Threats to the Boreal

Industrial development is the biggest threat to Boreal ecosystems.

Industrial activities impact the Boreal Forest by:

damaging wildlife habitat
Fragmenting forests and wetlands with roads, seismic lines and other disturbances
increasing human access into remote regions
changing water and nutrient cycles
contaminating wilderness areas with toxic chemicals

Logging

Each year, more than 8,000 square kilometres are logged in Canada.

Much of Canada's southern Boreal forest has been licenced to logging companies.
Approximately one million hectares of Canada's public forests and roughly 90 percent of this area is clearcut.
Logging can cause the loss of old growth forests from the landscape, degradation of wildlife habitat and conversion of conifer-dominated forests to hardwood.

What you can do:
Purchase paper and wood supplies certified to Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) standards. FSC certification sets standards for logging companies to manage forests well.
Encourage the companies you buy from to stock FSC products
Reuse existing wood supplies: Use recycled paper, and look into reclaimed wood suppliers

Oil and gas

Underneath Canada's Boreal Forest lies an oil deposit the size of Florida - the oil sands.

Alberta's Boreal Forests have already been fragmented by 88,000 oil and gas well sites, and a massive expansion of oil sands extraction is planned in the coming years.
The development of oil sands mining leases will result in the clearing of 300,000 hectares of Boreal Forest and constructing 30,000 km of roads, leaving 80% of the remaining Boreal Forest within 250m of a road, pipeline or well site.

Mining

Over 90% of the Boreal forest is currently open for mining exploration and claim staking.

While mine sites themselves are relatively small and isolated, the big impact comes from the network of roads and seismic lines created during exploration, and the tailing ponds and waste left behind after mining.
Staked lands are considered 'unavailable for protection' unless the industry agrees to remove the Crown's mineral reserves.

Species at risk

Over 30 species are at risk in the Boreal, including:

Woodland Caribou

Canada's Boreal Forest is where you'll find the vast majority of Woodland caribou. But ever-increasing development in Canada's north is fragmenting the Boreal and pushing the Woodland caribou towards extinction. The Woodland caribou is the canary in the coalmine for the Boreal Forest -- protecting their habitat helps protect us all.
Take action at caribouandyou.ca.

Wolverine

(Western population)

Wolverine are solitary animals that require large tracts of intact forest to survive. The western population is found in the Rocky Mountains and across the Boreal Forest into Northern Ontario. The Wolverine’s habitat, particularly in the southern part of its range, is subject to loss, degradation, and fragmentation from oil and gas development, mineral exploration and extraction, forestry, roads, agriculture, and urban development. Increased access of motorized vehicles into remote areas may also increase hunting pressure on the Wolverine and on its ungulate prey, particularly the threatened Southern Mountain population of Woodland Caribou.