Big wilderness needs a big vision
The Poplar River Watershed is located in the heart of the wildlife-rich East Shore Wilderness. Photo by Henry Kalen.
The boreal forest is the largest wild frontier forest ecosystem remaining in the world. It circles the globe, traversing the northern sections of Europe, North America, and Russia. The boreal forest is the northern equivalent of the Amazon rain forest: beautiful, green, biodiverse, a cradle of culture and increasingly under chainsaw attack.
Here in Manitoba we are blessed with the largest section of intact wild boreal forest left on Earth. It’s called the East Shore Wilderness Area and it’s over 150,000 square kilometres of wild forest bound by the eastern shore of Lake Winnipeg and the Ontario border. It’s truly a natural heritage worthy of protection.
Throughout this area the Bloodvein, Leyond and Pigeon rivers wind their way through black spruce, jackpine and wetlands - important habitats for a wide array of flora and fauna including threatened species like woodland caribou.
Woodland Caribou is being pushed toward extinction by industrial development. Photo by Karvonen Films Ltd.
Click on map for detail.
This wilderness forest is threatened by the proposed extension of the Lake Winnipeg East Logging Road (see inside map). This road would result in a network of hundreds of kilometres of all-weather roads that would bring clearcut logging, mining, hydro transmission corridors, dams and other forest-destructive developments to the East Shore Wilderness.
The only road currently on the east shore ends just short of the Bloodvein River and was built by the Pine Falls Paper Company (now owned by Tembec, a Quebec based multinational corporation). Tembec now wants to expand its operations into the East Shore Wilderness to feed their recently expanded pulp mill by clearcutting the area’s wild forests. Currently less than half of their wood supply comes from their Forest Management License Area, which includes over 60% of Nopiming Provincial Park. The rest comes from outside sources such as Whiteshell and Duck Mountain Provincial Parks. As it stands, our forests simply cannot sustain this level of logging, much less any proposed increase.
It’s already outrageous that the Manitoba government is allowing this multinational company to log within our precious few provincial parks. Now the same corporation that is cutting down Manitoba’s park system wants to clearcut the East Shore’s slow growing, fragile forests. Letting Tembec into the East Shore Wilderness would be like letting a bull into a china shop. The good news is that our provincial government is about to undertake a Large Area Land Use study, called the East Side Planning Initiative. Through this process we intend to push for a network of large interconnected parks, protected areas, wildlife reserves and conservation constraints on how industrial development is allowed to proceed – enough to keep the East Shore Wilderness intact and functioning as a natural wellspring of biodiversity.
However, the government is also proposing road construction and industrial development to start during the planning process. The Wilderness Committee opposes this kind of ‘bulldoze first and ask questions later’ land use planning.
Photo by Henry Kalen.
The East Shore Wilderness is also home to many First Nations’ communities who would be directly affected should the proposed road building and clearcut logging go ahead. Yet the provincial government has not consulted with First Nations as is required under Canadian law. The government has a moral and legal responsibility to seek consent from First Nations before proceeding with any plans for this area.
In all of Canada, Manitoba stands out as the province who has protected only 5% of it’s land base — less than half the amount of land that Ontario, BC, or Alberta have set aside as protected areas. Yet at the same time Manitoba has the opportunity to protect an area that is the best of it’s kind in the world. It’s time for Premier Doer to show world-class leadership.
