The environment ministers of Canada, Ontario, and Quebec pledged support to a major private conservation effort to preserve a boreal forest twice as large as Toronto on Earth Day.
The project is the largest in Canada and covers 1,450 kms of boreal forest. If the deal is completed, it will be protected against industrial development such as logging and mining.
Ottawa pledged to contribute $17 billion towards the $46 billion Boreal Wildlands Project, which is being managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada. The Ontario government also pledged $2.2 Million.
Boreal wildlands are carbon-storage areas. This is equivalent to removing three million cars from their lifetimes of emissions by leaving intact the forests and wetlands near Hearst, northern Ontario. According to NCC, the area is home to bears, beavers and moose as well as wolves, lynx and threatened boreal caribou, among many other birds.
The non-profit claims that the purchase will help to slow climate change at a global level.
But while pulp and paper company Domtar Inc. says it’s selling the parcels of lands near Hearst at a discount on appraised value after more than 10 years without harvesting, the NCC is still short about $13 million.
It now needs public help to close this gap.
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“When we became aware of these properties, they stood out like a beacon,” said Kristyn Ferguson, the program director for Ontario region’s large landscapes at NCC. “It was related to not just the size, but to what was on the land — the amazing forests, wetlands, rivers, all those lakes and the wildlife that these properties are supporting,” plus corridors to nearby provincial parks, she said.
Both the provincial and federal governments used Earth Day as a way to launch the project. This is after years of degrading climate policies and after the approval by the federal government of a huge offshore oil and gas project.
The Boreal Wildlands project is the largest in Canada. It covers 1,450 kilometres of forest that will be protected against industrial development such as logging and mining, if the deal is completed.
Less than 11 per cent of Ontario’s land and inland waters are now protected, according to Ontario Nature, while Canada has committed to conserve a quarter of the lands and oceans it claims by 2025 and 30 per cent by 2030.
David Piccini, Ontario’s Environment, Conservation and Parks Minister, responded to questions about the need to expand from here.
“We must distinguish between talk and rhetoric and what’s actually being done to get it done,” he said. “And it’s important to have ambition, but it’s more important to get it done.”
The contestants for the seat in provincial power also used this occasion to pledge environmental action. NDP talked about a youth climate corp to help plant one million trees by 2030. Liberals spoke of planting 800 million trees over the next eight years.
The federal Liberals, however, stated that nature protection was a key component in their plan to reduce emissions by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault and his cabinet colleagues earlier this month approved Bay du Nord, Canada’s first deepwater drilling site — a project climate scientists and environmental activists say flies in the face of climate goals and global recommendations for no new fossil fuel projects.
An analysis by Canada’s National Observer Barry Saxifrage, columnist, shows that Bay du Nord’s plans to extract 200,000 barrels per day would release 30,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year to the atmosphere. This is equivalent to seven to 10 million gasoline-powered cars.
Morgan Sharp / Local Journalism Initiative / Canada’s National Observer