Landmark Deal Protects Over 9 Million Acres Of Canadian Rain Forest

[Sunlei]

Source: NPR

A landmark deal 10 years in the making will protect 9.1 millions acres of Canadian rain forest on the Pacific Coast of British Columbia. The protected area in the Great Bear Rainforest is about half the size of Ireland.

The new land-use order — reached between aboriginal groups known as First Nations, environmental groups and logging companies — designates 85 percent of the forest land as permanently protected from logging.

The remaining 15 percent of the forest will be "available for logging, supporting local jobs," a press statement from the British Columbia government says. The CBC says logging will be permitted there "only under conditions described as the most stringent in North America." The Great Bear Rainforest "represents the largest tracts of intact temperate rainforest on Earth," according to CBC

There are 26 First Nations in the forest area, the Globe and Mail reports. Chief Marilyn Slett is the leader of one such group, which she says has lived in the Great Bear Rainforest for more than 10,000 years. Here's her reaction, in the British Columbia government press release: "Today we celebrate the restoration and implementation of responsible land, water and resource management approaches in the Great Bear Rainforest. Ecosystem-based management is the modern term which describes what we have always believed and practised: If we use our traditional knowledge to take care of our lands, waters and resources they will take care of us. Our vision for the future is one where ecosystems and potential developments in the Great Bear Rainforest are in balance."




Read more: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/02/465307500/landmark-deal-protects-over-9-million-acres-of-canadian-rainforest

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The forest is home to a rare variant of black bear that has cream-colored fur, known as a spirit bear. As National Geographic reports, "it's found almost exclusively here in the Great Bear Rainforest."

video of a young spirit bear learning how to fish

[BlueJazz]

1. I'm very happy to see this. Living in Florida, I'm used to seeing the cockroaches (land developers)

...try to pave over every square foot of land. Canada is double cool.

[houston16revival]

2. Hope

they hire enough Dudley Do-Rights to enforce the laws.

Nothing ever stops loggers.

[Art_from_Ark]

4. I'd hope they'd hire people more competent than Dudley

That guy couldn't even capture arch villain Snidely Whiplash.

Klondike Kat had better luck capturing his arch villain

[passiveporcupine]

3. Don't let the Bundys find out about this.

[Sunlei]

5. I have envy over 9 million acres of protected lands. President O has mandated more protected lands,

then any USA President in history. Our American 'public lands' is already torn up into much smaller pieces then this.
Many states our public land map looks like a checkerboard across entire states, 640 acres blocks interspaced with 'private' land -thousands of miles of taxpayer paid barbed wire fence.

[RussBLib]

6. Canada has rain forests?

Surely not tropical rain forests, but I guess at this pace of climate change, they could have tropical rain forests in another generation or two.

[Sunlei]

7. 12,000 square miles of 'temperate rainforest'. Pristine land creates its own lovely climate.