Moving at an ever increasing pace, a wide range of threats face the Boreal including habitat loss and degradation from various natural resource extraction industries and from climate change. The International Boreal Conservation Science Panel was formed to advance science-based solutions to secure the long-term vitality of North America’s Boreal Forest ecosystem.

The scientists who have agreed to be a part of this panel have expertise that covers a range of disciplines from global warming and caribou biology to conservation planning and the effects of oil and gas industries on birds and wildlife. All have outstanding scholarly reputations and a commitment to public outreach and conservation.

The Panel will begin work on describing and mapping for the first time, the full array of conservation values of Canada’s Boreal—one of the first such comprehensive  assessments for a global scale ecosystem. The review will include such values as intactness of habitats and ecosystem processes, responsibility toward maintaining abundant bird and mammal populations, ability to support representative age- and size-structured ecological communities, quantification of natural capital values, importance for carbon storage, protection of healthy and pristine aquatic systems, and sustaining aboriginal traditional values.

Quantifying and mapping these values should provide further information to assist as governments, First Nations, industry, and non-governmental agencies work together toward planning for and establishing a broadened network of protected areas across Canada’s Boreal.

Read more about each Science Panel Member >

International Boreal Conservation Science Panel Members

David Schindler – Water Quality
Department of Ecology at the University of Alberta, Edmonton

John Jacobs – Global Warming
Departments of Geography and Environmental Science at the Memorial University of Newfoundland

Jeremy Kerr – Biogeography
Department of Biology at the University of Ottawa
 
Micheline Manseau – Conservation Biology
Canada Research Chair of the Natural Resource Institute at the University of Manitoba

James Schaefer – Wildlife/Caribou
Department of Biology at Trent University and past Senior Wildlife Biologist for Newfoundland and Labrador Wildlife Division

Nigel Roulet – Peat/Global Warming
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Scientist, Professor of Geography and past Director of the Center for Climate and Global Change Research at the McGill School of Environment
 
Pascal Badiou – Wetlands/Global Warming
Ducks Unlimited Canada and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of Manitoba.
 
Andrew Weaver – Global Warming
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author, U.S. National Academy of Science Climate Research Committee, Royal Society of Canada, and Professor and Canada Research Chair in Atmospheric Science in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at the University of Victoria.
 
Gordon Orians – Ecology and Conservation Biology
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of Washington
 
Terry Root – Global Warming and Wildlife
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change lead author and Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at Stanford University.
 
Jim Strittholt – Conservation Biology
President and Executive Director of the Conservation Biology Institute.
 
Stuart Pimm – Ecology and Conservation Biology
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University.
 
Peter Raven – Conservation Biology, Ecology, and Botany
Home Secretary of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration, President of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis.
 
Nancy Turner – First Nations and Ethnobotany
Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria

Panelists:

Pascal Badiou >
John Jacobs >
Jeremy Kerr >
Micheline Manseau >
Gordon Orians >
Stuart Pimm >
Peter Raven >
Terry Root >
Nigel Roulet >
James Schaefer >
David Schindler >
Jim Strittholt >
Nancy Turner >
Andrew Weaver >