[Mb-civic] CBC News - B.C. PROTECTS LARGE COASTAL AREA

[CBC News Online]

This email has been sent to you by harry.sifton at sympatico.ca
The following is a news item posted on CBC NEWS ONLINE
at http://www.cbc.ca/news
____________________________________________________
B.C. PROTECTS LARGE COASTAL AREA 
WebPosted Tue Feb  7 07:38:25 2006

---The B.C. government has declared more than 100 new protected zones,
raising the total in the province to more than three times the area of
Prince Edward Island.

Premier Gordon Campbell announced the new protected areas on the B.C.
coast on Tuesday. They cover 1.2 million hectares, where habitat
conservation, maintaining biodiversity, and the preservation of special
landscape, recreation and cultural heritage features are a priority. That
brings the total protected to 1.8 million hectares.

The new areas include one of the largest intact temperate rainforests
in the world, home to the Kermode or Spirit Bear, a black bear with
white fur.

"The agreement reached on these areas represents an unprecedented
collaboration between First Nations, industry, environmentalists, local
governments and many other stakeholders in how we manage the vast
richness of B.C.'s coast," Campbell said in a statement.

The protected areas are part of the 6.4-million-hectare region of B.C.'s
central and north coast, where the province on Tuesday outlined zoning
plans for land and resource management.

The deal covers a vast area of B.C.'s central coastal forest that
environmentalists have dubbed the Great Bear Rainforest, and the north
coast forest.

In some smaller areas, called biodiversity areas, limited economic
development is allowed.

In the largest sections, dubbed ecosystem-based management operating
areas, environmentally sensitive economic development that benefits local
communities will be allowed. These areas, where there could be work like
helicopter logging, account for about two-thirds of the total
6.4 million hectares.

"I think we can look forward to a world where we are actually going
to have one of the cutting-edge models for new forestry, a model that
can be looked at elsewhere in the world," said Lisa Matthaus of the
Sierra Club of Canada. "I think we will have one of the most amazing
success stories."

The land-use plan will allow limited logging, and environmental
organizations will contribute $60 million to help fund economic
initiatives such as eco-tourism. The province will add $30 million and
ask Ottawa to match it.

FROM DEC. 13, 2005: Conservationists pay more than $1 million to end
trophy bear hunt

Last year, environmentalists spent more than $1 million to buy the trophy-
hunting rights in the area.

Copyright (C) 2006 CBC. All rights reserved.