It's easy to get depressed when thinking about the rapidity with which natural lands and habitat are being gobbled up by development throughout North and, especially, South America. For those who delight in the wonders of nature and the beauty it offers, the statistics on its rate of disappearance are glum. So this news out of Ontario, Canada is as welcome as it is surprising:
Ontario has made the largest conservation commitment in Canadian history, setting aside at least half the Northern Boreal region - 225,000 square kilometres - for permanent protection from development, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced yesterday.
It's an area almost the size of the United Kingdom.
"It is, in a word, immense. It's also unique and precious. It's home to the largest untouched forest in Canada and the third largest wetland in the world," McGuinty said.
The Northern Boreal region covers 43 per cent of Ontario but few people call it home. About 24,000 people, mostly in native communities accessible only by air, live there. It is home to approximately 200 sensitive species of animals, including woodland caribou, wolverine and lake sturgeon, which have been driven from large parts of the more southern forest by logging and other development.
The land that Ontario will permanently protect from timbering and mining is also home to 5 million juncos, 4 million magnolia warblers, 3 million palm warblers, 3 million Swainson's thrushes, and 2 million Tennessee warblers, just to name a few species.
See also this article by Scott Weidensaul at The Nature Conservancy.
