Forestland half the size of Texas is being saved to help thwart climate change.
Philadelphia - It may be the biggest conservation victory for the US in decades. It ensures that massive amounts of greenhouse gases won't be released to add to global warming. It ensures an abundance of birds for generations of Americans to enjoy. And you may not have heard anything about it.
That's because it just happened in Ontario, Canada.
Over the summer, Ontario's premier, Dalton McGuinty, announced that at least 55 million acres – half of the province's boreal forest – will be off limits to development. And he has promised no new mining or logging projects until local land-use plans have support from native communities. The scale of the decision is staggering, and it commits Ontario to setting aside lands more than twice the size of Pennsylvania as parks or wildlife refuges.
Equally impressive was Premier McGuinty's strong reliance on the recommendation by scientists, led by Nobel Prize-winning authors of the International Panel on Climate Change, to make that decision.
