NationTalk: VICTORIA – New measures to sustain the Great Bear Rainforest as one of the world’s most treasured and diverse coastal temperate forest ecosystems have been introduced.

Coastal First Nations, the Nanwakolas Council and the Ministry of Forests, have worked in partnership to identify new steps to be taken as part of strengthening implementation of ecosystem-based management in the Great Bear Rainforest, including to expand stewardship measures for key habitat for grizzly bears, Kermode (Spirit) and black bears, along with important fish habitat.

“First Nations have been resourceful, responsible managers of our forests for thousands of years,” said Dallas Smith, president, Nanwakolas Council. “Under our care, and with the systems we used, both our forests and the people and creatures who depend on them thrived. It is gratifying to work with a government that recognizes that, and is working with us to return our forests to those Indigenous-led, sustainable management systems. These new measures are a vital step on that pathway.”

The changes result from a review of a land-use order. The regulatory and policy review is a key accountability under the co-management of the Great Bear Rainforest.

“The collaborative Great Bear Rainforest agreements have already been a huge success—establishing a framework for co-governance to protect and sustainably manage our cultural sites, fish-bearing streams, wildlife habitat and old-growth forests using principles of ecosystem-based management,” said Christine Smith-Martin, CEO, Coastal First Nations-Great Bear Initiative. “These new measures strengthen what is already an inspiration worldwide for conservation, sustainable forest management and enhanced carbon sequestration, and will lead us further on a path of shared decision-making and reconciliation.”

These changes reflect provincial government’s and First Nations’ leadership commitment to continuous improvement of forest management in First Nations territories and are part of a broader responsibility to build a conservation-based economy that supports maintenance of ecological integrity and human well-being for the North-Central and South-Central Coast.

“The successful introduction of these new measures demonstrates the power of collaboration and the and benefit of working to continuously improve the ecosystem-based management model,” said Bruce Ralston, Minister of Forests. “These achievements under ecosystem-based management will inform the new Forest Landscape Planning tables to be introduced across the province and will expand First Nations co-management and public participation in forest management.”

Improvements have been made in four key areas:

• First Nations co-management: Increased oversight by First Nations of forest planning and timber harvest activity, stronger protection of Indigenous cultural heritage sites and features, and improved stewardship of key Indigenous forest values in their territories.
• Biodiversity: Improvements in the way old-growth reserves are being created, enabling First Nations to take a stronger role in their development and expedite the protection of important forest values. This work will enhance the 1.5 million hectares of protected areas and conservancies already established through legislation with an additional 1.6 million hectares to be reserved through the landscape reserve design process.
• Wildlife: Increased requirements for the protection and stewardship of habitat for regionally important wildlife, particularly in relation to grizzly bears, Kermode (Spirit) bears and black bears.
• Aquatic habitat: Strengthened requirements for protection of important fisheries watersheds, maintenance of watershed health, and stewardship of fish-bearing rivers and streams, and other important aquatic habitats and riparian forests.

These measures also support carbon sequestration and the ongoing production of carbon offsets. More than 9.4 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions have been sequestered since the implementation of the Great Bear Rainforest. Those tonnes are verified as carbon offsets and sold by First Nations through the Great Bear Rainforest Carbon Initiative. Funds generated from the sale of these offsets support a wide range of conservation stewardship, economic development and capacity building projects and continue to be an important source of revenue in support of the ecological and human well-being goals regarding the Great Bear Rainforest.

The updated Great Bear Rainforest land-use order will be accompanied by new policy guidance to better support the implementation of ecosystem-based management in the Great Bear Rainforest. A Great Bear Rainforest monitoring strategy, supported by new highly detailed landscape mapping data (also known as LiDAR), will be implemented in collaboration with key stakeholders over the next two years. This approach will strengthen the province and First Nations’ ability to track implementation and ensure our ecological and economic objectives are being met.

A backgrounder follows.

Contact:

Ministry of Forests
Media Relations
250 896-4320

BACKGROUNDER

Achieving forest resilience in the Great Bear Rainforest

Conservation finance is an important part of the Great Bear Rainforest. Through Coast Funds, First Nations have accessed $109.2 million since 2008 and invested in 439 stewardship and economic development projects in the Great Bear Rainforest and Haida Gwaii.

This has:

• created 1,253 new, permanent jobs and invested $63.5 million in local salaries;
• conducted 389 research and habitat restoration projects, benefiting 75 different species;
• launched, acquired, and expanded 123 businesses in sectors ranging from ecotourism to sustainable energy; and
• established 18 regional monitoring and Guardian Watchmen programs, which operate across more than seven million hectares of land and marine territory.

Under the  previous Great Bear Rainforest land-use order, protection of old-growth increased to 70% from 50%, and eight new special forest-management areas were introduced covering nearly 295,000 hectares. No harvesting takes place in these zones. These measures meant 85% of the forest in the Great Bear Rainforest was protected, and 15% is available for logging, supporting local jobs.

The 2023 Great Bear Rainforest land-use order builds on this this achievement by enhancing protection and stewardship of First Nations’ cultural heritage resources, freshwater ecosystems and wildlife habitat. As “landscape reserves” are completed more old growth will be mapped and reserved, along with Indigenous areas of importance, and rare and endangered ecosystems.

The Great Bear Rainforest is co-managed within a broad network of agreements, conservation finance, carbon offsets and protected areas and continues to be an innovation lab for new ideas, approaches and partnerships. The 2023 Great Bear Rainforest land-use order is established under B.C.’s Land Act, and the recent update represents the third round of improvement since 2006. The Province is committed to continuing the government-to-government collaborative approach to Great Bear Rainforest implementation, with further government-to-government reviews and updates scheduled for 2026 and every subsequent 10 years.

For more on the Great Bear Rainforest and the land-use order, visit:https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/natural-resource-stewardship/great-bear-rainforest

Contact:

Ministry of Forests
Media Relations
250 896-4320