As Amazon Burns, Canada's Boreal Forest Also Faces Serious Threats
08/31/2019 07:00 EDT
Canada’s boreal is the largest intact forest in the world and we need to do more to protect it, researchers say.
By Samantha Beattie
ONFOKUS/GETTY IMAGES
An area of boreal forest in Canada that's been clear cut
Tens of thousands of fires are ripping through the Amazon this month, stunning the world and demonstrating the precarity of earth’s ecosystems. But Canadians need only look as far as our own expansive boreal forest to understand the damage humans can cause, experts say.
The boreal forest covers more than half of Canada, is home to hundreds of Indigenous communities and is vitally important for the environment. It stores more carbon than is in the earth’s atmosphere, supplies massive amounts of clean air, and pours oxygen and nutrients into rivers and oceans to nourish marine life, said Jeff Wells, boreal conservation vice president at the National Audubon Society.
If the Amazon is the lungs of the earth, the boreal is its circulation system.
“On the one hand, the boreal forest biome is one of the most intact ecosystems on the planet … in the order of the size of the Amazon,” said Wells.
“On the flip side, the southern portion of boreal forest is heavily impacted by industrial activities, and that’s where the bulk of degradation happens.”
More:
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/amazon-wildfires-canada-climate-change_ca_5d698482e4b0cdfe057007ad
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