Stephens Island is located in Hecate Strait and includes the Ksgaxl/Stephens Islands Conservancy in the Great Bear Rainforest, about 93 miles (150 km) south-southeast of Ketchikan and 19 miles (30 km) southwest of Prince Rupert, British Columbia. The island is part of the Ksgaxl/Stephens Islands Conservancy that protects an entire island group including Prescott Island, Philip Island, Arthur Island, Skiakl Island, the Archibald Islands, and the Tree Nob Island Group.
The Ksgaxl/Stephens Islands Conservancy is part of a world-class network of protected areas along the north and central coast of British Columbia. The islands contain high-value habitats for birds, marine mammals, and marine invertebrates, and adjacent to Stephens Island there is also a rockfish conservation area. There are 37 species of rockfish caught in fisheries off the coast of British Columbia, and inshore species (which include yelloweye, quillback, copper, china, and tiger) are usually caught with hook and line gear in rocky reef habitats. Monitoring programs indicate that inshore rockfish, especially within the inland waters of Vancouver Island, are at low levels of abundance. Since 2002, Rockfish Conservation Areas have been established to mitigate further population declines. Learn more about the conservation areas here and here.
The Great Bear Rainforest is a temperate rain forest on the Pacific coast of British Columbia, comprising 15,814,744 acres (6.4 million ha), and extends from the Discovery Islands in the south to Portland Canal on the BC-Alaska boundary in the north. It includes all offshore islands within this range except Vancouver Island and the archipelago of Haida Gwaii. It is part of the larger Pacific temperate rainforest ecoregion, which is the largest coastal temperate rainforest in the world and was officially recognized by the Government of British Columbia in February 2016, when it announced an agreement to permanently protect 85 percent of the old-growth forested area from industrial logging. Explore more of Stephens Island and Hecate Strait here: