A Kermode bear, better known as the Spirit Bear fishing in the Riordan River on Gribbell Island in the Great Bear Rainforest, B.C. on Sept. 18, 2013.JONATHAN HAYWARD/The Canadian Press
The province of British Columbia and the Kwiakah First Nation are creating a new management area in the Great Bear Rainforest that will replace commercial logging with a conservation model that generates revenue from other sources, including the sale of carbon credits.
For Kwiakah Chief Steven Dick, the agreement opens the door to a conservation economy he hopes could be a model for other Indigenous communities.
“This creates a bright future for Kwiakah members to be out on the land – where they see opportunity not only for learning but over time, creating resources for future generations,” he said.
The agreement, announced Friday, reflects increasing interest – from governments and Indigenous peoples – in conservation models that go beyond protected areas to include jobs, research and innovation. The new management area will be the ninth such area in the Great Bear Rainforest, a 6.4-million-hectare swath of forests and ocean inlets on B.C.’s north and central coast.
The region was the focus of anti-logging campaigns from the late 1990s, with First Nations and environmental groups protesting clearcut logging of a coastal rainforest that was home to old-growth trees, a rich and diverse ecosystem and the white kermode bear, also known as the Spirit Bear.
After two decades of negotiations that involved First Nations, the province, environmental groups and industry, the B.C. government in 2016 announced the Great Bear Rainforest agreement, which included new legislation and other measures to conserve 85 per cent of forest area and 70 per cent of old growth in the region.
While that agreement won praise and global attention, it had some unforeseen consequences, including stepped-up logging in Kwiakah territory as other parts of the Great Bear Rainforest were put off-limits.
Before the Great Bear Rainforest agreement was announced in 2016, up to 70 per cent of some parts of Kwiakah territory were under conservation measures, Mr. Dick said. After the agreement was announced, those protection levels dropped to 50 per cent and logging activity increased, he added.
“We were working quite closely with environmental groups to achieve that 70 per cent and that was kind of a shock,” Mr. Dick said.
Since the 2016 deal was announced, Kwiakah has been working to increase protection on its traditional territories.
Logging in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest not meeting protection promises, environmentalists say
The new M̓ac̓inuxʷ Special Forest Management Area includes 7,865 hectares of forested land within the Great Bear Rainforest. As with previous management areas, an amendment will be made to the Great Bear Rainforest (Forest Management) Act to reduce the annual allowable cut tied to the major tree farm licence in the area, Bruce Ralston, the Minister of Forests, said in a statement, adding that “any lost harvesting revenue is intended to be counteracted through the generation of carbon credits and regenerative forestry jobs.”
Tree farm licences are area-based tenures that provide harvesting rights to a given area.
B.C. has developed its own system to register forest carbon offsets, which have become part of the financing picture for the Great Bear Rainforest. To date, the primary purchaser of Great Bear Rainforest credits has been the B.C. government, which uses the credits to meet its pledge to run a carbon-neutral public service.
The B.C. government was not immediately available to provide data on how much it has spent on carbon credits. In a July update, the province said more than 9.4 million tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions have been sequestered since the implementation of the Great Bear Rainforest agreement.
The Kwiakah First Nation is one of the smallest in B.C., with only 20 registered members. In a statement, the nation said its core territory spans roughly 86,000 hectares in the southern reaches of the Great Bear Rainforest and includes Phillips Arm and Frederick Arm, ocean inlets that are home to historical village sites, all five species of Pacific salmon, Roosevelt elk and grizzly and black bears.