Having Just returned from the June scouting trip for the Great Bear Rainforest RAVE, Cristina Speaks for a threatened landscape and way of life.

Large tankers plan to travel through fragile ecosystems on the BC coast in the Great Bear Rainforest (GBR). While a major oil spill is a leading concern, just the presence of these tankers disrupts the ecosystem on which the First Nations rely as well as many species which call the GBR home.

Photography: Cristina Mittermeier
Video: Jenny Nichols

BACKGROUND
The Athabasca tar sands in northern Alberta, Canada are arguably the world's most environmentally devastating oil extraction industries. And now there are plans to expand the tar sand operations to increase exports of oil to the United States and Asia. This would double the size of the tar sands and increase the release of green house gases and cause further impacts to the boreal environment of northern Alberta. However, the tar sands cannot expand without building a 2,000 mile pipeline across British Columbia and through the Great Bear Rainforest on BC’s wild coast. Moreover, a moratorium on large ship tankers would need to be lifted to allow the enormous vessels to ply the waters of the fragile coast to receive the oil and carry it to oil hungry Asia.

THE RAVE
The Great Bear Rainforest RAVE, a project of the International League of Conservation Photographers (iLCP) has teamed up with Pacific WILD to expose BC’s plans to lift the moratorium on tanker traffic along BC’s coast and how that could very easily lead to a repeat of the Exxon Valdez in the Great Bear Rainforest. If the tanker moratorium is left in place the pipeline cannot be built and the tar sands cannot be expanded. To do this iLCP will document the Great Bear Rainforest in photos, video, audio, and words with a special focus on the marine world. iLCP will use the collected media to generate outreach initiatives and to flood major media organizations with stories of BC’s intent to lift the moratorium on tanker traffic.

THE PHOTOGRAPHERS
The iLCP Great Bear Rainforest RAVE team will include the following iLCP Photographers. Photographer and iLCP President Cristina Mittermeier , National Geographic Photographer Paul Nicklen , World Press winner Daniel Beltra , award winning photographer Garth Lenz , Save Our Seas Chief Photographer Tom Peschak, photographer and Pacific WILD President Ian McAllister, and iLCP Photographer Neil Ever Osborne.
Guest photographers include Andy Wright, and Renee Harbers.

VIDEO TEAM
Epicocity Crew

PARTNERS INCLUDE
Pacific WILD , and The Save our Seas Foundation , LightHawk and Sierra Club BC.