We are delighted to post this guest blog by our Canadian colleague Suzy Fraser of the Canadian Boreal Initiative about their annual Boreal Awards ceremony in Ottawa. There were some great nominees and winners, as well as a great overall mood about the Boreal! – Jeff

‘Bou’ the Woodland Caribou drops by the CBI Awards
Credit: [...]

I thought I would do a quick follow-up on my previous post about the great progress being made in Manitoba toward the creation of a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the east side of Lake Winnipeg. The Premier, who just allocated $10 million toward the project before taking on his new job as ambassador to [...]

A river within the potential new UNESCO site
Credit: Garth Lenz
Yesterday the outgoing Premier of Manitoba (equivalent of governor), Gary Doer, announced he will be putting $10 million into a trust fund designated for large-scale conservation planning in eastern Manitoba. Selected as the new ambassador to the United States and thus leaving his post as premier, [...]

Image borrowed from greenpeace.org  
Sometimes it seems like positive stories about the environment are few and far between, but today a bit of good news: Kimberly-Clark, maker of Kleenex, Scott, and Cottonelle, announced it will finally update its environmental policy regarding logging and forestry practices. For years, Kimberly-Clark has used pulp from virgin, intact Boreal [...]

Nancy and her husband, Bob
Taken from: http://sononis.blogspot.com/
While the field of Ethnobotany might not be deeply understood by many everyday citizens, its importance is certainly recognized by the Governor General of Canada.
Earlier this month Nancy Turner, an Ethnobotanist for the University of Victoria and member of the International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, was named to the [...]

Nahanni Valley
Credit: Steve Kallick
Another day, another good looking day for conservation in Canada.
Yesterday, the Canadian government introduced legislation that will expand the Nahanni National Park Reserve from its original 5,000 square kilometer boundary to a whopping 30,000 square kilometers (7.4 million acres) – an area more than 8 times the size of Long Island and nearly half [...]

 
Boreal Forest in N. Ontario
Credit: Garth Lenz
Today the Ontario government introduced draft legislation to eventually ensure that the pledge of protecting 50% of the Boreal becomes a reality. I haven’t seen any details of the legislation as it was just being introduced this afternoon but you can read more about it and see a video [...]

 
Raymond Taniton - Chief Negotiator  on the Grizzly Bear Mountain Scented Grass Hills file
Credit: Ed Reeves
 Thank you to the elders and community of Deline for their vision and perseverance that resulted in the announcement a few days ago that two massive peninsulas on Great Bear Lake are now officially protected areas that will be co-managed by [...]

Hi all,
I thought I would share with you a truly wonderful opportunity to learn about the devastating environmental impacts of Canada’s tar sands, a unique oil extraction technique that devastates the Boreal Forest.
On March 16 – 20, 2009 Andrew Nikiforuk’s book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent will be offered for FREE [...]

So here’s one of the back stories of the first three days of our International Boreal Conservation Science Panel media tour. The renowned Stuart Pimm came up from Duke University on Monday to Washington DC while Jeremy Kerr came down from the University of Ottawa. It was pretty amazing that either of them came because [...]