Rainforest Solutions Project

Promoting conservation and economic alternatives in British Columbia's Great Bear Rainforest

News

WWF Gift to the Earth Award

May 10, 2007

(Vancouver, BC) – Today in Vancouver, ForestEthics, Greenpeace and Sierra Club of Canada, BC Chapter, along with coastal First Nations, several logging companies and BC Premier Gordon Campbell are accepting the World Wildlife Fund’s international Gift to the Earth Award for their collaborative work on a conservation plan for BC’s Great Bear Rainforest.

The international award recognizes the parties’ groundbreaking 2006 consensus, which will see two million hectares of rainforest protected from logging, forest companies operating under Ecosystem-Based Management and $120 million flowing to coastal communities to create new businesses and practice land stewardship.

“We’re proud that this innovative conservation solution in the Great Bear Rainforest is being internationally recognized,” said ForestEthics Director Merran Smith. “We now owe it to British Columbians and the international community to see this globally significant vision realized over the next two years.”

Full implementation of the Great Bear Rainforest conservation plan is scheduled to take place by March 2009.

“The collaboration and leadership shown by all parties in developing last year’s agreements remain key ingredients in ensuring this achievement lives up to its promise on the ground,” said Kathryn Molloy, Executive Director of Sierra Club BC.

A decade ago, the Great Bear Rainforest was the focus of widespread protest, road blockades and markets campaigns – an environmental conflict dubbed the ‘War in the Woods’ that spilled outside BC’s borders to the U.S., Europe and Japan.

“Today we are all being recognized for a decade of work building an international model of conservation,” said Bruce Cox, Executive Director of Greenpeace Canada. “This award brings the promise that, if we all continue to live up to our commitments, by 2009 the people, plants and animals of the Great Bear Rainforest will have a brilliant future.”

Read the Background Factsheet: Conservation in the Great Bear Rainforest – a Gift to the Earth