Spanning across Canada from Alaska to the Atlantic Ocean exists a global treasure: the Canadian Boreal forest. Thirteen times the size of California, the Boreal is larger than the Brazilian Amazon and plays an astonishingly unsung role in the regulation of global climate and the maintenance of clean air and water.

It is home to more than a million indigenous people and supports rare species of wolves, bears, and woodland caribou, as well as more than a third of North America’s songbirds, which migrate through it annually.
Eighty percent of the world’s original forests have been destroyed or degraded, and many of the remaining forests are piecemeal, islands of wilderness in a sea of development. But the Canadian Boreal is different. It represents a landscape of opportunity and hope, a place where we can ‘do it right’.
Currently, less than 8% of the Boreal is protected. It is being logged at a rate of two acres a minute, 24 hours a day. And there is no bigger consumer of the Boreal than the United States. We consume more than half of all the trees logged in the Boreal, much of it to make things like catalogs, junk mail, magazines, newspapers and toilet paper. The impact of the destruction of the Boreal will be felt not only by the people and animals that live in it, but by all of us
Canadian scientists, industry leaders, indigenous people, and environmental groups including ForestEthics, are attempting to jointly develop a comprehensive plan to guide development and protect the cultural, economic and natural values of the entire Boreal. This ‘Framework’ may be the most ambitious conservation initiative in North America’s history and will define a new model for large-scale conservation and resource management.