New hostilities over the Great Bear Rainforest have emerged, seven months after the British Columbia government brokered a deal meant to end a battle between environmentalists and the logging industry.
This time the government is under fire from the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition, a group that boasts it has six million supporters worldwide, an animated Hollywood film in production and that is led by Simon Jackson, who in April of 2000 was named to a Time Magazine list of 60 "heroes for the planet."
The group, which drops the names of influential supporters such as Nelly Furtado, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Jane Goodall in its press releases, has accused the B.C. government of failing to follow through on a promise to protect the rare white bears found on the Central Coast.
The so-called spirit bears -- soon to be glamorized in a film illustrated by the designers of The Lion King -- are black bears with a gene that causes their fur to go white. For more than a decade, they have been an icon for environmentalists trying to stop logging of old-growth forests on the B.C. coastline north of Vancouver Island and south of the Alaska Panhandle.
Last February, the government won international praise for setting aside 1.8 million hectares in the Great Bear Rainforest. Greenpeace, ForestEthics and the Sierra Club of Canada were signatories to the deal, which was also supported by the forest industry.
But Mr. Jackson's group was noticeably absent from the press conference at which the historic agreement was unveiled -- and yesterday he broke his silence, saying the compromise left out a key area that, if logged, would compromise the genetic sustainability of spirit bears.
"Everybody thought the white bears were protected with that announcement," he said. "A lot of great steps were taken . . . but it didn't protect the spirit bear."
The deal set aside about two-thirds of the white bear's habitat, but Mr. Simon said its fatal flaw is that it left open to logging an area known as the Green watershed that is needed as a genetic buffer zone.
"What's happening now is that if logging occurs in the Green, bears will be displaced from their homes and the likely forced migration route they'll take is over to Princess Royal Island, where they'll dilute the gene pool and render the area thus far protected useless."
He said the 80,000-hectare Green wilderness must be protected or the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition will mobilize its considerable forces in an international protest.
Mr. Jackson, who's helping to produce The Spirit Bear, an animated film featuring a bear cub named Mokee, said a portion of every ticket sold -- "a figure projected to be in the millions of dollars" -- is to go toward offsetting the cost of protecting bear habitat in the area.
But if logging proceeds, he said, that money will be redirected into a global environmental campaign meant to shame the B.C. government into protecting more habitat.
He said there have even been discussions about pushing the release date of the film back one year, to 2009, to coincide with the next provincial election in B.C. and to draw the world's attention to the issue in the lead-up to the 2010 Winter Games.
B.C. Agriculture and Lands Minister Pat Bell said he is disappointed in the criticism and urged Mr. Jackson to spend more time talking with the Kitasoo First Nation, which claims the Green watershed in its traditional territory.
Although Western Forest Products is the main logging company active in the Great Bear Rainforest, the Green is being logged by a band operation, Kitasoo Forest Products.
Mr. Bell said the Kitasoo are logging to the highest environmental standards, using helicopters instead of building roads and they are leaving "a very light footprint" on the land.
He said the operation is in keeping with the February agreement, which protected key spirit bear habitat, while leaving other areas open to ecosystem-based logging.
"A tremendous amount of work went into the land-use plan for the Great Bear Rainforest. It was unprecedented when you had groups like ForestEthics, Greenpeace and others coming together," he said, noting that 25 native groups also endorsed the plan.
Grant Scott, a Kitasoo representative, said he was surprised by Mr. Simon's attack because the area being logged is not prime black or spirit bear habitat.
"We talked to him about this. We said, 'Simon, this isn't spirit bear country,' but he apparently doesn't agree," Mr. Scott said.Toronto Globe and Mail
