Vancouver island, Clayoquot Sound, British Colombia

The rain forests are extremely rare, covering only 0,2 percent of the landscape surfaces of the Earth. They are located where the temperatures remain moderate throughout the year and where precipitations are rather significant, on average 2000 mm/year. We find them in Chile, in Tasmania, New Zealand, Norway and for approximately a half of them along the West coast of North America, from Oregon to Alaska.

These ancient temperate rain forests abound in various biologically ecosystems.

 But since the middle of XIXe century, these forests were exploited. At that time, we counted two million three hundred hectares of old temperate rain forests  whereas in 1954, after a hundred years of logging, there remains only one million six hundred. Since the cuts were multiplied to leave, in 1990, only eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand hectares. If we continue at the same rhythm, we risk to see disappearing any portion from old rain forest in the next years.