Great Bear Rainforest Hunting Negotiations To Cost Millions

VICTORIA — New information reveals ending the trophy hunt for grizzly bears in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest will cost millions of dollars, and in the meantime hunters will still be able to set their sights on the bruins.

Premier Christy Clark announced a landmark deal earlier this week to limit logging and end the commercial grizzly hunt on the central coast, which is home to rare, white spirit bears and 1000-year-old cedar forests.

Great Bear Forest to Be Massive Carbon Offset Project

In a young man's eyes the logging that laid waste to the coastal forest was akin to a military invasion.

Cameron Hill was barely a teenager when loggers descended onto Gitga'at First Nation territory in the early '80s, clear-cutting vast stands of old-growth cedar in the midst of what is now known internationally as the Great Bear rainforest.

"We still have huge blocks of our territory decimated from those clear cuts," says Hill, now 44, a band councillor and school teacher in the remote north coast village of Hartley Bay. "The land was raped while we watched, and we don't ever want to see that again."