals, and government officials have reached a landmark deal that will ban trophy hunting and logging in more than four-fifths of the rainforests along the Pacific coast of Canada.
According to AFP and Associated Press reports, the deal announced on Monday will protect the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia from rampant deforestation and prohibit hunters from pursuing game in the part of the country that is home to the rare white Kermode bear.
The agreement, which was announced by British Columbia Premier Christy Clark on Monday, will protect 85 percent of the 16 million acre (6.4 million hectare) long rainforest – the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest, according to the AP.
The remaining 15 percent of the land, which runs from the Discovery Islands north to Alaska, will be subject to some of the strictest commercial logging standards in North America, the wire services added. The deal also puts an end to region’s commercial grizzly bear hunt and calls for the establishment of protected habitats for the marbled murrelet, the northern goshawk, and the mountain goat.
‘A unique solution for a unique area’
When negotiations began approximately 20 years ago, 95 percent of the now-protected forest land was open to logging, environmentalist Richard Brooks told the AP. Now, though, industry leaders, conservationists, the government and the 26 aboriginal tribes that live in the area have taken steps to ensure that the bulk of the forest will be protected from logging activity.
Coast Forest Products Association chief executive officer Rick Jeffery explained that the deal involved a complicated series of discussions between groups with differing points of view, but that in the end, all parties were able to reach a compromise. He called it “unprecedented in the history of our province,” adding that the agreement was “a unique solution for a unique area.”
The AFP said that the compromise “applies a novel approach to conservation that recognizes the full array of interactions within an ecosystem, including humans,” and Marily Slett, chief of the Coastal First Nations, said that the tribes envisioned a future in which “ecosystems and potential developments in the Great Bear Rainforest are in balance.”
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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