Just over two years ago the unthinkable happened. After decades of disputes and fighting over logging in pristine parts of Canada’s boreal forest, environmentalists and forest companies finally decided to talk to each other directly about their concerns rather than by exchanging sound bites through the media.

Log pile in Canada’s boreal forest
Credit: Garth Lenz
Although [...]

Smokestacks and tailpipes aren’t the only major source of emissions.
Credit: Wikimedia user: Dori
Although most people envision smokestacks and tailpipe exhaust when thinking about greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation is an often underreported component of our human contribution to climate change. Most estimates place carbon emissions from deforestation at somewhere between 12-25% of all human emissions at [...]

While the majority of North American media has been focused on a few high-profile stories over the past few weeks, an amazing and uplifting story has quietly emerged behind the scenes in Manitoba and Ontario.

A warm welcome from some of the children of Bloodvein First Nation.
Credit: Jeff Wells
It began with the joint announcement between [...]

A few weeks ago I had the honor of being part of a tour of the proposed Pimachiowin Aki World Heritage Site. There is no doubt that the region and the people there are incredible and I will write more about the trip in an upcoming blog entry. In the meantime I wanted to share [...]

Common Loon
Credit: Jeff Wells
I glanced up while in our driveway in Gardiner Friday morning to see the black outstretched heads and sparkling white bellies of five high-flying Common Loons heading north as part of the immense wave of migrants that passed over the eastern U.S. Thursday night and in the early morning hours. Migration is at [...]

Quebec Premier Jean Charest and the boreal forest.
Credits: Charest: © Hans Westerling (via Flickr); Boreal: © Garth Lenz
The Premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, gave his long-anticipated Inaugural Address on Wednesday. For the majority of us living outside of Quebec most parts of the speech wouldn’t have been too relevant to our daily lives (things like education [...]

Beyond the furthest reach of highways, electric lines, and suburbs and farms that tend to dominate southern Manitoba and Ontario lies a 43,000 square kilometer (16,600 square miles—about the size of Denmark) expanse of rugged and intact boreal forest where a number of First Nations still lead highly traditional ways of life. Although more modern [...]

Bohemian Waxwings in Canada’s boreal forest.
Credit: Valerie Courtois, Canadian Boreal Initiative
This year, the UN’s International Year of the Forests, provides us with an opportunity to take a step back and look more carefully at our relationship with forests. Hundreds of millions of people live in or directly rely on forests, while the remainder of us [...]

This past year flew by fast!
Credit: Garth Lenz
Well, 2010 has officially flown by and now we have a brand new year to look forward to and inspire us to better our lives and environment.
2010 was certainly a memorable year, in some ways good and in some ways bad. We were thrilled to hear that Brazil [...]

Peatlands in Canada’s boreal forest.
Credit: Garth Lenz

Peatlands, those luxuriantly moss-capped, squishy, vast open spaces in the boreal underlain with yards-thick layers of undecomposed plant material, may not be the first habitats that people think of when talking about climate change. But they should be.
Though spanning only 3% of the Earth’s land area, peatlands store approximately [...]