From Albania and India to Paraguay and Norway, people from 62 countries around the world have signed a petition demanding that Canadian provincial and federal governments act immediately to curb habitat destruction in the Canadian boreal forest. The petition also calls for conservation measures to protect the most significant breeding ground in the western hemisphere.
The Save Our Boreal Birds petition is a campaign of Ontario Nature, a leading conservation organization in Ontario with over 140 member groups and over 30,000 supporters, and the Boreal Songbird Initiative, a U.S. based bird conservation organization. With the help and support of partner nature organizations across Canada, Central and South America, the petition quickly spread across the continent and overseas.
In Ontario alone, there are over 200 species and a quarter billion breeding birds that depend on Ontario’s boreal forest. The region is an important ecological refuge for birds and other animals including some of the last remaining large populations of woodland caribou, wolves, lynx and wolverines on earth. In recent years however, the encroachment of rapid and unchecked development in the mining and forestry sectors have dramatically impacted the area.
Last year NAFTA’s environmental watchdog, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, confirmed that more than 45,000 nests were destroyed in 2001 while recent breeding bird surveys have demonstrated population declines in flycatchers, Boreal Chickadees, Bay-breasted Warblers and Canada Warblers.
Canadians are being asked to sign the Save Our Boreal Birds petition at www.saveourborealbirds.org to contribute to this global effort.
