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| "The world's boreal forest, a resource of which Canada is the major trustee, is under siege." - Report of the Canadian Senate Subcommittee on the Boreal Forest (1999) A draft report prepared by Environment Canada in August of 1998 entitled "Ecological Assessment of the Boreal Shield Ecozone" identified large scale resource development activities - namely industrial logging, mining, and hydro-electric dams - as the largest human threat to biodiversity in the boreal forest. Many indigenous peoples still depend on the boreal forest for their very survival. Industrial activities often directly conflict with traditional food gathering, trapping and hunting and many have been forced to resort to protests and blockades in an effort to halt the destruction. A little over a dozen companies control half of all the "commercial forestland" in Canada. Since the late 1980's over $13 billion of new and expanded pulp mills and oriented strand board mills have been built in Canada, making the boreal the subject of a new feeding frenzy by the corporations. In addition to large-scale clearcutting, there are at least 300 hydro dams, 60 active mines, and thousands upon thousands of kilometers of seismic lines, creating untold ecological damage. |
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