From Green Right Now Reports Canada is in the process of
mandating protection of 470,000 square miles of boreal forest in
one of the largest conservation and climate change initiatives
in history. “It’s our gift to future generations,” said Alan
Latourelle, chief executive officer of Parks Canada, the agency
managing the nation’s parks. “We’re the last generation that can
do that.” The area affected amounts to about half the size of
the Louisiana Purchase or five times the size of the U.S.
National Park system. The land would be protected in perpetuity
from damming, mining and logging. Canada’s peat bogs and forests
store 233 billion tons of carbon, according to some estimates,
or almost one third of the carbon stored in the Earth’s
atmosphere. More than 80 percent of that is stored within the
country’s boreal region, and politicians are writing protections
for that carbon into the law. “This is the first time in Canada,
and quite possibly the world, where a government is creating a
law that intends to protec