Posted on May, 01 2007

On February 7, 2006 a major agreement was announced by the Premier of British Columbia, concerning the conservation and management of forests on the coast of Canada’s Pacific province, British Columbia. The agreement covers 6.4 million hectares of the largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforest ecosystems in the world. Of these, 1.8 million ha are to be protected, and the remainder subject to Ecosystem Based Management provisions to secure ecological and social values. WWF believes these agreements represent both a local demonstration of environmental leadership and a globally significant achievement and is therefore nominating the Agreement for recognition as a Gift to the Earth. The award goes to representatives from Canada’s indigenous communities, environmental groups, forest companies and the British Columbia government, who worked for more than a decade to conserve ecologically sensitive areas of the rainforest.