Trees are cut in the Boreal Forest for lumber, and for pulp and paper. To date, less than 10% of Canada’s Boreal Forest is permanently protected from industrial development, including logging. Every minute, two acres of the Boreal Forest are cut down. In some regions, forest is being lost at rates similar to those in tropical rainforests. At least 100 million acres of Canada’s Boreal Forest (an area similar in size to California) is slated for commercial logging in the coming decade.

Approximately half of the treed Boreal Forest has already been allocated or licensed to logging companies by the government (which owns most of the land in the Boreal Forest). In the areas where logging is occurring, over 90 percent is by ecologically destructive “clear cutting”, with individual cuts sometimes extending over 24,000 acres (10,000 hectares), or approximately 17,000 football fields. This makes them some of the largest clear cuts in the world.

A disappearing forest means increased impacts to aboriginal communities; to the survival of wildlife species; and to the global climate.

• About 1 million people live in more than 600 First Nations communities throughout Canada’s Boreal Forest. Many of these people rely on the forest for traditional uses such as hunting, trapping, and gathering plants for food and medicine.
• Many wildlife species require old-growth habitat for shelter, food and breeding grounds. Already, the Labrador marten, wolverine, woodland caribou, eastern wolf and cougar are listed on endangered species lists in Canada, due to forest loss and fragmentation.
• In recent years, we have seen long-term declines in many Boreal bird species. Rusty Blackbirds have declined by 95%, Olive-sided Flycatchers, Boreal Chickadees, Bay-breasted and Canada Warblers, and Evening Grosbeaks by more than 70%, and scaup and scoters by over 50%.
• Intact areas of forest have been shown to store larger amounts of carbon than logged areas and are better suited to adapt to the impacts of global climate change.

US Demand is Driving the Clear-cutting of the Boreal

US consumer demand for paper products and lumber is fueling the ecological crisis in the Boreal. Canada is the second largest pulp producing country in the world, producing 25.5 million tons of pulp per year; the largest fraction of that winds up as paper sold to the US. Americans consume 80% of Canada’s forest product exports, with much of the timber used for throw away items such as junk mail, catalogs, and toilet paper.

Every year, for example, the catalog industry as a whole sends out more than 20 billion catalogs — that's 67 catalogs for every man, woman, and child in America. It takes millions of trees (including from Canada’s Boreal) to produce the catalog industry’s mountains of catalogs. Worst of all, most of those catalogs have no recycled content and are discarded without ever being looked at.

Solutions Are At Hand

One of the most effective ways to decrease destructive logging practices in the Boreal is for corporate customers not to purchase lumber or paper products that are from intact Boreal Forest areas, habitats of endangered and threatened species, or carbon-rich areas. In addition, corporate customers should require responsible forestry certified to the standards of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).

An increasing number of companies have shown that commercially viable alternatives to using virgin fiber for products exist. Just two examples include:

• Montreal-based Cascades, the fourth largest tissue product manufacturer in North America meets 96 percent of its pulp requirements with recycled fiber and it has committed to meet the remaining 4 percent with Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified pulp by 2007.

• The Limited Brands, parent company of Victoria's Secret, has announced it will not purchase fiber from caribou habitat unless certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Its new procurement policy states that it will eliminate all pulp supplied from endangered forests in the Boreal, and use paper that is either 10% post-consumer waste or 10% from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council in 2007.