An Irreplaceable Wilderness

The boreal forest--the ultimate destination for millions of songbirds--is facing destruction

By Jeffrey V. Wells

Every winter since 1998, a familiar and unassuming bird has ranked as one of the Great Backyard Bird Count's top three most widely reported species. About 260 million of these birds flood south into the United States each year, most of them coming from their hatching grounds in a great bird nursery far to the north.

The bird is the Dark-eyed Junco, and it's more than likely the ones you've seen in your backyard were born in the boreal forest. Like a green blanket stretching from Alaska 3,500 miles across Canada to Newfoundland, the boreal forest of Canada and Alaska encompasses more than 1.5 billion acres and includes 25 percent of the world's remaining intact forests. More than 80 percent of the global population of Dark-eyed Juncos is estimated to breed there.

Image of boreal forest courtesy of Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society

In fact, the boreal forest shelters more than 300 bird species and 50 percent of the total populations of nearly 100 bird species. It produces an astounding 3?5 billion birds each year, one billion of which spend the winter in the United States. Eighty species recorded in last year's Great Backyard Bird Count, for example, have at least 50 percent of their breeding populations in the boreal forest. Another two billion or more boreal breeding birds winter in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean.

North America's boreal forest is home to caribou and other wildlife, including more than 300 bird species that breed there.

Wayne Sawchuck

Many of our most familiar birds are abundant because more than 70 percent of the boreal forest is still ecologically intact. But pressures are mounting. Hundreds of millions of acres of the boreal forest are being allocated for industrial uses--forestry, hydroelectric dams, and oil, gas, and mineral operations.

Since 1975, more than 60 million acres of forest have been logged in Canada. Some of the leases of logging rights on publicly-owned land are massive. Single companies have purchased logging rights from the government for areas larger than the entire state of New York. Oil and gas development projects are increasing, including plans to build an 800-mile pipeline through the pristine Mackenzie Valley to speed the development of the Alberta Oil Sands, the world's second largest oil and gas deposit and one of the most polluting sources of energy available. Yet only about eight percent of the Canadian boreal forest is currently protected.

The irony is that the very place that produces so many of the birds we love is being destroyed to feed the American appetite for cheap energy, paper, and other wood products. Approximately 80 percent of Canada's forest product exports go to the United States. Almost two thirds of the wood cut in Canada's boreal forest is used to make paper, including catalogs, junk mail, magazines, and newspapers. And many Americans would be surprised to learn that the United States buys more of its oil and gas from Canada than from any other country.

About 52 percent of Black-and-white Warblers in North America breed in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska.

Pamela Wells

This spring the critical importance of the boreal forest as North America's great bird nursery is being celebrated through International Migratory Bird Day. Hundreds of events across the hemisphere will highlight the importance of the boreal forest and raise awareness of its conservation issues. This year, new cutting edge Internet technology will take the public and thousands of school kids from classrooms across North America on America's Bird Trek, a virtual field trip at www.borealbirds.org/events.html. that will span Ecuador, Mexico, and New Jersey, and end in the boreal forests of northern Alberta.

This year as you revel in the return of migrating birds to your favorite place, look closely at them. That Blackpoll Warbler, Northern Waterthrush, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Yellow-bellied Sapsucker, or White-throated Sparrow may owe its existence to a vast green wilderness filled with wolves and bears and caribou--a place that represents North America's last great wilderness; a place that is one of the last great conservation opportunities of our time--the boreal forest: North America's bird nursery.

To find out more, visit the Boreal Songbird Initiative web site at www.borealbirds.org.

Jeffrey V. Wells is senior scientist for the Boreal Songbird Initiative.

For permission to reprint all or part of this article, please contact Laura Erickson, editor, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 159 Sapsucker Woods Rd., Ithaca, NY, 14850. Phone: (607) 254-1114. email: lle24@cornell.edu