Bears Forever Project
design, writing, COMMUNITY management & public ENGAGEMENT
In 2013, four First Nations on the BC Central Coast signed an historic agreement banning the trophy hunting of Grizzly, Spirit, and black bears in their territories, or what is generally known as the Great Bear Rainforest.
The Bears Forever Project was created to help these Nations galvanise public support for a trophy hunting ban by telling the moving story of a grizzly bear named Cheeky killed earlier that year by a professional hockey player.
I was responsible for designing the visual brand of the project, including the logo, website, social content and promotional merchandise.
I designed the Bears Forever logo alongside Heiltsuk artist and carver Ian Reid, who contributed the formline imagery included in the body of the mother bear.
The Bears Forever website was built on Nationbuilder (a relatively new organizing-focused CMS at the time) to help collect signups to a pro-trophy ban petition.
Along with our 22-minute documentary ‘Bear Witness’, the site allowed us to sign up 20,000 British Columbians in 5 weeks to support the cause, and helped raise the percentage of people opposed to trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest by five points to 93%.
During British Columbia’s 2017 provincial election, both leading political parties pledged to ban the trophy hunting of Grizzly and Spirit bears in the Great Bear Rainforest.
The new BC NDP government announced a ban on trophy hunting in the Great Bear Rainforest — along with a province-wide ban of the Grizzly bear trophy hunt.
