Protected temperate rainforest · Canada · 6,400,000 hectares
Great Bear Rainforest
The forest where the white bear walks.
Great Bear Rainforest: the numbers, sourced
As of July 2026.
- 3.1 million hectares — 85% of the forest put permanently off-limits to industrial logging by the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement. Province of British Columbia, February 2016.
- 2012 / 2017 / 2022 — trophy-hunt bans: Kitasoo Xai’xais territory, then province-wide grizzly, then black bear (to protect Spirit bears). Raincoast; Coast Funds, 2012–2022.
- ~35 jobs in a village of 300 — Spirit Bear Lodge employment in Klemtu — profits return to the Nation. Coast Funds, current.
- 6.4 million hectares — the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest on Earth. Province of BC; Mongabay, current.
What was lost at Great Bear Rainforest?
The "War in the Woods": decades of industrial old-growth logging on British Columbia's central and north coast, and trophy hunters shooting the bears — including the white-coated Spirit bear, found almost nowhere else on Earth.
What brought it back?
On 1 February 2016, after twenty years of negotiation, Coastal First Nations, the Nanwakolas Council and the Province of BC signed the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement: 3.1 million hectares — 85% of the forested land base — permanently off-limits to industrial logging (Province of BC). The Kitasoo Xai'xais Nation had already banned trophy hunting in its territory in 2012; the province followed for grizzlies in 2017, and in 2022 the Kitasoo Xai'xais and Gitga'at won a black-bear hunting ban to protect the Spirit bear's genes.
What is it like now?
The Great Bear is the largest intact coastal temperate rainforest left on Earth — 6.4 million hectares of fjord, cedar and salmon stream. Guardian Watchmen patrol the territories; the Spirit Bear Research Foundation's science informs management. (Some old-growth logging continues in the 15% outside the protections — the watch is not over.)
Who does the work?
Spirit Bear Lodge in Klemtu is owned and run by the Kitasoo Xai'xais Nation itself — around 35 jobs in a village of 300, with profits returning to the Nation (Coast Funds). This is conservation travel where the host community and the conservation authority are the same people.
How do you visit Great Bear Rainforest?
Go with the Nation: Spirit Bear Lodge's guides take you into their own territory for the white bear, the whales and the old villages. Nimmo Bay, family-run at the forest's southern edge, is the other door.
Or have the whole journey designed for you — or anchor at Nimmo Bay.
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