The Canadian boreal forest represents 25 per cent of the world’s remaining intact forests. Around 80 per cent of Canada’s boreal is intact, which is extremely rare in today’s emission-filled world.
Threats to the Forest:
The boreal forest is facing threats from logging, fires, mining, and the ways in which this interacts with climate change.
The boreal is one of the greatest conservation opportunities because there is still hope to mitigate the consequences of climate change on its forestry. But here’s the thing: it houses massive deposits of oil, gas and minerals.
Decisions to exploit it for political, economic and environmental gains are going to have repercussions for generations to come.
Home to Species:
The green ribbon makes up 75 per cent of Canada’s forests, and a quarter of the country’s total landmass. This is a habitat to most of the country’s endangered species. Threatened caribou rely on the boreal forest to protect their calves from predators, and wolverines and whooping cranes make their homes there.
There are 270 million hectares of boreal forest in Canada, which is made up of meadows, forests (including hardwoods and conifers), swamps and bogs. Then there are the bodies of water – lakes and rivers – that tie them all together.
Forest Represents a Connected World:
What occurs inside of the forest and to the boreal bleeds out to surrounding areas and the entire globe at large. Wetlands in the boreal filter water and treat waste. Birds that nest in the forest can end up migrating as far as the southern tip of South America, spreading seeds along the way and consuming insects.
The large vast lands of the boreal are refuge for wildlife species that have disappeared from their former homes. The forests rivers provide nutrients to the sea, feeding fish and stocks that feed human populations. The services that it provides to humans, quantified as “ecosystem services,” account for an estimated $93 billion per year in value.
Boreal is a Carbon Bank:
Soils, wetlands and trees in the boreal forest soak up carbon. They soak up twice as much as what is stored in tropical forests, and has a great chance of preserving that carbon for a very long time.
But this doesn’t mean that the forest is “leak proof.” When the boreal forest feels sick, it has no choice but to release the carbon back into the environment. The carbon that is stored into the boreal isn’t quarantined there indefinitely. Sure, it absorbs the carbon while it is healthy, and retains as much as it can, but it also deposits some back into the atmosphere.This means that it is both a source and a sink, depending on its state.
Burning and Logging:
When there are wildfires in the forest, it releases the carbon back into the environment because it releases the carbon from the top lays of the soil and from the trees. Logging is an entirely different problem altogether. Logging affect older trees more than fires do. Trees that are older contain more carbon, and when they are logged, they also tend to be burned, ground into pulp and release their carbon sooner than if they were left alive.
What’s next?
Well, that depends on how serious we are taking these threats. If we’re to see the boreal forest as crucial to our existence, then we will have to do a bit more than just talk about it.
