Our Story

Pacific Wild leverages its many partnerships to influence policy, public opinion, and legislative change to more urgently support healthy and protected ecosystems that can sustain optimal biodiversity throughout the northwest Pacific region.

Pacific Wild’s founders, Karen and Ian McAllister, have been involved in wilderness and wildlife protection in British Columbia for over two decades. In the late 1980s, they worked on the frontline campaigns to protect Vancouver Island’s endangered rainforest. In 1990, the two moved north establishing a year-round base for conservation work in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest.

Their initial years of exploration of the endangered river valleys of the Great Bear Rainforest resulted in The Great Bear Rainforest, the bestselling book that is credited with sparking an international campaign to protect this area. They helped to bring international attention to the clear-cut logging destruction of B.C.’s temperate rainforest while assisting with the development of a number of conservation proposals for the remaining intact river valleys of the Great Bear. These efforts were a contribution to the 2006 Great Bear Rainforest agreements, where 30% of the landmass of the region was assigned various protected designations.