Canada's National Heritage

Canada, a vast piece of Earth's geography second only to that of Russia, has been privileged by location and nature with a wide network of fresh-water lakes, the envy of the world. Canada's great boreal forest that encompasses a green area extending from Newfoundland to the Yukon is greater in volume than those other famous forests and jungles of the World, inclusive of the Congo Basin, the Amazon and the Russian Taiga.

The great boreal forests of Canada store greater amounts of wetland- and lake-freshwater than exists anywhere else on Earth. The boreal absorbs more carbon in its vast acreage of trees, bogs, soil and peatlands than elsewhere on this planet. Within it are supported billions of migratory songbirds, huge caribou herds, millions of waterfowl and shorebirds, and populations of predatory animals like wolves, grizzly and polar bears, wolverines and lynx.

Canada's vast ocean shorelines and ocean-sovereign extensions from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic have been recognized, like the immense boreal forests, as being needful of federal and provincial protection through legislation enacted to ensure these geographic and oceanic areas are granted heritage protection status. And the current federal government, along with its provincial counterparts have responded to that need.

The ecological value to the country, to its people, the recognition of its responsibilities to ensure these areas are not degraded through misuse, spoilation and encroachment, has been signalled by most recent actions of all levels of government in the work they and environmental groups which spur the governments to action engage in to protect endangered species and their sometimes-fragile habitat.

Climate change, increased population, strains expressed on natural resources by increasing energy demands all conspire to present as challenges to the preservation of Canada's natural resources, those that cannot be extracted, but their beauty and utility protected. National park-protection designations are ongoing. The challenge is to preserve these world-class natural resources from pillage-for-profit.

And thanks to the dedication of citizen groups, environmentalists, First Nations, biologists and social scientists, and groups such as the David Suzuki foundation, all of whom act as moral spurs to government action, Canada is in fairly good shape to face the future proud, but not complacent, that it protects its natural heritage.