The Great Bear Rainforest

While it is somewhat ironic that rainforest preservation is going on North of the border, rather than to the South, Canada deserves great kudos for its creation of the Great Bear Rainforest along the coast of British Columbia. In the best practices of environmental preservation, the plan preserves a large tract of key habitat important to many threatened species (as well as to the "First Nations" of Canada) from unsustainable logging and development, and is subject to rules agreed upon collaboratively. It will have a core park area making up about 4.4 million acres, and a peripheral 11.6 million acres "an ecosystem-management plan to ensure sustainable forestry with minimal impact on the environment." Full implementation, however, is three years in the future.

The park area alone will be larger than any park in the United States outside of Alaska, and twice the size of Yellowstone National Park.