Canada
Old-growth trees of the boreal forest near Dryden in northwestern Ontario, Canada
River Jordan for NRDC
Unparalleled global treasures stretch across the distant reaches of Canada, from the Great Bear Rainforest along British Columbia’s coast to the boreal forest, which accounts for a quarter of the world’s remaining intact forests and holds nearly twice as much carbon as all the world’s oil reserves combined.
These ecosystems are home to hundreds of Indigenous communities and many of North America’s most iconic species. They also play a pivotal role in protecting our climate. But industrial activities threaten them with irreparable harm—activities like the development of Alberta’s tar sands, among the world’s dirtiest sources of oil, and the clearcutting of more than a million acres of boreal forest each year.
Canada’s energy and land-use decisions have major implications for its future, as well as that of its neighbors in the United States and the climate of the entire planet. This is why NRDC works with Indigenous allies and environmental partners to protect the country’s landscapes and shape its conservation choices, from Quebec’s James Bay to British Columbia’s Clayoquot Sound.
- NRDC experts have gained a reputation for credible research that has earned us a place in the federal regulatory process, shaping decisions on issues such as tar sands pipeline proposals and deep-sea drilling. We have established trusted partnerships with Indigenous allies, environmental and community groups, and government agencies, making us one of the few environmental organizations that can convene key stakeholders on both sides of the U.S.–Canadian border.
- NRDC is defending Canada’s boreal forest from unsustainable logging, which is driven in part by the U.S. demand for single-use, throwaway products like toilet paper. We support our allies by backing their efforts to establish Indigenous protected areas and by challenging companies like Procter & Gamble to stop using intact boreal forest to make products like Charmin toilet paper.
- As one of the first organizations to call international attention to the destructive power of oil production from Alberta’s tar sands, NRDC worked with a coalition that stopped the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline and the Energy East pipeline that would have brought hundreds of tar sands tankers down the U.S. Atlantic coast. We continue to fight the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast, and we work to protect our communities and marine ecosystems along the Pacific coast from tar sands tankers.
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Industrial logging is destroying a million acres of the boreal every year.
Tell Justin Trudeau to close Canada's logging loopholes and save the boreal forest!
