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2003

Can Canada save one of the world's last wilderness forests?

June 30, 2003

Taylor was Chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry's Sub-committee on the Boreal Forest in 1999, when it tabled its report: Competing Realities: The Boreal Forest at Risk.

One of the world's very last wilderness forests lies within Canada's borders. Spanning more than one billion acres of forests, wetlands and plains our boreal region accounts for one-quarter of the globe's remaining intact forest lands.

As Canadians, we need to make a choice and we need to do it soon - do we want to conserve these vast and precious forests and wetlands, or do we want to lose them as so many other great wilderness forests have been lost forever?

Last week, the Canadian Boreal Initiative, a new conservation organization, released a succinct yet disturbing progress report marking a fourth anniversary. In June of 1999, as chair and deputy chair of the Senate Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest, we released an extensive report called Competing Realities: The Boreal Forest at Risk.

After two years of research and first-hand visits to forestry operations and communities within Canada's boreal region, as well as Sweden and Finland where original forests are generally only found in history books, our Subcommittee's conclusion was that the window of opportunity for preserving all of the values offered by Canada's boreal forest was closing rapidly.

We concluded that the boreal forest is under siege. In addition to climate change, the biggest threats it faces are overcutting using highly mechanized timber harvesting, along with mineral and petroleum exploration and extraction. We developed a set of 35 recommendations that we believed would enable Canada to become a true steward of this vast and precious natural resource.

Our goal was to ensure that the boreal forest within Canada's borders would last forever as a home for its inhabitants, as a source of wealth, as a playground, and as a natural heritage. Ambitious? Yes. Unattainable? We thought not, and still have some reason for hope.

The Canadian Boreal Initiative's report shows that too little has been done by governments since 1999 but at least we still have an opportunity to get it right. About 30% of Canada's boreal region is now within a kilometre of road access. That means that the vast majority remains a haven for wildlife such as woodland caribou, bears, wolves, pine martens, and billions of migratory birds who nest in the boreal every summer. But large-scale development decisions are on the horizon. In the next three to five years, they could alter the face of the boreal forest region forever.

Unlike the forests of the United States and most other nations of the world, Canada's forests are publicly owned - less than 10 per cent of the boreal region is in private hands. Governments - provincial, territorial and federal - have an important role to play in determining our use of these lands. This is a public legacy of biodiversity found in few other countries.

Our central recommendation in 1999 was that governments, working with other major stakeholders including forestry companies, First Nations and citizens groups should develop a natural landscape-based forest use regime - a regime that ensures at least 20 per cent of the boreal forest is strictly protected from industrial development and that the majority of the remainder is managed with the primary goal of conservation of biodiversity. Only 20 per cent should be intensively logged, using advanced technology to boost yields.

According to the Canadian Boreal Initiative, governments have issued reports but have yet to set out specific commitments towards achieving this goal. About one million acres per year of boreal forest - mainly old growth -- are being logged. The trees of the boreal, mainly jack and lodgepole pine, spruce, tamarack, poplars, aspen and birch, grow in northern latitudes, and regeneration is slower than further south. Access roads, not just for logging but increasingly for oil and gas exploration, are creating grid lines on once huge boreal wilderness forest tracts, especially in provinces like Alberta. These open the boreal region to easier human access - and increase the danger to wildlife, particularly large species such as caribou, bears and wolves that need large territories in which to roam safely.

Aboriginal peoples are the primary inhabitants of the boreal forest region - living in more than 600 communities and forming the majority of the boreal region's 1.4 million inhabitants. We recommended in 1999 that governments move more quickly than they have to date in addressing outstanding land claims and increase their actions to respect traditional use of the forests when allocating development rights to industry.

It is discouraging that the Canadian Boreal Initiative found that Aboriginal people continue to be largely excluded from the planning and management of forests across the country. This is a situation that must change.

Four years ago, we were convinced that the window for conserving Canada's boreal forest was beginning to close. Today, it is still open, but is closing rapidly. Conserving this vast and precious forest ecosystem is one of the most important conservation issues facing our country today. The time for action, by governments working with enlightened corporations, First Nations and conservation groups, is now.

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