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. The area also supports small human communities, particularly First Nations. Once slated for clearcut logging, large areas were protected in 2006 by the signing of one of the world’s most innovative conservation agreements. This book provides a detailed account of the complex and contested process that resulted in the establishment of the GBR. It also shows how environmentalists’ deployment of a powerful actor network saved the area from status quo industrial forestry while still respecting First Nations’ right to economic development.

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Justin Page is an environmental social scientist at ERM Rescan, an environmental consulting company based in Vancouver. He has over ten years of environmental social sciences research experience in the academic and private sectors.

This is an extremely important book, not only for explaining how collaboration has been achieved at a regional scale in mid- and north BC, but also as a symbol and example of what is possible in seemingly intractable conservation “stand-offs.” It will repay study by students of environmental history and by all involved in that wide-reaching, all-encompassing field of environmental politics.

British Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 29 No. 1, Spring 2016