Recent Updates from the Manitoba Field Office

1 week 4 days ago

by Eric Reder, Campaign Director, Manitoba

WINNIPEG -  Late on Sunday, May 6th, after a whirlwind weekend for the Yinka Dene Alliance Freedom Train riders, I took my truck to the hostel to help transport them back to the train station so they could continue their journey. After filling the back with luggage, there was an exclamation as they went to hop in the front. “A caribou! Oh, we have to get our friend. She’s part of the caribou clan.” People clambered around, and pictures were taken of the caribou decal on the side window of my truck.  

7 weeks 10 hours ago

 I am writing you today because we urgently need your help to defend Manitoba’s provincial parks. A donation now will go towards ensuring legal protection for our parks before another tree is cut!

8 weeks 4 days ago

Making a snowman while sweating through a t-shirt is a distinctly unusual event, and yet that is exactly what happened on this past Saturday's Wilderness Witness Tour.

While most of Winnipeg slept soundly, an eclectic mix of Winnipeggers was up before sunrise on St. Patrick’s Day, gathering at a coffee shop and preparing for a day’s adventure.

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Manitoba Field Office

Welcome to the Wilderness Committee's Manitoba Field Office. The Wilderness Committee is Canada’s largest membership-based wilderness preservation group with 60,000 members, supporters and volunteers, and we are hard at work on the ground in Manitoba. We’ve helped gain protection for over 50 major wilderness areas in Canada, including millions of hectares of critical wildlife habitats, and some of the world’s last large tracts of old-growth temperate rainforest and boreal forest. Through public education, grassroots mobilization, and strategic research, we are working on protecting the wild spaces and species in the province to ensure a healthy future for all Manitobans. We encourage you to join us in our work. 

Campaigns

Stretching from the east side of Manitoba’s Lake Winnipeg far into the province of Ontario is one of the greatest natural areas left on earth. The Heart of the Boreal is a vast wilderness filled with jack pine-covered granite ridges, black spruce and tamarack lowlands, and more lakes than you can imagine.

Manitobans are fortunate to still have vast expanses of intact, representative ecosystems within our province. These wild lands provide ecosystem services – byproducts of healthy and natural wild areas – to maintain our own health through clean air and clean water.

Manitoba’s provincial parks are home to remote sparkling lakes, clear rivers, sandy beaches and wild boreal forests. You can hike through natural grasslands in Spruce Woods, relax on the sand at Grand Beach, cross-country ski at Duck Mountain, spot rare orchids in Nopiming, or paddle down world-famous canoeing rivers in Atikaki.

The north is often symbolized by caribou. School children even know of the massive herds made up of thousands of barren ground caribou migrating across the open tundra. The caribou is one of those iconic species, featured prominently on Canada’s 25-cent coin.

The Wilderness Committee has worked on boreal forest research and protection for decades. We were inspired to take action because the boreal forest makes up over half of Canada, is threatened on multiple levels by numerous industrial activities such as the tar sands, and has many wildlife and plants that are declining.

Make Your Voice Heard

Act Now to Keep Woodland Caribou in our Wilderness

 To Canadians, caribou are iconic, akin to the maple leaf and the beaver.

Because of their sensitivity to disturbance, boreal woodland caribou are in trouble in Canada. Already they’ve been pushed off half their range by developments, which is why they have been listed under Canada’s Species At Risk Act (SARA). SARA requires the federal government to establish a recovery strategy, which is a path forward to preserve caribou.

Right now, the government is in the final days of accepting public comments on this strategy. This is our last chance to make sure a strong strategy is put in place, so boreal woodland caribou survive in more than just Canadian lore. Take the time right now to write a letter to the government of Canada, voicing your opinion. Your letter will be sent to Environment Minister Peter Kent, and the Boreal Woodland Caribou Recovery Team at Environment Canada.

The deadline for public comment is February 22, 2012. Please write your letter now.

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Wednesday, April 4, 2012 (All day)
Winnipeg Free Press
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