The Great Bear Rainforest: Carbon store or carbon story?

The provincial government, First Nations and environmental organizations alike have all hailed it as an ecological triumph and a shining beacon of a new economic order based on conservation principles.

Yet when it comes to talking openly about one of the hallmarks of that emerging economy -- a project that cashes in on the carbon-storing capacity of trees in the Great Bear Rainforest -- not one of the principles is anxious to talk.

Why Northern Gateway shouldn’t go near Great Bear Rainforest

BELLA BELLA, B.C.—Sometimes in life you have to witness a place firsthand to really get it.

See it. Experience it. Sense it.

I had watched a video of the channels and byways in western British Columbia that supertankers will ply if the controversial Northern Gateway Pipeline is approved. But I decided I wanted to see them up close, then form my own opinion.

A Forest Like No Other

The dense web of natural life found in the Great Bear Rainforest has earned it the deserving nickname, "Canada's Amazon."


This is the second article in a three-part series on Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. February marked the six-year anniversary of the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements, which were celebrated around the world as one of the greatest rainforest conservation stories of our time. To this day, however, half of the Great Bear Rainforest is still open to logging. Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC, and ForestEthics have launched a campaign calling on B.C. Premier Christy Clark to speed up the outstanding steps for healthy forests and thriving communities, before it’s too late. The first article in this series discussed how the Great Bear Rainforest (or “Canada’s Amazon”) is still at risk. This second article describes what makes the Great Bear Rainforest so significant – and worthy of full protection.


A narrow band of land and sea stretching along the central and northern coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is one of the largest, mostly intact coastal temperate rainforests remaining on the planet. Here, 1,000-year-old red cedars stand as tall as 20-storey buildings. Below the treetops, a thick moss-and-fern understory blankets the forest like a neon snowfall. Spirit bears, a white-furred version of black bears whose only home on the planet is within the Great Bear Rainforest, move calmly along the rivers in search of wild salmon – ghostly flashes of white against a dense green backdrop.

The War in the Woods

More than six years after a historic agreement to save the Great Bear Rainforest, the promise of protection remains unmet.

This is the first article in a three-part series on Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. February marked the six-year anniversary of the Great Bear Rainforest Agreements, which were celebrated around the world as one of the greatest rainforest conservation stories of our time. To this day, however, half of the Great Bear Rainforest is still open to logging. Greenpeace, Sierra Club BC, and ForestEthics have launched a campaign calling on B.C. Premier Christy Clark to speed up the outstanding steps for healthy forests and thriving communities, before it’s too late.


In the spring of 2009, then-agriculture and lands minister Ron Cantelon declared, “The war [in the woods] is over.” The provincial government, industry, First Nations, and environmental groups had recently renewed their commitment to protect the Great Bear Rainforest from unsustainable levels of logging. The announcement came at the start of a heated election race in British Columbia, and was quickly established as a wedge issue, with voters long-convinced that the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest on the planet (which happened to be located in their backyard) should be preserved.