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Friday 29 May 2015

Saving Canada’s Boreal Forest http://nyti.ms/1HTIvJX

Saving Canada’s Boreal Forest



STRETCHING from interior Alaska across Canada to Newfoundland, and sandwiched between the prairies and the Arctic, North America’s boreal forest is a mind-boggling 1.5 billion acres in size — bigger even than the vast rain forests of the Brazilian Amazon or the Congo. And despite the relentless pace of development and industrialization worldwide, 80 percent of it remains wild and intact.
But that doesn’t mean that this region of cold-hardy trees, lakes, wetlands and tundra is safe. Corporations have their eyes on the land’s plentiful resources of minerals, timber, oil and gas, and on the hydropower potential of its many powerful, untamed rivers.