The City of Revelstoke and the Columbia-Shuswap Regional District have passed motions formalizing their intention to push the provincial government to protect an old-growth forest.

The proposed Rainbow-Jordan park would stretch 11,000 hectares, from just north of the city up to where Rainbow Creek feeds into Lake Revelstoke, on the traditional territory of the Sinixt people.

Three mountain valleys form the landscape of the area and house what is described as “ancient forests,” said Reanne Harvey, the Revelstoke manager for conservation group Wildsight, which helped spearhead the site’s protection efforts.

“It’s been in place without disturbance, human or natural, for thousands of years…. Once lost, it can’t be regained again,” Harvey said.

The Government of B.C. describes old-growth trees as those that are 250 years old in the wet coastal and Interior wet belt regions, and 140 years old in the comparatively drier Interior. Some of the cedar trees in the Rainbow-Jordan area are believed to be more than 1,800 years old.

The area was first identified and proposed for protection in 2017 by the Valhalla Wilderness Society. The organization created a documentary film about the site, called Safe Haven, that served as a call to action and sparked community support for the initiative.

Harvey said the bases of the giant trees make perfect dens for grizzly bears, and the forest is teeming with unique biodiversity, including species of lichen that have never been studied before. Mushrooms and moss cover the lumpy forest floor, she said, created by thousands of years of fallen trees left undisturbed by humans or natural events.

“It’s honestly pretty magical,” she said.

Until now, the forest’s giant trees have been spared from logging because the area is difficult to access — protected by mountains and a lake, and without roads.

But David Brooks-Hill, a Columbia-Shuswap Regional District director with jurisdiction over the Rainbow-Jordan wilderness land, said the steep slopes and lack of roads will not protect the rare temperate rainforest forever.

“As tree supply gets reduced, it might become economically viable for logging companies to go in there,” he said.

Brooks-Hill said there is a forest tenure on the Rainbow-Jordan forest, which means there is an agreement between a logging company and the B.C. government to harvest in the area.

“I think it would be more useful economically and otherwise to have it preserved as a park,” he said.

He said the forest has tourism, ecological, scientific and recreational value greater than its timber.

“Revelstoke is changing,” he said. “It was really a logging town. Now, it’s already sort of a half tourist-based town. That aspect of things, I think, is becoming more important to our economy.”

Brooks-Hill brought the motion to protect the wilderness area to the regional district after the City of Revelstoke passed its own resolution in February.

Next, the city and regional district will present the resolution at the Southern Interior Local Government Association meeting in April. If successful, it will then be presented to the resolutions committee at the Union of B.C. Municipalities meeting in September.

Then, if it passes both steps, the resolution will be presented to the provincial government.

“I don’t think issues, or opportunities like the Rainbow-Jordan need to be really polarized,” said Revelstoke city councillor Tim Palmer.

He was one of the councillors who brought the motion forward to the city after community members raised their concerns for the future of the forest.

He said right now, one of the difficulties impacting conservation is the polarization of issues surrounding ecology and the environment.

“We can actually get it protected in a way that looks after our entire community, as well as the ecosystem,” he said.

“Good economic policy is good environmental policy, which is good social policy, and good social policy is good.”