The Boreal. To wall off, or not to wall off. That is the question. Whether it is politically wiser to bend to voters who think it is a popular concept to retreat from the bush, or to think of the advantages of a resource economy which perhaps may be wisely monitored in its environmental effects. The idea of intelligent preservation or measuring the actual impact of selective logging, for instance, practiced by three companies in Algonquin park for over 100 years, has not been visited upon. I don't see Algonquin park as a desert so far. In fact it seems to be quite a healthy forest ecology, despite the logging communities that thrive there. And the 8000 km of roads. I wonder what they were doing right that the government has to put the run on them? We don't see the government's own management of its clear cut only areas approaching any balance vis a vis regeneration, (impossible with their replanting of one species approach) or wildlife preservation. The government screws up, bends to payola from pulp and paper companies and blames industry, not themselves, for a hair brained forest and wildlife preservation regime. And when someone does it right, they don't learn from it.
Obvious Environmental Devastation - Algonquin Style
I do realize that Caribou have receded from Southern Ontario since 1950. This is largely due to hunting pressure and clear cut logging. Also the Cougar receded and for some reason now is making a comeback. Wolf bounty may have had something to do with both instances. However it should be noted that one of the best placed to trap fur bearing animals is Lake Erie, which is rather built up. In 1921 the geology team doing recon on the Manitoba-Ontario border between the 49th parallel to Hudson Bay complained that they rarely saw animal life and that most placed had no beaver or fur bearing animals of any kind. But everywhere they saw signs of traps and hunter stands. Even in that remote area of few roads and aircraft, modern man had been everywhere and devastated the wilderness with his scorched earth policy of plunder. We have a lot to learn about ecology.
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Deforestation
In contemporary times, the boreal forest has suffered little deforestation, defined as the permanent conversion of forest area to non-forest due to activities associated with agriculture, urban or recreational development, oil and gas development, and flooding for hydroelectric projects. In Alberta, the province with the largest oil and gas industry, more trees are cut for agriculture or oil and gas exploration than for timber.
In eastern Canada, over 9,000 square kilometres of peatlands and forest have been flooded over the past four decades for hydroelectric projects. Even so, the statistics don’t measure afforestation and such deforestation as is occurring is a fraction of the boreal’s 3,100,000 square kilometres. Canada as a whole has 91% of the forest cover that existed at the dawn of European settlement. More deforestation has occurred outside the boreal region, in more southerly areas of the country.
The forest sector annually harvests approximately ½ of 1% of the region. However, this is not considered deforestation by some, given that provincial laws ensure that areas harvested by the forest sector are replanted or regenerated naturally.
Biodiversity
Native species
Some trees native to the Canadian boreal include: Black Spruce, White Spruce, Balsam Fir, Larch (Tamarack), Lodgepole Pine, Jack Pine, Trembling and Large-Toothed Aspen, Cottonwood and White Birch, and Balsam Poplar. Black Spruce stands are among the lowest in biological productivity, likely due to their ability to thrive on low nutrient soils.
Wildlife and land habitat
There may be as many as five billion landbirds, including resident and migratory species. The Canadian boreal region contains the largest area of wetlands of any ecosystem of the world, serving as breeding ground for over 12 million water fowl and millions of land birds, the latter including species as diverse as vultures, hawks, grouse, doves, cuckoos, owls, nighthawks, swifts, hummingbirds, kingfishers, woodpeckers and passerines (or perching birds, often referred to as songbirds). It is estimated that the avian population of the boreal represents 60% of the landbirds in all of Canada and almost 30% of all landbirds in the United States and Canada combined.
Water and wetlands
Canada’s boreal landscape contains more lakes and rivers than any comparably sized landmass on earth. It has been estimated that the boreal region contains over 1.5 million lakes with a minimum surface area of 40,000 square metres as well as some of Canada’s largest lakes. Soft water lakes predominate in central and eastern Canada and hard water lakes predominate in Western Canada. Most large boreal lakes have cold water species of fish like trout and whitefish, while in warmer waters, species may include northern pike, walleye and smallmouth base.
Species at risk
Few species of boreal wildlife are classified under government conservation regimes as being at risk of extinction. However, the decline of some major species of wildlife is a concern and is spurring multilateral stakeholder initiatives to understand the causes of a population decline and identify potential actions to stabilize the species concerned. Woodland caribou, present in several provinces, are threatened by hunting, wolf predation, as well as habitat disturbance from forestry activities, roads, mining and exploration, pipelines and oil and gas production. The Newfoundland population of marten is threatened by habitat loss, accidental trapping and prey availability.[18]
Boreal life cycles
Natural regeneration
Since the emergence of the boreal forest after the Ice Age, a natural arboreal life cycle has emerged, whereby natural clearing mechanisms – fire, insects, disease and extreme winds – would kill off large tracts of trees and spark the necessary rebirth. New trees would grow in place of the burn ones. Species like lodgepole and jack pine have resin sealed cones. In a fire, the resin melts and the pods open, allowing their seeds to scatter so that a new pine forest will grow within two decades. It has been estimated that prior to western colonization, this renewal process occurred on average every 75 to 100 years and created even aged stands interspaced with natural fire breaks. Fire continues to cause the greatest amount of forest disturbance because of the predominance of coniferous trees whose needles are more readily combustible than the leaves and bark of deciduous trees.
Fire loss
Despite today’s sophisticated fire-spotting and fire-fighting techniques, forest fires in Canada still burn, on average, about 28,000 square kilometres of boreal and other forest area annually.
That average annual burn area is equivalent to more than three times the current annual industrial timber harvest. It can be many more times that in bad fire years.
Different parts of the boreal have different burn cycles. The drier western region, which receives lower average rainfall, is more susceptible to fire and more area is burned annually on average in the west than in central and eastern Canada.
Economic activities
Land ownership
Forest land in Canada is largely Crown land. Over 90% of the boreal forest is provincial Crown land; another 5% is federally controlled and includes national parks, First Nations reserves and national defence installations.
Industrial activity
About 1,400 communities within the Boreal region rely on resource industries for at least part of the livelihood and stability. Many of these communities were carved out of the forest to support a sawmill, pulp and paper mill, mine or railway maintenance facility. Boreal forestry activities support almost 400,000 direct and indirect jobs across Canada. Forestry, pulp and paper, mining, and oil and gas exploration and development are the largest industries along with tourism, trapping, recreation, light manufacturing and the services to support industry and communities.
The forest products sector is one of Canada’s largest export industries, representing approximately 3% of GDP, with about half of the annual wood harvest coming from the boreal forest.
Roughly one quarter of the boreal forest is managed for industrial forestry. The remaining three-quarters is either in parks, conservation areas, model forests or is considered non-timber-productive, generally defined as unsuitable for managed forestry or inaccessible. As recently as 2003, it was estimated that that the annual harvest in the boreal was about 7,500 square kilometres per year, equivalent to about 0.2% of the total Canadian boreal forest.
The sharp downturn in the market for lumber because of the collapse of the housing market in the United States that began in 2006, coupled with import tariff and tax barriers, have knocked the bottom out of Canada’s forest industry.
In Ontario, Canada’s largest province, where most forestry activity is in the boreal, government statistics suggest that the harvest declined 18% from 2005 to 2006.
Given the high number of mill closings from 2005 onward, mostly in Ontario and Quebec, it is a trend that most likely persisted through 2007 and 2008. Most of Canada’s conventional onshore oil and gas production, including the rapidly expanding oil sands production in Alberta, is located in the boreal region as is Canada’s largest uranium producing zone in northern Saskatchewan and Quebec’s largest hydroelectric generating facilities in the La Grande watershed.
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