From the Back Roads of the Boreal Forest
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Wilderness Committee’s ancient "beast", a 4 cylinder bush truck donated by famed BC writer and conservationist Ian McKenzie just rumbled home to Vancouver after a long summer travelling the remote, back roads of Canada. Although the rusty old "beast" has been used for all kinds of crazy adventures, like moving trail builders and their giant 40kg backpacks and helping evacuate native communities in the face of wildfire, this time the "beast" returned from an epic bird counting mission across Canada’s vast boreal forest.
I have been counting birds for Wilderness Committee for nearly two decades, and the numbers are not good. Every year I notice a few more forests without the birds I have come to expect to see.
Driving the back roads of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba this summer brought home the urgency of the need to protect birds and their habitat. Although a few short years ago there were more boreal chickadees, rusty blackbirds, evening grosbeaks and purple finches than you could shake a stick at, now I see and hear a lot less of them. An international team of scientists just finished compiling years of data and found that some of these species have decreased by 90 percent.
As I drove to places like Pickle Lake, Red Lake, and Grassy Narrows Ontario, Sundance Manitoba, and across he breadth of northern Saskatchewan I had a lot of time to think in between my bird study plots, located every ten km along the roads. Something big is going on here, I thought. It is more than just the tar sands or the 1000 ha clear-cuts in Northern Ontario.
Scientists are a conservative bunch and not prone to speak out without years of hard data and statistical analysis (something that is still a few years off), but when I talk to them in private the tell me their darkest fears, that climate change, clearcutting, and oil, gas and tarsands development is making the already perilous existence of birds even worse and could cause a sudden and mass die-off of billions of Canadian birds.
We can and must take immediate action to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.....BIG TIME. Whether you take action on behalf of the birds, for the environment in general, or for the sake of our kids.......JUST DO IT. Read our little report called Canada’s Bird Nursery; the Boreal Forest, which summarizes the threats to boreal birds. Then fire off a letter to your elected officials asking them to respect the tens of thousands of scientists and citizens that have signed petitions asking for one half of the boreal forest to be protected.
Driving the back roads of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba this summer brought home the urgency of the need to protect birds and their habitat. Although a few short years ago there were more boreal chickadees, rusty blackbirds, evening grosbeaks and purple finches than you could shake a stick at, now I see and hear a lot less of them. An international team of scientists just finished compiling years of data and found that some of these species have decreased by 90 percent.
As I drove to places like Pickle Lake, Red Lake, and Grassy Narrows Ontario, Sundance Manitoba, and across he breadth of northern Saskatchewan I had a lot of time to think in between my bird study plots, located every ten km along the roads. Something big is going on here, I thought. It is more than just the tar sands or the 1000 ha clear-cuts in Northern Ontario.
Scientists are a conservative bunch and not prone to speak out without years of hard data and statistical analysis (something that is still a few years off), but when I talk to them in private the tell me their darkest fears, that climate change, clearcutting, and oil, gas and tarsands development is making the already perilous existence of birds even worse and could cause a sudden and mass die-off of billions of Canadian birds.
We can and must take immediate action to cut our greenhouse gas emissions.....BIG TIME. Whether you take action on behalf of the birds, for the environment in general, or for the sake of our kids.......JUST DO IT. Read our little report called Canada’s Bird Nursery; the Boreal Forest, which summarizes the threats to boreal birds. Then fire off a letter to your elected officials asking them to respect the tens of thousands of scientists and citizens that have signed petitions asking for one half of the boreal forest to be protected.
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