Earth Equity News

Canada's Forestry Firms, Environmentalists to Call a Truce over Northern Forest. By Tim Shufelt, CanWest, May 17, 2010. "The battle between forestry companies protecting their timber supply and environmentalists trying to save the trees has been too fierce to hide in the shade of Canada's vast boreal forest. But after decades of fighting, the bitter foes have agreed to bury the hatchet. At the heart of the agreement is an enormous swath of boreal forest spanning about 70 million hectares, an area almost twice the size of Germany. Some of the country's biggest forestry companies will agree to freeze logging on parts of the northern forest. In return, environmental groups will pull marketing campaigns denouncing logging practices and will even go so far as to give the companies a green endorsement... The boreal is the northern treed region that adjoins the tundra along the Arctic tree line, and its southern reaches are particularly valuable ecologically, providing habitat for threatened wildlife and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Most of Canada's boreal forest is publicly owned and managed, but about half has been allocated or licensed to logging companies."