Advisory panel to look at boreal forest protection in Canada

WINNIPEG - Ontario promised to do it, Quebec could follow suit, and a new panel of scientists hope Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta could be the next provinces to protect the boreal forest.
"It's really one of the last, vast tracts of forests that's still intact, that hasn't been substantially degraded anywhere in the world," said Pascal Badiou, one of 14 North American researchers on an advisory panel announced Thursday.
The voluntary panel came together under the Pew Environmental Group, an American conservation organization that honed in on Canada's boreal forest eight years ago.
The group includes Alberta ecology professor David Schindler and Terry Root, an author on the Nobel Peace Prize-winning United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.
Conservation groups prize Canada's largely untouched boreal forest as habitat for songbirds and caribou, and as a carbon "sink" that keeps roughly 186 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, by some estimates.
Badiou, a research scientist for the hunters' conservation group Ducks Unlimited Canada, said the panel will gather information on benefits provided by the boreal forest and come up with recommendations for government on how to best protect it. Previous worldwide goals to protect 10 per cent of natural ecosystems are inadequate, he said.
In July, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty promised to protect half of his province's boreal forest, a total of 225,000 square kilometres. Earlier this week, Quebec Premier Jean Charest pledged to safeguard twice as much land in Quebec, making up half of the province's total boreal forest.
Badiou said members hope provinces like Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan will be receptive, too.
"I think that's fairly realistic, especially at a time when a lot of these premiers are kind of tussling to see who can be the most green," he said.