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A Last Chance
On his last morning along the Mackenzie, Wells is once more out wandering with his binoculars. The air again has a deepening chill despite the rich sun, and the birds are moving in force: Merlins strafe the sandpipers; ducks paddle through a wide marsh; northern harriers hunt the boggy margins for voles; and warblers, redpolls and fox sparrows fill the alders with their chip notes.
Later, on the plane south, these details melt with the altitude, fading into a seemingly endless tapestry of forested plains, lakes, wetlands and high mountains. The world outside the window looks utterly timeless, not like a landscape poised on the edge of tectonic change.
“That’s the whole point of conservation first,” Wells says, watching the enormous, largely untouched landscape roll by. “We can protect what’s important now, while we still can. The boreal is our one, last chance to get it right.”
Naturalist Scott Weidensaul has written more than two dozen books on natural history, including Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds, a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Photographer Garth Lenz has spent years documenting Canada’s boreal forest and temperate rainforests. His work has appeared in Time, BBC Wildlife and International Wildlife.
Nature picture credit (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Garth Lenz (Temiscamie River)
