Tracking the Great Bear

Book excerpt: Encompassing millions of hectares of globally rare coastal rainforest, the Great Bear Rainforest in coastal British Columbia is home to ancient trees, rich runs of salmon, and abundant species, including the elusive white “spirit bear.” The area also supports small human communities, particularly First Nations. Once slated for clear-cut logging, large areas were protected in 2006 by the signing of one of the world’s most significant and innovative conservation agreements. Tracking the Great Bear traces environmentalists’ efforts to save the area from status quo industrial forestry, while at the same time respecting First Nations’ right to economic development. Adopting a novel theoretical approach from science and technology studies, the book explains environmentalists' success as a result of their deployment of a powerful actor-network within British Columbia’s land-use decision-making process. This book makes a significant contribution to social scientific analyses of natural resource management. Bridging the gap between interpretivist and social structural analyses, it demonstrates how the Great Bear Rainforest was made – or, rather, recreated – out of uncertain and contested links among an improbable assemblage of actors and elements.