FROM THE NORTHERN END of Vancouver Island, across Queen Charlotte Strait, and up the central coast of British Columbia to the Alaskan border, the Great Bear Rainforest stretches more than 250 miles. It is a land of mist-shrouded valleys and glacier-cut fjords, old-growth forests and rich salmon streams. Encompassing 21 million acres, the Great Bear Rainforest and the islands of the Haida Gwaii are part of tie largest intact coastal temperate rain forest left on Earth. These rain forests have always been rare. Born of a complex interaction between oceans, mountains, forests and rain, they originally covered less than one-fifth of 1 percent of Earth's land surface. Today, nearly 60 percent of the original coastal temperate rain forests have been logged or developed. The Great Bear Rainforest represents one-quarter of what remains.
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