Expired News - New report ranks Canada as the #1 country in the world ... in degradation of pristine, old-growth forests - The Weather Network
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New report ranks Canada as the #1 country in the world ... in degradation of pristine, old-growth forests


Scott Sutherland
Meteorologist/Science Writer

Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 2:33 PM - Canada has achieved a lot of proud rankings on the world stage over the years, but this is not one we can be particularly proud of. According to Global Forest Watch, a monitoring and alert system for the world's forests, Canada tops their list of nations, worldwide, when it comes to the fragmentation and degradation of intact forest landscapes.

According to Global Forest Watch, which represents a partnership of environmental groups around the world, such as the World Resources Institute, the United Nations Environment Programme and several others, including Greenpeace, 'intact forest landscapes' (IFLs) are areas of forest land which are at least 500 square kilometres in area, at least 10 kilometres wide at their widest span, and with any 'corridors' or 'appendages' branching off needing to be at least 2 kilometres wide.


Credit: Global Forest Watch

According to the GFW blog: "Almost 95 per cent of IFLs are concentrated within tropical and boreal regions. Just three countries - Canada, Russia and Brazil - contain 65 per cent of the world’s remaining IFLs. These countries also account for more than half of all IFL degradation, although the drivers in each country are vastly different, from human-caused fires and logging in Russia, to road construction and conversion to agriculture in Brazil."

Credit: Global Forest Watch

In Canada, according to GFW's figures, we have over 405 million hectares of tree cover stretching across the country, 53 per cent of which is undisturbed, old-growth (primary) forest. Over 92 per cent of that 405 million hectares represent public lands, which are controlled by the government.

The analysis from GWF showed that Canada's intact forest landscapes alone represent almost a quarter of the world's remaining IFLs (as of 2013), and our loses - nearly 26.4 million hectares between the years 2000 and 2012 - account for about 21 per cent of the total global degradation of these pristine forest lands during that same 12-year period.

"Canada is the country with the largest share of intact forest degradation in the world. It's No. 1 on the list," Nigel Sizer, who is director of the World Resources Institute's global forest program, said in a news conference, according to CBC News.

"What is lost is the intactness," said Christoph Thies, senior forest campaigner for Greenpeace International, according to CBC News. "This is a process which results in biodiversity loss - particularly, far-ranging species will no longer be able to survive."

According to Peter Potapov, the University of Maryland professor who led the satellite analysis for the study, it's the oil and gas industry that bears the greatest responsibility for the loses, in Canada and in Russia.

"There's huge areas affected by this fragmentation, by pipelines, seismic lines, industrial places, temporary settlements and so on," he said in the report.

The construction of new roads, logging and forest fires (some human-caused) are other contributors to the loses.

The findings of this report from Global Forest Watch, are summed up in the infographic below:

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