Intact boreal forest near Clearwater River in Alberta
Credit: Garth Lenz
Sometimes it seems like environmental problems always end up in some form of fight. Whether it’s local residents battling for compensation after a chemical leak or environmental groups suing industry for negligent practices, most environmental issues either end up in court or flung into government talks where rhetoric and lobbying dollars often overshadow substance and reasoning.
That is with exception of today.
This morning the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC), which represents over 20 major forestry companies and owns rights to the majority of tenured (designated for logging) timber in Canada, is announcing an agreement with environmental groups to radically restructure where and how they log in an effort to turn green. Having participated in many of the type of fights I mentioned above over the last 30 years, FPAC has taken it upon itself to transform the way they do business.
Clearcutting in the boreal forest has been a problem in recent decades
Credit: Matt Medler
Much of this impetus came from the story of the Woodland Caribou. Its numbers have been in decline over the past 50 years, much of this as a result of habitat degradation from logging, and all signs point to the situation getting worse. Despite acknowledging the alarming rates of decline, the government has done little in response to calls by environmental groups asking for increased protection.
Very few would have guessed the timber industry would be the one to step up to the plate on caribou protection.
Having worked many months behind the scenes with 9 leading environmental groups, including our key ally the International Boreal Conservation Campaign, FPAC today signed along with these groups the single largest forest conservation agreement in history. The agreement, which took heavy negotiation between FPAC and the participatory environmental groups, states that FPAC, through its member businesses, will manage 170 million acres (around twice the size of Germany) of pristine boreal forest to ensure ecological sustainability by meeting the highest environmental standards of forest management.
Declining Woodland Caribou were at the core of the agreement
Credit: Wayne Sawchuk, Northern Images
It will also remove more than 70 million acres of the most sensitive caribou habitat within the agreement from any logging to allow for scientific studies on caribou habitat to be conducted. In return, the environmental groups will stop their campaign against FPAC timber. The implementation process will occur over the next three years and includes plans to bring government and aboriginal groups on board.
Click map to enlarge
Credit: The Nature Conservancy
You can see in the map just how extensive the protected areas of this agreement are, spanning nearly the entire width of Canada and including seven provinces. While caribou provided much of the context of this agreement, it will have a long lasting positive effect on birds. Canada’s Boreal Forest is immensely rich with summer breeding habitat for billions of migratory birds, many of which can be seen in the US in the winter and during spring and fall migration. Using even conservative estimates we found that hundreds of millions of birds breed in the regions protected under the agreement, meaning caribou won’t be the only species reaping benefit of this historic announcement. Southern boreal breeding bird species like the Bay-breasted and Canada Warblers that are migrating through the U.S. Right now are among the bird species that will most benefit from the agreement.
The Canada Warbler is one of hundreds of bird species sure to benefit
Credit: Jeff Nadler
Over the last decade there has been a significant effort by FPAC, led by their visionary President and CEO Avrim Lazar, to turn their forest industry green. It started with their increases in FSC-certified timber management--the world's highest standard for ecologically sustainable forestry practices--and was vastly advanced with this conservation agreement today. The majority of timber products that Canada produces are shipped to the United States, meaning many of the wood-related products you see every day in stores and factories will be caribou (and bird) friendly. It’s rare that such a large and powerful industry make such sweeping changes of their environmental policy, and even rarer to achieve such a groundbreaking agreement between environmental groups and the timber industry.
A big "thank you" goes out to FPAC, its members, and the environmental groups for what appears to be the world's largest conservation agreement in history!
Here are a few more links that might be helpful to you:
Collaborative group press release >
