Nature Conservancy Magazine: Summer 2007 - The Last Stand

Go Deeper

The Boreal Forest in Canada
Stretching across 1.6 billion acres, the North American boreal forest is one of the few largely unspoiled ecosystems remaining on Earth.

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A Long-Dormant Plan

But the boreal forest is an ecosystem on the brink of radical change.

“Historically, the threats to the boreal were concentrated in the southern tier, mostly from industrial forestry — and frankly, the threats haven’t been that large until the last 10 or 15 years,” says Evie Witten, director of The Nature Conservancy’s boreal forest program. “But changes in technology have allowed the use of what until now had been quite marginal forests for fiber and pulp production. That has greatly increased the pressure on the forest.”

While more than 70 percent of Canada’s northern woodlands remains unaltered by industrial activity, the pressures to develop these remote lands are piling up: Along with the long-standing threat of logging, there are growing demands from diamond mining, hydroelectric dams, and, most of all, an explosion in energy and mineral development.

“Some large swaths of forest are being cleared in Alberta for oil-sands development, and several hydro projects are in the works or are being planned,” says Witten. “Oil, gas and mining are going to be the real changes in the future — these will be fundamental changes on the landscape, and they’re going to be concentrated this time in the north.”

Nowhere in the boreal are these pressures more front and center — and nowhere is time ticking away so rapidly — as along the Mackenzie River. Wide and brawling, heavy with sediment, the Mackenzie and its tributaries drain a fifth of Canada’s land area, flowing almost due north to the Beaufort Sea.

The Mackenzie basin is home to dozens of aboriginal communities that still depend on the annual migration of caribou, waterfowl and fish to fill their larders. Musk oxen live among the sparse forests at the edge of the tundra, while moose and wolves face off along its countless rivers, with grizzlies cleaning up the scraps. In the high, jagged Mackenzie Mountains, snow-white Dall sheep move effortlessly along slopes so high and steep the animals seem to have suspended gravity.

Wells has traveled to this area — specifically, the Mackenzie Valley — several times during the past few years to better understand its importance for conservation. Today, he’s setting out for the valley yet again. At Déline, he clambers aboard a puddle-jumper flight headed to the Sahtu village of Tulita, the first stop en route to the former boomtown of Norman Wells.

“Think about it. Probably every lake and pond down there has at least one breeding pair of loons,” Wells says, looking out the window of the small plane. “And how many thousands of blackpoll warbler territories are we looking at right now? And Cape Mays? And yellow warblers? It’s hard to get your mind around it.” From the air, the landscape is empty of any obvious sign of humanity, just tens of thousands of lakes and ponds stretching to the horizon in all directions among the forest.

As if to match that epic sweep, the Canadian government has fast-tracked a long-dormant plan to build a 750-mile-long natural-gas pipeline the length of the Mackenzie Valley, hurried along by explosive oil and natural-gas demands to the south.

The Mackenzie Gas Pipeline, if built, will be one of the largest industrial developments in Canadian history. The project would bring roads, airstrips, compressor stations, processing facilities, feeder pipelines, at least three natural-gas production fields and housing for an estimated 8,000 construction workers into one of the largest roadless areas remaining on the continent.

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