The US-based, non profit Pew Environment Group is urging Canada to protect our boreal forests which they claim do more to reduce global carbon emissions than even the Amazon rainforests.
Steve Kallick, the director of Pew’s international boreal conservation camp, said American researchers were stunned to learn exactly how much fresh water and how many carbon-draining peat bogs are located in the forest that cover the top of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and the far north across to Alaska.
..The Pew study says the bulwark provided by boreal ecosystems against the loss of biodiversity and global warming have an estimated value of $700-billion annually.
The forests contain half of the world’s lakes that are larger than a square kilometre in size; 50 of the world’s largest rivers; 200 million acres of surface water; and Great Bear Lake, the world’s largest remaining unpolluted body of fresh water.
In addition, the report says, the wetlands and peatlands store an estimated 147 billion tonnes of carbon, more than 25 years worth of current man-made emissions. The delta of the Mackenzie River alone stores 41 billion tonnes.
Boreal Aerials from Enviro on Vimeo.
2 comments:
No land reclamation project will ever be able to replace these magnificent forest ecosystems once they are lost to Tar Sands strip mining and fragmentation. The lakes polluted by tailings will never be pure again.
Harper and Ignatieff have got it all wrong. It is the boreal forests and their water systems, not the Tar Sands, that are our "national treasure". A global treasure as well, particularly since the Amazon rainforests are under threat from climate change droughts.
You can sign some relative petitions here http://www.naturecanada.ca/take_action.asp not that the government will listen.
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