Logging and industrial development have consumed 80 percent of the world’s original old-growth forests.
Canada’s boreal forest, just one of three places that account for much of what remains, stores twice as much carbon as tropical rain forests, contains vast reserves of clean water and provides a critical nesting ground for almost half of all North American migratory songbirds and waterfowl. Yet, global demand for timber, minerals, energy and water resources threatens the future of Canada’s boreal.
And today, more than half of the national forests in the United States—our best source of habitat and vital freshwater reserves—remains open to logging, mining and drilling.
These wild places are vital to sustaining wildlife and fighting climate change, and they are the heritage of future generations.
Pew works to defend these essential lands, with the goals of permanently protecting half of the 1.2 billion-acre Canadian boreal forest from industrial development and safeguarding the nearly 60 million acres of roadless forests in the United States.