Centre des m?dias

La For?t Bor?ale dans l?actualit?

Boreal forest info centre opens in city

Hanneke Brooymans
May 11, 2007 - Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON - A boreal forest information centre for North America has been established in Edmonton.

The Boreal Information Centre began as a pilot project two years ago, but has now been formally established.

It is sponsored by a coalition of scientists, forest products suppliers and buyers, conservationists and resource managers, including the Canadian Boreal Initiative, the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund-Canada, Xerox and Office Depot.

The 640 million hectares of the North American boreal forest covers more than half of Canada's land surface and reaches into much of Alaska and into northern Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. It is a nursery to billions of breeding songbirds, has thousands of freshwater lakes, but also supports the timber and energy sectors.

The centre aims to help those trying to reconcile these functions by providing mapped natural resource information to conservation organizations, governments and industry working toward protection and sustainable management of the boreal forest.

The centre is accessible to the public via the Internet at www.borealinfo.org