Tracking the Great Bear

A detailed and conceptually rich account of how a landmark agreement was reached to save the Great Bear Rainforest.

A detailed account of the complex and contested process that resulted in the establishment of the Great Bear Rainforest in coastal British Columbia.

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.

Ken Atkinson, University of York St John:
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.

Michael S. Carolan, Professor of Sociology, Colorado State University:
Superbly researched, theoretically sophisticated, accessible, and immensely entertaining. You cannot ask for anything more from a book. Tracking the Great Bear tells a nuanced story about human-nonhuman assemblages in the constituting of the Great Bear Rainforest. It also offers one of the most lucid applications of actor-network theory that I have come across in quite some time.

Graeme Wynn, from the Foreword:
By documenting the transition from fiercely confrontational, oppositional activism to a more inclusive, collaborative, collective form of environmental politics in the development of the Great Bear Rainforest Agreement, this book shows how all of those involved in discussions, negotiations, and actions ... worked out new ways of relating to (or framed new stories about) the rainforest environment and each other. By moving beyond familiar binary conceptualizations – such as those between nature and society, science and politics, ecology and economy, and local and global – this book also challenges widely accepted ways of thinking about (storying) the environment.