Earth Equity News

Ontario Preserves Boreal Forests Twice the Size of Pennsylvania. Commentary by Jeff Wells, David Wilcove and Scott Weidensaul, CSMonitor, September 22, 2008. "It may be the biggest conservation victory for the U.S. in decades... Over the summer, Ontario's premier, Dalton McGuinty, announced that at least 55 million acres -- half of the province's boreal forest -- will be off limits to development. And he has promised no new mining or logging projects until local land-use plans have support from native communities. The scale of the decision is staggering, and it commits Ontario to setting aside lands more than twice the size of Pennsylvania as parks or wildlife refuges. Equally impressive was Premier McGuinty's strong reliance on the recommendation by scientists, led by Nobel Prize-winning authors of the [IPCC], to make that decision. Scientists identify the Canadian boreal forest, larger than the remaining Brazilian Amazon, as one of the world's largest and most intact forest ecosystems. It stores 186 billion tons of carbon -- equivalent to 27 years of the world's [CO2] emissions… Placing half of Ontario's boreal forest off limits to development and industrial use helps to ensure that the carbon currently stored there stays put. And it protects the habitat of the abundant wildlife of the boreal forest." Jeff Wells is the science adviser to The Pew Charitable Trusts' International Boreal Conservation Campaign. David Wilcove is a professor in the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Scott Weidensaul has written more than two dozen books on natural history.