Pristine, untouched wilderness – it is hard to come by and harder to protect, but that is exactly what photographer and conservationist Ian McAllister and Pacific Wild are hoping to accomplish.
McAllister, who started Pacific Wild as a conservation group on the West Coast, has been living in and documenting the Great Bear Rainforest of the B.C. West Coast for the past 20 years. Through his books and stunning photographs of the area, the world gets a glimpse into a place that has almost no contact with humans – a truly immaculate ecosystem comprised of rain forest valleys, the archipelago and the ocean.
But in its unprotected state, numerous liquefied natural gas pipeline proposals and the well-known and staunchly opposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline threaten its 20,000 kilometres of coastline, 1,000 uninhabited islands and 2,000 wild salmon systems.
At a talk hosted by the Juniper during the Banff Mountain Book and Film Festival, McAllister said the area represents the greatest opportunity left on the planet to study island bio-geography and a chance to conserve an area before it is altered by human hands.
“These truly intact systems are not dealing with invasive species and fragmentation,” he said. “So much of the conservation effort in other parts of the world is about restoration and recovery and trying to bring these systems back, whereas we have this amazing archipelago on the coast of British Columbia that is largely intact.
“It is such an incredible ocean wilderness that we have on our coastline and it is so unexplored and virtually unprotected.”
He said Canada, with the longest coastline in the world, ranks among the bottom in terms of protecting its marine environment. With three oceans, only one per cent of the jurisdictional waters are protected.
Almost as significant as the fact the Great Bear is untouched is the fact there is mounting evidence that an ecological resurgence is underway with multiple species returning, such as humpback whales, sea otters, herring and kelp.
This resurgence, which is a great environmental success story, McAllister points to when it comes to the importance of protecting the entire area before it is touched.
“We are seeing this resurgence in life occur that people who are paying attention are amazed by – it is unexpected,” he said.
The resurgence is demonstrated by the return of whales to Caamano Sound near Hartley Bay, home of the Gitga’at First Nation. He said whale biologists Janie Wray and Hermann Meuter have seen increases in whale numbers and species types in the 11 years they have had a research station on Gil Island.
“When they first went there, they counted a few dozen humpback whales in the area, which they thought was remarkable because humpback whales were virtually extirpated from the B.C. coast,” said McAllister, adding they now count more than 300 individuals returning.
The incredible resurgence of life with whales feeding and singing in the area includes fin whales, orca and even two sightings of the northern right whale. As for the reason why, McAllister says it could be because it is in an area without acoustic pollution.
“Perhaps it is because the world’s oceans have become so acoustically polluted from shipping traffic that this is one of the last quiet refuges where whales and acoustically sensitive whales can still forage and feed and communicate, and raise their calves without having to shout over the din of tanker traffic,” he said, noting it is also an area right in the middle of proposed shipping traffic planned for the multitude of LNG and condensate refineries being contemplated in B.C.
Yet acoustic pollution and its affect on species, especially in an area where they are rebounding, is not considered part of environmental assessments when considering projects, according to McAllister. But it is the end of whales gathering in the area regardless of whether there is ever a tanker spill or not.
“We know this impact is a fact and it will happen. It is not theoretical, chronic acoustic disturbance is debilitating for a lot of species,” he said. “Today, it is still an acoustic refuge, it is still a place that is returning and it is giving us a window into days of former abundance of our oceans and we hope things continue.”
With the federal government doing virtually nothing to protect marine systems, the work is being undertaken by groups like Pacific Wild and McAllister said the exploring and mapping of underwater reef systems, for example, is going directly into a marine protected areas strategy.
“All the conservation work that is actually happening on the marine side of things is happening, really, in spite of government, so First Nations, communities, fishing groups, industry and environmental groups are working together on a marine planning process and the hope is the federal government will be brought in once it is finalized,” he said.
The outer coastal area also includes genetically diverse populations of black bears and wolves. McAllister said the river systems at the heart of these islands are dominated by black bears and not grizzly bears.
“This is a really unique black bear population that was probably separated from their continental counterparts about 350,000 to 360,000 years ago. So this is a genetically distinct coastal population of black bears and within that black bear population there is a recessive gene that allows for some to be pure white,” he said.
He said it is a different world and culture for the bears compared to mainland ones – where protecting cubs and the time and focus needed for catching fish are at odds, especially when multiple bears use the same spots to feed.
McAllister said he saw two mother bears get together to keep their cubs safe and catch fish, the sort of behaviour you would never see from bears on the mainland.
Wolves that occupy the outer archipelago, or sea wolves, he said, have been an incredible experience to study and see these systems through their eyes.
“These are genetically distinct wolves and they are distinct from other wolves in North America, not so much that they have unique genetic material, but more they have harboured and safeguarded the genetic diversity that has been lost in wolves across North America because of the long history of persecution,” he said.
“It is because they have been able to hide out on these remote islands and because the road density is so low humans haven’t had access, they have really been hidden away while their kin across North America have suffered persecution rates of 30, 40 and 50 per cent or greater, year after year.”
While mainland wolves feed on ungulates for the most part, sea wolves are intimately connected with the ocean ecosystem for survival, reinforcing for McAllister how connected the rainforest is to the water.
“In this journey I have been on in the last 20 or so years on the coast, everything always comes back to the productivity of the ocean and how the ocean is fuelling and funnelling nutrients into the rainforest,” he said. “This iconic terrestrial land mammal is actually making its living in the ocean, so they are swimming on a daily basis, often to offshore haul outs and successfully preying on seals. They are successfully preying on sea lions, they are getting a significant amount of their yearly food from beached whale carcasses and other carcasses that come up on the shore.”
Their efficiency and consistency in the ecosystem, he said, is clearly a relationship with the environment that should be measured in an evolutionary timeframe and is not a recent thing to happen.
Another example is when herring spawn mid-March under the right conditions and that can be seen in the traditional herring spawning areas of the Heiltsuk First Nation in Bella Bella on Campbell Island.
“Twelve hours later the tide goes out and there is 100 kilometres of herring spawn that is inches deep and goes from below the cedar boughs all the way down to 100 feet below sea level and we associate herring with marine mammals, so we know the whales, the dolphins, seals and rockfish are coming up from the depths to feed on herring and the eggs,” he said.
“But then there is also all the terrestrial life that comes out of the forest and feeding on these eggs and this is what has been such a remarkable part of this process, this isn’t incidental or haphazard.”
