Event description
Step into an ancient world… right here in British Columbia and explore the magic of one of Earth’s few remaining inland temperate rainforests. Safe Haven: The Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness, an award-winning film by Damien Gillis and Valhalla Wilderness Society, highlights a globally significant rainforest near Revelstoke, B.C. The film is a culmination of eight years of devotion to protecting the forest of the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness as a new park, and a call to action for British Columbians to support the campaign.
In this 30 minute film, journey into the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness through the eyes of people who have come to know and love it intimately. Home to trees up to 2,000 years old and a significant diversity of flora and fauna, the Rainbow-Jordan is one of three remaining truly intact areas that Valhalla Wilderness Society has identified through their 23 year inland rainforest campaign. The film will be followed by a presentation by biologist and campaigner Amber Peters, RPBio, with stunning photography from 23 years of research in the inland rainforest.
More about the campaign:
Despite decades of clearcut logging, British Columbia is still home to some magnificent ancient forests, the oldest of which scientists believe may have been growing, without ever burning, since the last ice age. Their rich, intricate webs of life have evolved for thousands of years, untouched by human activity and unscathed by landscape changes over millennia. Very few of these wonders remain and much of what still stands is vulnerable to being clearcut over the coming years.
The campaign to protect three proposals of the inland rainforest follows a legacy of 50 years of conservation by the Valhalla Wilderness Society and their supporters, amounting to over half a million hectares of wilderness protected. Beginning in the early 2000’s, the Society’s inland temperate rainforest campaign set out to identify the most ecologically significant forests remaining in the Interior Wetbelt.
Produced by award-winning filmmaker Damien Gillis, Safe Haven is a sequel to the film Primeval: Enter the Incomappleux, which helped achieve protection of the Incomappleux Rainforest in 2023 after decades of research, campaigning, and attention from the international scientific community.
Exploratory research expeditions into the Rainbow-Jordan in 2017 and 2018 documented hundreds of plants, lichens and fungi, rivalling the biodiversity values of the Incomappleux. With ancient cedar bear dens, wetlands with amphibian life, and rainforest vegetation of Jurassic stature, the rainforest had no record of scientific study prior to 2017.
Valhalla Wilderness Society’s three proposals of the Inland Rainforest (The Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness, Selkirk Mountains Ancient Forest and Quesnel Lake Wilderness park proposals) have been carefully studied and mapped to propose protection of the richest forests the Society has identified in 23 years of research in the Interior Wetbelt. The proposals encompass some of the very last and best of B.C.’s old growth, providing an opportunity for parks tourism, research and education, among countless ecological benefits.
Admission by donation.
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