New report confirms boreal forests are vital to caribou and you!

Nov 12, 2009

The Boreal Songbird Initiative and the Canadian Boreal Initiative today posted the findings of a new scientific report "The Carbon the World Forgot". The report's findings confirm how important boreal forests are to the fight against climate change. Besides being the life blood for a large variety of wild life, including me and my boreal woodland caribou family and friends, the boreal is also vital to your health and well being because it is the world's largest land carbon store. Boreal forests represent 22% of all carbon stored on our planet's land surface.

Some other interesting findings are:

1. Boreal forests hold almost twice as much carbon per area as tropical forests.
2. Boreal forests can keep large amounts of carbon out of our atmosphere for thousands of years by storing the carbon underground in deep peatlands and permafrost soils.
3. Canada has the largest intact Boreal forest.

So how should these new findings be used to fight climate change? According the report:

The Kyoto Protocol failed to create sufficient incentives for forest conservation and sustainable forestry. Carbon accounting for peatlands, the planet’s most carbon-rich ecosystems, was also not included.

Future climate change protocols must be better suited to motivate stewardship of the massive quantity of carbon stored in forest and peatland ecosystems.

Two simple changes to the protocol that would have far-reaching beneficial impacts are 1) inclusion of peatland carbon; and 2) mandatory accounting of all carbon emissions from forest management, without an obligation to account for emissions caused by natural disturbances. This protocol should also require a positive or neutral affect on biodiversity and ecosystem services in order to maintain capacity to adapt.

In other words, our leaders need to Make Forests Count in the next agreement on climate change. If you want your Government to make forests count, then go to www.makeforestscount.org and sign the email or petition. It will take you less than a minute to do, so please take a minute to do it now.

I would like to send a BIG woodland caribou THANK YOU to the Boreal Songbird Initiative, the Canadian Boreal Initiative, and the authors of the report for all of their hard work in putting together and publishing these very important findings. You are helping to save the lives of both of our species, families, and friends. Thank you.

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