The Wilderness Committee has released a report titled Keep It Wild-A Conservation Vision For Manitoba. 

Their Campaign Director Eric Reder says it is a path forward to preserve the province’s wilderness and surpass the global goal of protecting 17 percent of Manitoba lands and waters by 2020 including the northern boreal forest.  

He says there’s mining interests and logging interests but we also have the fact that the boreal forest has very little protection in the northern region and we have woodland caribou herds that don’t have protection required for them to survive in so we need to look and ensure we are protecting great portions of that northern forest with areas that are set aside from development so they will maintain caribou and maintain all of the other services that we get from the boreal forest.         

Reder says the report is available at their website www.wildernesscommittee.org/manitoba with the goal getting a conversation started and hopefully leading to the government starting public consultations on the issue.