In case you missed this article--great news for wilderness and wildlife!

Canada Sets Aside Vast Northern Wilderness
25 Million Acres in Boreal Forest Declared Off-Limits to Development, Mining

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 22, 2007; A30

Canada's government yesterday set aside 25 million acres of wilderness -- 11 
times the size of Yellowstone National Park -- for conservation, a move that 
environmentalists called one of North America's most important acts of 
nature preservation.

The land in Canada's Northwest Territories is in three huge tracts that will 
be used to create a national park, a national wilderness area and a 
conservation area administered by native groups under treaty rights.

The areas are wild, scenic and remote. They have been eyed with increasing 
interest by diamond, uranium, and oil and gas developers, and the action 
yesterday by Canada's ministries of environment and Indian affairs will 
prevent mining, drilling and most timber-cutting in the areas.

"We are withdrawing massive areas from industrial development to protect 
some of the most impressive ecological and cultural wonders in the north for 
generations to come," Environment Minister John Baird said in an 
announcement from Ottawa.

Environmentalists hailed the action as adding protection to parts of the 
sensitive boreal forest, the broad swath of green that circles a northern 
tier of the globe from Canada to Siberia. The boreal forest is said to be 
the largest land-based store of carbon on the planet. If released by 
development, the carbon could exacerbate global warming. The forest also is 
the summer home to millions of North America's migrating songbirds.

"We're very happy with this," said Chief Adeline Jonasson, who leads a small 
community of the Lutsel K'e Dene native tribe on part of the proposed 
national park. "This area is the one our ancestors chose for us to live in. 
This will preserve it for generations to come."

Native groups, environmentalists and others have been working to designate 
the land for years. They reached a tentative deal on the national park in 
2006, but yesterday's action formally withdraws the land from development.

People working to set aside parts of Canada's vast wilderness from the 
encroaching oil wells and growing diamond and uranium mining had initially 
considered the conservative government of Stephen Harper to be hostile.

But now, "the government is actually delivering on their promises, and 
delivering much more quickly than we are used to," said Larry Innes, head of 
the Canadian Boreal Initiative, which works to preserve the forest. "They 
are doing some very surprising things."

The 6.5 million-acre national park will be created on the eastern edge of 
Great Slave Lake, a pristine, glacier-carved body of water that is prowled 
by grizzlies and caribou and remains frozen eight months a year. About 400 
members of the Lutsel K'e Dene tribe live there.

Farther west, a 3.7 million-acre national wildlife area will be created in a 
region called the Ramparts, where towering stone cliffs line the Mackenzie 
River and key wetlands border the Ramparts River. Buffering Great Slave Park 
will be a 15 million-acre conservation area administered by the Akaitcho 
native tribe.

"The whole scale of the boreal landscape is staggering for an American," 
Joshua Reichert, managing director of the Pew Environment Group, which 
helped shepherd the projects, said by telephone from Philadelphia. "We have 
a lot of what we consider vast landscapes in the West, but nothing like the 
boreal. You really have to fly over it -- it just goes on and on."

Yellowstone National Park, which includes land in Wyoming, Montana and 
Idaho, is about 2.2 million acres.

The land designated yesterday "isn't just Canada. This is a global resource 
and a worldwide treasure," said Steven Kallick, the Seattle-based manager of 
the International Boreal Conservation Campaign for the Pew Environment 
Group. "It's the largest largely intact forest left in the planet. It rivals 
the Amazon and Siberia in size. It's one of the few places left in the world 
like it."

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