60 million acres of continuous
forest once spanned from Alaska to Northern California, but today undisturbed
watersheds do not exist in California, Oregon, or Washington. Found, however,
on the coast of British Columbia are some of the world’s last remaining
large contiguous areas of intact, coastal temperate rainforest containing
full assemblages of large carnivores species and prolific stocks of pacific
salmon.
With a small group of students, Round River began working in the British
Columbia’s Great Bear Rainforest in 1993, in cooperation with
the Big House Society of the Heiltsuk First Nation and the Raincoast Conservation
Society. Since that time, Round River has played an important role in providing
scientific research, analysis, and educational opportunities to help guide
conservation strategies for the Great Bear Rainforest. These efforts included
the development of a Conservation Area Design (CAD) for the Central Coast,
and subsequent development of an Ecosystem Spatial Analysis for both the
North and Central Coasts with partners from the Coastal Information Team
(www.citbc.org). Together, these products have served to form the scientific
basis for negotiations over protected areas in the Great Bear.
The
Great Bear Rainforest campaign (savethegreatbear.org) celebrated an important
victory in early 2006 with an official announcement by the British Columbia
government that will result in approximately one third of the region placed
into protected status. However, as impressive as this achievement was,
the need to care for the GBR conservation values outside the new protected
areas remains a top priority. Round River continues its work in partnership
with the Rainforest Solutions Project and The Nature Conservancy on the Great
Bear Rainforest to implement the negotiated Ecosystem-based Management (EBM).
Making
EBM work for conservation will demand substantial coordination among conservation
science partners, and will require ongoing and adaptable analytical support
at multiple spatial and temporal scales. In light of these challenges and
given the experience of Round River, we have been invited to continue to
take a leading role with conservation partners in building the scientific
capacity and expertise necessary to ensure EBM is successfully implemented
in the Great Bear Rainforest. Specific objectives in include:
• Support
priority setting, decision-making, communications, fundraising, and team
cohesion, for conservation science-based activities among partners working
in the GBR;
• Execute
critical scientific analysis required to support and monitor EBM at multiple
scales;
• Support
the communication of results of scientific analyses to partners, stakeholders,
and the public.