About the project

"It's really a story of growth and also of hope that transpires from it," said Dr.
Bettina Van Hoven, the lead researcher from the University of Groningen in
The Netherlands, to Star reporter Sara Simpson in August of 2007, "It's not
just about preserving nature, I think it's also about respecting people and I
think that's what the Great Bear Rainforest stories really show is that
appreciation of other people's perspectives that you didn't normally think
about before."

In 2006, Van Hoven, invited OLP producers Jean Andrews and Steve Fetsch to
come to Holland where they led a video documentary workshop for Dr. van
Hoven's graduate students. Their job was to show them how to make a
documentary in the style of their oral history video, 'A Forest Returns: The
Success Story of Ohio's Only National Forest' as told by Ora Anderson'.

Inspired by Appalachian Narrator Ora Anderson's story and how it was told
on the movie screen, the Dutch producers subsequently travelled to Canada
and produced their own environmental video documentary.

'A Forest for the Future' explores the human-nature conflict surrounding the
establishment of the Great Bear Rainforest in western Canada. In 2006,
newspapers around the world announced groundbreaking conservation plans
for an area roughly the size of West Virginia, situated along the coast of
British Columbia, stretching from northern Vancouver Island to the Alaskan
border. At 6.5 million hectares (16 million acres), the Great Bear Rainforest
is one of the last and largest remaining intact temperate rainforests in the
world. The announcement was said to end the 'war in the woods', which
captured media attention from 1997 onward, when remote Roderick Island
became the scene of a confrontation between environmentalists and the
logging industry.

The Great Bear Rainforest includes over 100 unlogged watersheds, sustains
20 percent of the world's wild salmon population, and supports extraordinary
biodiversity. It is home to 68 different mammal species, genetically distinct
wolf populations, numerous bear species including the endemic white
Kermode bear and a wealth of botanical resources. It is the home territory of
24 First Nations groups who have inhabited the region for more than 10,000
years.