Copyright © 1995 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

At the beginning of time the whole world was white with ice and snow. Then the raven came from heaven and made the world green as it is now. But he also wanted to make something to remind himself of the beginning and its whiteness. The raven went among the bears, the black bears, and made every tenth one white. That way he could look at them and remember the world as it was. And the raven issued a decree: The white bears will live here forever in peace.

The spirit bears, a rare white strain of the American black bear, that live in a natural habitat that is rich with salmon, deer, freerunning streams, and ancient Sitka spruce. The spirit bears are sacred to the Kitasoo people who live in what is now called British Columbia. The spirit bears are rainforest creatures of awesome beauty. The spirit bears are about to be clearcut out of existence.

Conservationists from around the world, led by B.C.'s Valhalla Society and the Great Bear Foundation are working with the Kitasoo to protect the habitat of the spirit bears, and have asked the B.C. Government to demarcate the land as a provincial park. The area comprises about 1,000 square miles of temperate rainforest midway up the British Columbia coast, including twothirds of Princess Royal Island, all of Swindle and Campania Islands, as well as Carter Inlet, Green Inlet, and the Khutze River estuary on the mainland coast. The Kitasoo will co-manage the park and maintain access to the land for traditional hunting, fishing, and gathering of food.

A secret report obtained by Canadian conservationists, however, indicates that the B.C. government intends to create only a very small protected area and open up everything else to logging. The report, prepared by an interagency government team, recommends a 96.5 square mile park on Princess Royal, nothing on Swindle Island and nothing on the mainland. The only large protected regions designated in the report are coastal bogs and alpineboreal mountains places with virtually no trees, and therefore of no interest to the timber industry.

Western Forest Products, a major B.C. logging company, is stepping up plans to clearcut areas within the proposed sanctuary. They have already cut a logging road through Princess Royal's ancient rainforest and the ancestral Kitasoo deerhunting grounds.

Logging in the temperate rainforest is not sustainable. The ground is too rocky and the soil too shallow to allow replanting. The old growth trees hold the soil in place and regulate the flow of water through the ground. With no trees, the huge amount of rain that falls during the wet season will wash away the land. Additionally, the destruction of watershed will endanger the five species of salmon that live in the mainland inlets and estuaries. The B.C. government and Western Forest products seem willing to lay waste to centuries of nature's work for onetime use.

Clearcut logging, which makes up 90% of logging in B.C., is fatal to the spirit bears and to the Kitasoo way of life. British Columbia needs to protect the spirit bears' entire habitat. The bears will not survive if relegated to swamps and stony mountain tops. The Kitasoo are in danger of losing their traditional economy, of losing any chance at developing a tourist trade, and of losing cultural sites including ceremonial houses, burial grounds, fish traps, and modified trees that are on land likely to end up under the chainsaw.

According to Archie Robinson, a Kitasoo hereditary chief raised on Princess Royal Island: "The quicker we get the whole park created, the better we will keep the logging companies from raping the land. We now have mining companies moving in. We need to protect all of our land, the white bear, and our herring and salmon fisheries. This has all been part of our people's survival for centuries. We do not want to see it destroyed."

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What can you do?

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Send a letter to the B.C. Minister of Environment, and to the Minister of Forests. Here is a sample:

Hon. Moe Sihota,
Minister of Environment
Hon. A. Petter,
Minister of Forests
Parliament Buildings
Victoria, B.C. V8V 1X4

I urge the government of British Columbia to create the 265,000 hectare "Spirit Bear Park" as proposed by the Valhalla Society, Great Bear Foundation, and others. I urge you to include the southern portion of Princess Royal Island, all of Swindle Island, Campania Island, and the mainland areas of Khutze, Green, and Carter Inlets.

We need a significant protected area to preserve the unique rainforest ecosystem that provides sanctuary for the white "spirit bear," as well as countless other life forms. I urge you also to preserve the land for the Kitasoo people, and recommend that the park be comanaged to allow for their traditional uses.

From Action Alert 113, October 1995 Rainforest Action Network. Commercial reproduction prohibited. Students, teachers, and activists may copy articles for limited distribution. Rainforest Action Network works to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action.