Canadian Forests Need Better Protection

mossy forestThe Globe and Mail reports that a group of 1,500 scientists from around the world will be releasing a letter today urging Canada to better protect our forests.

According to The Globe and Mail article Scientists plead for protection of forests by Bill Curry:

The scientists’ letter points out that forests absorb and store carbon dioxide, playing a key role in the fight against climate change. Global warming concerns are based on predictions that human-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The boreal forest, a green band primarily made up of coniferous trees, stretches from Alaska to Newfoundland and from the northern tundra to a varying southern edge that touches Lake Superior and Lake Huron.

“We are concerned that current conservation planning efforts are insufficient to sustain the ecological integrity of Canada’s Boreal region, one of the most intact ecosystems left in the world,” the letter states. “Specifically, the amount of land in protected status within the Canadian Boreal, now at under 10 per cent, is inadequate and must be markedly increased.”

How will this play out: will it be discussed in the House of Commons? Will it influence the environmental legislation concerning climate change?

Comments

  1. Perhaps the worst story of the effect of global warming on northern forests is the devasation of the mountain pine beetle in British Columbia. There is a good and sobering article on this disaster and its epidemic proportions in the April issue of “The Walrus” http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2007.04-business-red-rush/1/