Revelstoke City Council moves to protect the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness and old-growth forests

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Photo: Reanne Harvey

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 10, 2026

Revelstoke City Council moves to protect the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness and old-growth forests

Revelstoke, B.C. – Wildsight applauds the City of Revelstoke for passing a motion to bring forward a resolution to the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM), urging the province to protect the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness, just north of Revelstoke. 

“The City of Revelstoke’s support for this resolution is recognition of just how important old and ancient forests like this are,” said Reanne Harvey, Wildsight Revelstoke Branch Manager. 

“The Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness is one of the largest remaining examples of intact, low elevation, ancient inland temperate rainforest in British Columbia. It’s enormously valuable, not only for carbon storage, biodiversity and wildlife habitat, but also for tourism, recreation, and flood and fire mitigation. Protecting it would be an example of the kind of collaborative, community-based management that’s needed across British Columbia.”

The Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) first proposed that the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness should be protected in 2017, and has championed its conservation ever since. A recent VWS-petition to protect the area gathered over 840 signatures in two years, but the provincial government has so far failed to act. 

On January 16, Wildsight Revelstoke submitted a letter to city council calling on the municipality to draft a resolution for submission to the Southern Interior Local Government Association (SILGA) Convention this April and May, and subsequent UBCM Convention in September. 

The submission that passed today calls on the UBCM to push the provincial government to work with First Nations and local governments to pursue long-term protection for the Rainbow-Jordan, and other ancient and old-growth ecosystems throughout the Inland Temperate Rainforest. 

Wildsight encourages residents to support protection of the Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness by contacting provincial officials and urging their local Councillors to back the resolution at the September UBCM Convention.

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