Pacific Rim National Park is a thin strip of land along the southwestern coast of Vancouver Island. Its magnificent islands, beaches and dramatic seascapes divide into three geographically distinct park units: Long Beach (the most accessible), Broken Group Islands (about 100 islands in Barkley Sound), and the challenging 72 kilometre West Coast Trail. The first federal-provincial agreement for Pacific Rim was signed in 1970 and re- negotiated in 1987. It established Pacific Rim as a national park reserve subject to the comprehensive claim of the Nuu-chah-nulth tribal Council and the Ditidaht First Nation. The park comprises a total area of 500 square kilometres stretching across the 125 kilometres from Tofino in the north to Port Renfrew in the south. To the east of the park is the Vancouver Island Range, to the west, the Pacific Ocean. The geology and climate resulting from a combination of almost equal areas of land and water has created a coastal landscape thickly overgrown with vegetation, providing refuge for a wide variety of land animals and marine wildlife where a complex and vivid human history unfolds.