British Columbia offered 490,000 acres of the Queen Charlotte Islands to the Haida Nation yesterday in hopes of restarting treaty negotiations that were abandoned in 1995. This offer, which would require the Haida to respect all logging contracts between the provincial government and the forestry companies, also calls for a temporary suspension of the Haida land-claims lawsuit now pending in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The Haida had previously claimed more than 2.4 million acres of the island forests and were challenging the logging rights granted by the government. The Haida said they will respond fully to the new proposal shortly.
