In this post I want to talk about the Great Northern Boreal Forest. The
Boreal is the Forest the Ecologist and Green Peace etc forget, while all
the media focus is on the tropical forests of the Amazon, very few
journalists or members of the public look north to the Boreal yet
it makes up one third of the worlds wooded land. Russia has half the
Boreal forest, while Canada has a third and Alaska and Scandinavia
the rest. If the tropical forest of Amazon and Central Africa are one
of the worlds lungs the Boreal is the other. The Boreal has a vital
role in regulating the climate and filtering out billions of tons of
carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases during photosynthesis,
storing the carbon in trees roots and soil. The Boreal also
contains the largest area of wet lands in the world, with over two
million lakes and ponds which are a vital breeding ground for
millions of birds.
The
Forest is named after Boreas the Greek god of the North Wind. The
Boreal begins where the woods of Oak and Maple end and continues
North into the Artic World of cold winter and short cool summers. The
Boreal has far less biodiversity then the tropical rain forests or
temperate woods and is made up of a few key tree species Spruce,
Pine, Fir, Larch and Aspen. Over half the Boreal remains untouched
but that will change Oil, Gas, drilling, flooding from Hydropower
dams are eating away eradicating the forest and it's wildlife.
The
Russian forests are being cut to feed the Global paper appetite which
chews up the trees at an alarming rate, destroying the habitat of
endangered wildlife like the Siberian Tigers., eroding the
traditional way of life for the indigenous people. Far-Eastern
conglomerates have bought up most of Siberian forests, one Malaysian
based group `Rimbunan Hijao' own over 900,000 acres alone
to log. Thousands of square miles of forest have been polluted
thousands of trees damaged by oil spills or killed by highway
construction by these foreign conglomerates. It's been estimated that
up too 40% of trees felled are left on the ground which is not only
wasteful and un professional but it makes fuel for forest fires.
In
Canada over two million acres of the forest are cut down each year to
save the wildlife we need to see a dramatic expansion of the
protected area before its too late. When I was born in the 1960's,
96 % of the Forests in Alberta province in Canada were wilderness.
Sixty years later the Oil and Timber company's have stripped the
province of its natural resources and less then 10% of the forest
still exists in very small patch's all less then a few miles from the
roads and pipe lines that criss cross the province. This has caused a
huge decline in bird numbers, big mammals almost disappeared. Over
the last sixty years in the swan hill region of Alberta the grizzly
bear population has dropped from 400 to 30, herds of Caribou are on
the verge of disappearing .All thanks to the greed of man.
Its
not all doom, Russia needs to be praised, the Government of Mr Putin
so often attacked in the West and by myself in previous posts, has stepped forward to try
and stop the destruction by creating the kostomukshskig Nature
Reserve a 117,600 acres of Pine wood and wet land. Which have been
set aside to flourish, with only Scientists and Visitors with special
permits allowed too enter. The Reserve since it was set up has
witness Moose, Reindeer's, Otters, Bears, Eagles and Swan population
flourish. In the Yakutiya Republic in Siberia, Putin has passed laws
to protect 270,000 square miles of forest, which is half the size of
Alaska. The Russians have also set up schemes to regenerate forests
that were damaged in the chaos that followed the fall of the Soviet
Union. Forests are strong if they are allowed to recover they will
come back to life, Nature works on circles of death and rebirth but
they need our help. while this is only a small step in stopping the
attacks and protecting the Boreal ,it shows what governments can do
when they put nature before greed.