By Darragh Worland – First posted on tonic.com on Wednesday, May 19, 2010 1:15 PM ET
Pact between forest industry officials and environmentalists will preserve an area of forest the size of the Texas.
The Forest Products Association of Canada and nine leading environmental groups announced an agreement Tuesday that will protect huge swaths of boreal forest in Canada and help protect the threatened woodland caribou while also allowing sustainable logging to continue.
The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement covers 178 million acres of forest — two thirds of Canada’s forest — licensed to all 21 forest companies who are FPAC members.
Under the agreement, new logging will be suspended on nearly 72 million acres of boreal forest, and in return Canopy, ForestEthics and Greenpeace will suspend their campaigns against the logging industry. The agreement calls for a compromise approach between the use of world-leading forest management and ecological conservation, as well as support for the economic future of forest communities.
“Together we have identified a more intelligent, productive way to manage economic and environmental challenges in the boreal that will reassure global buyers of our products’ sustainability,” said Avrim Lazar, president and CEO of FPAC, reports the Edmonton Journal. “It’s gratifying to see nearly a decade of industry transformation and hard work greening our operations, is culminating in a process that will set a forestry standard that will be the envy of the world.”
“This is our best chance to save woodland caribou, permanently protect vast areas of the boreal forest and put in place sustainable forestry practices,” said Richard Brooks, spokesperson for participating environmental organizations and Forest Campaign Coordinator of Greenpeace Canada.
The boreal forest encircles the Northern Hemisphere, just south of the Arctic Circle, extending through parts of Russia, Scandinavia, China, Alaska and Canada. In Canada, the boreal region stretches across the top of the country, starting in the Yukon and northeastern British Columbia, and stretching across the northern parts of Quebec, Ontario and the Prairie provinces, to Labrador and Newfoundland. It forms a band more than 1000 kilometres wide between the frozen tundra of the Arctic to the north and the more temperate forests and grasslands to the south.
The area has an abundance of wildlife and fresh water (including an estimated 1.5 million lakes), and some of the world’s richest deposits of natural resources. It is home to half of Canada’s 450 bird species and a wide range of mammals, including moose, wolves, caribou, bears, rodents, rabbits, lynx and mink, as well as 2.5 million people.
