The Great Bear Rainforest and the continued threat of Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipelines

For more than a decade Greenpeace and its partner conservation organizations, First Nations, the government of British Columbia (B.C.) and the forest products industry has been trying to implement a set of agreements aimed at protecting the Great Bear Rainforest, the world’s largest intact coastal temperate rainforest. We have succeeded in setting aside about half of the old-growth forest from industrial logging, with much more work to be done for further protection.

Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipelines project, however, threatens to undo all the hard conservation work we and others have undertaken over the years. The project also threatens to overshadow ongoing work for increased conservation and community well-being. The pipeline would run across British Columbia from Alberta’s tar sands, and oil supertankers would ply B.C.'s turbulent coastal waters to receive the oil at Kitimat.

Greenpeace has been vocal and supportive of First Nations and many others who resist this project, a potentially massive environmental disaster in the making.

Thankfully there are also other voices beyond our region now expressing concern and opposition to the project and its impact on the Great Bear Rainforest and on the people who rely on its healthy lands and waters.

Recently, U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) launched its “Big Oil Threatens the Spirit Bear Coast” video. The video, narrated by well-known actor Kevin Bacon who publicly supports the campaign, profiles Enbridge and how the Great Bear Rainforest, home of the rare Spirit Bear, is threatened by the Northern Gateway project.

NRDC is focussing on the rare Spirit Bear in their campaign against the Enbridge pipeline because, as they explain:

The Spirit Bear is one of North America’s greatest wildlife treasures. Native only to the coastal rainforest of Canada’s British Columbia, it is a race of black bears in which a recessive gene causes one out of ten cubs to be born all white. But Big Oil has other plans for the land of the Spirit Bear. The Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed by energy giant Enbridge, would carry 500,000 barrels a day of the world’s dirtiest oil from the Alberta tar sands directly through the bear’s rainforest home.

A serious pipeline break could happen at any time as a river of toxic oil is pumped from the Alberta tar sands across the spectacular mountains and rivers of British Columbia. But it gets worse: When that oil reaches the Spirit Bear Coast, it will be loaded onto supertankers that will have to navigate treacherous reefs, hurricane-force winds and a channel six times narrower than the passage that sank the Exxon Valdez!

Those oil-laden tankers will need to pass Princess Royal Island, the last stronghold of the Spirit Bear, as they churn through wildlife-filled waters that are home to orcas, humpbacks, fin whales and Steller sea lions.

The project is in its early stages and can still be defeated. Enbridge's Northern Gateway Pipelines proposal is subject to evaluation by the Joint Review Panel (JRP), as mandated by the Federal Minister of the Environment and the National Energy Board. Over 4,000 people have registered to speak as intervenors at the upcoming JRP hearings. As it is estimated that it will take months to hear every comment, Natural Resources Minister, Joe Oliver, declared at this year's APEC meeting in Hawaii his desire to ‘expedite the process' – a serious development which threatens to undermine what little there is of a public consultation process. Regardless, due to all the public interest and the will and desire of the public to speak at the hearings, the Northern Gateway Pipelines project will likely be delayed.

The Union of British Columbia Municipalities have opposed both Enbridge's project and oil tanker traffic on the BC coast. Over 70 First Nations and 80 per cent of British Columbians oppose the pipeline project. Public opposition is significant and palpable.

Although the BC Government has played a central role in protecting a significant amount of the Great Bear Rainforest it has remained loudly silent on the Enbridge pipeline proposal. This is disconcerting and odd. Its major investment in the Great Bear Rainforest on behalf of the public might all be for nought, given the environmental risks of the overall Enbridge project.

How the B.C. Government will meet its commitment to protect the Great Bear Rainforest without actively opposing Enbridge's Northern Gateway project remains a huge question for us.

The B.C. Government has, however, the opportunity to align itself with the vast majority of people and municipalities who oppose the pipeline proposal.

Please join Greenpeace and NRDC and send B.C. Premier Christy Clark a message to demand that her government both actively oppose the Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipelines project and enact a ban on oil tankers in B.C. coastal waters.