Comments on: The Spirit Bear gets more action!

By: Darren

Darren — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:25:48 +0000

@Rebecca I’ve been meaning to comment on that, but what Raul says is true. There’s a great section on the power of renaming something for conservancy in “Made to Stick”, if I remember correctly.

By: Raul

Raul — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:23:07 +0000

@ Rebecca – that type of comment is extremely common, unfortunately. It’s the same type of comment that climate skeptics use to avoid working on emission reductions. It is true that those are charismatic, cute names for the forest to help attract attention, but that’s an issue of branding and not of lack of ethics and integrity.

For the reader in your post, I am more than happy to come over and drop this same response (or you can excerpt it from here). There is an article in the (peer reviewed) journal Cultural Geographies, in 2004, that explains the Greenpeace campaign and how the ENGO creates an image of a pristine forest. That’s not (in my view) unethical in the least. It’s just a method to connect with the general public.

The article’s reference:

Rossiter, David (2004) “The nature of protest: constructing the spaces of British Columbia’s rainforests” Cultural Geographies, Vol. 11, No. 2, 139-164

I’m more than happy to interact with your blog reader offline (via email) if he/she would like more information.

By: Rebecca

Rebecca — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:10:47 +0000

I got a very strange comment on my post about the Great Bear Rainforest… here’s an excerpt:

Where is the integrity, where are the ethics. The Great Bear Rain Forest, and the sprit bear are only figments of someone’s overworked imagination…

…Certainly there is nothing wrong with promoting the tourist interest in this great area, why I ask create artificial names, it just sounds like something dreamed up by Hollywood marketing executives.

…. Do you or anyone else know about this theory?