Timber Logging in Clayoquot Sound, Canada: Community-Corporate Partnerships and Community Rights

Abstract

Clayoquot Sound, an area of about 265,000 hectares1 on the central west of Vancouver Island (known as the Central Region), is the largest contiguous area of temperate rainforest in the world. With 75 per cent of its ancient forest still intact, it is the region with the largest biomass of any intact forest system remaining on earth. Clayoquot Sound is special because of its size but also because of its relative rarity, as temperate rainforests comprised less than 0.2 per cent of the earth's land surface before clearing commenced (FOCS 2001a-f). Clayoquot Sound was declared a United Nations Biosphere Reserve in January 2000.2