B.C. to Announce Major New Park

Ending a decade-long environmental battle, British Columbia is set to announce today the creation of a park twice the size of Yellowstone along a vast coastal swath where grizzly bears and wolves now prowl under 1,000-year-old cedar trees.

The park will cover 4.4 million acres, and strict controls will protect against exploitation on an additional 10 million acres. The territory, called the Great Bear Rainforest, is the result of an alliance of loggers, environmentalists, native groups and the provincial government.

“This is aimed at trying to find a balance, where people can understand and really enjoy our wilderness and we protect our wildlife, while recognizing that people are part of the ecosystem,” Gordon Campbell, the premier of British Columbia, said in a telephone interview Monday. “We all win. I think this model will be emulated in different parts of the world.”

The agreement ends a bitter dispute over the lush coastland and islands that stretch across more than 250 miles and include most of British Columbia’s central and north coast, from the northern coast of Vancouver Island to the Alaskan border. The evergreen forest is the ancestral home of nearly a dozen native tribes, and most of it is accessible only by boat or seaplane.

The area includes eagles, grizzlies, black bears and a rare white bear called the Kermode. About 30,000 people live in small towns or on reserves.

The land already was owned by the provincial government and was slated for logging. For years, environmental groups fought to stop the clear-cutting practices they say ravaged Vancouver Island and the southern portion of the British Columbia coast. In the late 1990s, they pressed companies to boycott wood and paper from the forest, a tactic that led to negotiations.