CPAWS needs your help to keep Restigouche wild

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) needs your help to protect 100,00 hectares of ecologically important wild habitat in the Restigouche watershed of New Brunswick. CPAWS has launched an online petition calling for action by Premier Shawn Graham.
The mountainous Restigouche area is home to old growth forests and wild rivers and a leading Canadian destination for eco-tourism. It’s also key habitat for black bears, moose, bald eagles, wild Atlantic salmon, and many bird species that depend on a deep forest ecosystem to thrive.
What’s also key is that the Restigouche area is part of a linked forest system stretching into Quebec, northern New England and Maine, and the maritimes. Throughout Canada, a major cause of species decline is fragmenting of forests which cut off forest dwelling species from other populations in other forests. When natural forest corridors are broken, populations suffer through lack of food and failure to breed.
CPAWS says less than 1% of the watershed in New Brunswick is protected from development, leaving most areas open for mining, logging or new development proposals. Forest management plans show that most uncut areas of the Restigouche will be logged within 10 years.
CPAWS is Canada’s pre-eminent, national community-based voice for public wilderness protection. Since 1963 CPAWS has taken a lead role in establishing two-thirds of Canada’s protected wild spaces — an area over seven times the size of Nova Scotia.