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International environmental groups and the Canadian government have collaborated on a C$120 million (€80m) fund to help fund eco-tourism and environmentally friendly businesses in Canada's Pacific coast rainforest.

The region, on the Pacific coast from Vancouver Island to the southern end of Alaska, contains some of North America's most dramatic scenery - and fewest people.

The deal is the conclusion to a long battle over protecting wilderness valleys in the area (often called the Great Bear Rainforest), which had stalled after the January 2006 election of the Conservatives, whose ecological record (and even people’s impression of it) isn’t good.

Environmentalists are keen that the deal, using private and public funds, is copied elsewhere. Much of the money will be used in small indigenous communities, where unemployment can be more than 70 percent since the (ecologically necessary) decline of the fishing and timber industries.