There's a Fight Brewing Over a Really Important Forest in Canada

[What is the Boreal Forest?]

By Jake Bleiberg
   As oil prices continue to drop towards an uncertain bottom, tensions between environmentalists and industry are mounting around another natural resource: Canada's forests.
   A long brewing dispute over the largest undisturbed boreal forest on Earth, nearly 2-million square miles of pines and firs stretched across northern Canada, began to heat up this week when 13 American environmental advocacy groups wrote the governments of Ontario and Quebec urging them to support new conservation efforts.
   The letter comes in response to earlier lobbying by the Québec Forest Industry Council, which represents nearly half of Canada's $20-billion timber industry, warning the government against new measures proposed by a watchdog, the Forest Stewardship Council. The new measures would threaten thousands of jobs and the communities that rely on them, the industry group warned in an October letter to Quebec's minister of forests...Continue reading...