New study shows Great Bear Rainforest being clearcut, not protected

April 30, 2005 - VANCOUVER – Industrial clear-cut logging is rapidly denuding the most prized areas of Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest, posing a dire threat to coastal communities, Kermode and grizzly bears, wolves, salmon and other threatened species, according to an extensive analysis to be released today by the David Suzuki Foundation.

The Suzuki Foundation’s findings on Canada’s disappearing coastal temperate rainforest will be presented at the University of Victoria tonight, at the Canadian premiere of the National Geographic film “The Great Bear Rainforest.” Dr. David Suzuki will open the event.

“Most people don’t realize that the forests on the central and north coasts and on Haida Gwaii are rapidly disappearing, despite assurances that they have been ‘saved’,” says Jim Fulton, Executive Director of the David Suzuki Foundation. “Logging corporations still have a green light to haul out the best old-growth cedar, clear-cut log in salmon watersheds and destroy the habitat of the Kermode bear.”

The Suzuki Foundation’s third annual Coastal Status Report analyzed logging plans in the region over the past four years and found that destructive forest practices are still the norm in Canada’s rainforest. Research findings include:

• 92% of small fish streams located within cutblocks are being logged to their banks, without adequate buffers
  
  
• 78% of logging in Canada’s rainforest is in old growth forests—home to majestic old growth cedar and sitka spruce
  
  
• 74% of logging in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) continues to be done by clearcutting
  
  
• 83% of logging is in critical nesting habitat of the Northern Goshawk
  
  
• 46% of logging is taking place in the region’s most productive salmon bearing watersheds – harming salmon, a staple food supply for First Nations, and vital habitat for grizzly bears, white “spirit” bears, wolves, migratory birds and endangered and threatened species.

Years of negotiations to develop a land-use plan for the Great Bear Rainforest include a package of proposed protection measures, but have yet to be ratified by the B.C. government. Unfortunately, as this package currently stands, it does not provide for long-term protection for the Great Bear Rainforest and the species that depend on it.

The proposed land-use agreement for the area would leave:

• 80% of critical Kermode (spirit bear) habitat unprotected (from logging and other forms of development)
  
  
• 65% of the most-intact and highest conservation value ecosystems unprotected
  
  
• 86% of the Timber Harvesting Land Base unprotected
  
  
• 77% of cedar old-growth forests unprotected
  
  
• 65% of the most productive salmon rivers unprotected

“What kind of protection package leaves 65 percent of our best salmon runs unprotected?” says Mr. Fulton. “The government is obviously putting the interests of forest companies well before the glaring need for conservation.”

Fulton points to an urgent need for an agreement that improves land-use standards in a measurable way, suggesting an immediate end to logging in the most vulnerable areas as a crucial first step.

“Until we have strong and legally-binding protection measurements in place, forest companies will just keep clearcutting this globally unique forest – for fire sale prices.”

The David Suzuki Foundation’s Coastal Status Report is available at www.canadianrainforests.org

Media are invited to attend the Canadian premiere of the National Geographic film “The Great Bear Rainforest” at UVic’s Farquhar Auditorium, Saturday, April 30 at 7:00pm.

For more information, or to arrange an interview, please contact:
Cheri Burda, David Suzuki Foundation, 604-721-9332
Jim Fulton, David Suzuki Foundation, 604-317-5022