The past couple of summers, Bonny and I have managed to slip away for three weeks of sea kayaking in the Great Bear Rainforest, on BC’s Central Coast. I’d never paddled on the mainland north of Bella Bella before, and this year was eager to finally get up there.

What we found did not disappoint! The area is vast, and potential for paddling is huge. We found ourselves visiting First Nations villages, paddling with humpback whales, and camping with grizzly bears. We also found that although the area was recently declared “protected” by the BC government, there are a lot of threats to the integrity of the ecosystem, which still need to be resolved.

The Great Bear Rainforest has been the focus of much debate for more than fifteen years. Many people breathed a sigh of relief when they heard the news that the Great Bear was protected in February of 2006. The announcement was made with much fanfare by BC’s Premier Gordon Campbell, who was surrounded by leaders of environmental groups and First Nations leaders.

Yet although the government’s own panel of scientists recommended that 70% of the area be set aside in order to achieve a low risk to biodiversity—protecting only 40% would leave biodiversity at high risk—in the end, only 33% of the land-base was protected. This is a success story?

Conservationists have pegged their support for such a low level of protection on the promise to implement Ecosystem Based Management, or EBM. The problem is, EBM is being phased in over a 3-year period. Logging companies are using this window to target areas of high timber value, to get the wood out before they are forced to log in a more environmentally sensitive manner.

It doesn’t end there, of course. The BC government has developed a new form of protected area, called a Conservancy Area. A 1990 analysis of protected area status in BC concluded that the only meaningful form of protection in BC was a National Park or a Class A Provincial Park. The new Conservancy Area designation has been compared to a “watered-down Class B Provincial Park.”

The new designation allows for future economic developments, possibly including mining, roads to access timber adjacent to protected areas, and tourism facilities such as lodges.

Another threat that we learned about on this past trip is the proposed pipelines from Alberta’s Tar Sands project to the BC coast at Kitimat. The idea is to bring in condensate (a toxic mix of chemicals and petroleum used to dilute crude oil so it will flow through the pipeline) from Russia, pipe it over the Rocky Mountains and use it to steam the oil from the Tar Sands. A twinned pipeline would then pipe crude oil from Alberta back over the Rockies for export.

Kayakers will have no problem imagining the potential damage caused by a major oil spill in such a remote northern location, particularly after this summer’s spills in Vancouver and Robson Bight. BC has only one company with clean-up capabilities, and it is located in Vancouver. If the spill involved a shipment of condensate, the clean-up crew could not even approach the site for at least 48 hours, as the stuff is so flammable that a spark plug in an outboard motor could ignite the whole mess.

The Gitga’at First Nations of nearby Hartley Bay don’t feel a lot of confidence in the abilities of big vessels with state-of-the-art navigation technology to safely maneuver through their territorial waters—places we’ve given such names as “Squally Channel.” After all, it was the Gitga’at who came to the rescue in winter of 2006 when the BC Ferry (the Queen of the North) ran into Gil Island and sank.

The question is not if there will be a spill, but when and how big. Spills are part of the business of shipping oil. In the event of such a spill, the big question will be one of jurisdiction. Who is responsible for clean up? The builders of the pipelines say their responsibility ends where the pipeline ends—at Kitimat. The provincial government will say it is on the ocean, and thus federal jurisdiction. The feds will say it is in BC, and thus a provincial issue. And taxpayers will be left chasing after an oil tanker from goodness knows where, flying who knows what flag, and owned by a holding company registered offshore.

One thing we do know is that the BC government is unwilling to pay to get the diesel fuel out of the sunken Queen of the North, preferring to leave it to slowly leak out in dribs and drabs until rust takes over and releases whatever is left in a major leakage event. The Gitga’at are not impressed by this and feel their traditional seafood gathering sites are at risk of contamination.

This past summer, just as we were rounding a point at the south end of Whale Channel, a mound of bubbles erupted on the surface, about 50 feet behind us. Right then a huge humpback whale floated to the surface, its mouth gaping open, dozens of silver fish spilling past its yellowish baleen. I often think of that whale, and the many other humpbacks and orcas who live in Whale Channel, and wonder where they will go if their summer home becomes the site of a major oil spill.

No doubt the February 2006 announcement about protecting the Great Bear Rainforest was a good first step. But there is a lot more that needs to be done before the incredible biodiversity is truly protected from industrial development.

For more information on logging in the Great Bear Rainforest, check out: www.canadianrainforests.org. For more info on keeping the BC coastline oil-free, check out: www.notankers.ca.