The State of Conservation in North America’s Boreal Forest: Issues and Opportunities

Abstract

The North American Boreal Forest biome has been recognized as containing some of the highest proportions of intact, primary forest left on Earth. Over 6 million km2 of the Boreal Forest biome is found in Canada (5.5 million km2) and the United States (0.74 million km2) across 10 provinces and territories and one United States state (Alaska). All of it is within the traditional territories of hundreds of Indigenous governments, many of whom are now asserting their rights to make decisions about its future and current land-use including for conservation and development. The biome is considered to be 80% intact and between 8 and 13% formally protected. The North American Boreal Forest biome’s intactness has allowed it to retain many globally significant conservation features including long-distance mammal and fish migrations, healthy populations of large predators, one to three billion nesting birds, some of the world’s largest lakes and North America’s longest undammed rivers, massive stores of carbon and ecological functionality. The biome’s forests, minerals, and hydropower potential are also recognized as economic opportunities so that the industrial footprint is rapidly increasing, sometimes without careful land-use planning decisions. Indigenous, federal, state, provincial and territorial governments and conservation organizations have strived over recent decades to recognize the conservation opportunity inherent in such a still-intact landscape, resulting in implementation of some of the world’s largest land conservation set-asides. Indigenous governments, in particular, have been at the forefront in developing and implementing world-leading, modern land-use plans that achieve land conservation at massive scales. Supporting efforts to ensure that a high proportion of North America’s Boreal Forest biome is protected and remains as intact habitat with unimpeded ecosystem processes should be a priority of the global conservation community. Federal, state, and provincial/territorial governments should support Indigenous protected area proposals, vastly increase financial support for Indigenous government land conservation and stewardship activities, and should develop new protected area co-management models with Indigenous governments. Governments should also be strongly advocating for raising the global Convention on Biological Diversity protected area goal to at least 30% by 2030.

Full text

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POLICY AND PRACTICE REVIEWS
published: 30 July 2020
doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00090
Edited by:
Alexandra C. Morel,
University of Oxford, United Kingdom
Reviewed by:
Neil Pederson,
Harvard University, United States
Evan S. Kane,
Michigan Technological University,
United States
*Correspondence:
Jeffrey V. Wells
jeff.wells@audubon.org
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Temperate and Boreal Forests,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Forests and Global
Change
Received: 14 January 2019
Accepted: 02 July 2020
Published: 30 July 2020
Citation:
Wells JV, Dawson N, Culver N,
Reid FA and Morgan Siegers S (2020)
The State of Conservation in North
America’s Boreal Forest: Issues
and Opportunities.
Front. For. Glob. Change 3:90.
doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2020.00090
The State of Conservation in North
America’s Boreal Forest: Issues and
Opportunities
Jeffrey V. Wells1,2*, Natalie Dawson3,4 , Nada Culver5, Frederic A. Reid6and
Shaunna Morgan Siegers7
1Boreal Conservation Program, National Audubon Society, Gardiner, ME, United States, 2Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell
University, Ithaca, NY, United States, 3National Audubon Society, Audubon Alaska, Anchorage, AK, United States, 4College
of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, United States, 5National Audubon Society, Public Lands
Program, Denver, CO, United States, 6Ducks Unlimited, Boreal and Arctic Conservation Program, Rancho Cordova, CA,
United States, 7Indigenous Leadership Initiative, Ottawa, ON, Canada
The North American Boreal Forest biome has been recognized as containing some
of the highest proportions of intact, primary forest left on Earth. Over 6 million km2
of the Boreal Forest biome is found in Canada (5.5 million km2) and the United States
(0.74 million km2) across 10 provinces and territories and one United States state
(Alaska). All of it is within the traditional territories of hundreds of Indigenous
governments, many of whom are now asserting their rights to make decisions about
its future and current land-use including for conservation and development. The biome
is considered to be 80% intact and between 8 and 13% formally protected. The
North American Boreal Forest biome’s intactness has allowed it to retain many globally
significant conservation features including long-distance mammal and fish migrations,
healthy populations of large predators, one to three billion nesting birds, some of the
world’s largest lakes and North America’s longest undammed rivers, massive stores
of carbon and ecological functionality. The biome’s forests, minerals, and hydropower
potential are also recognized as economic opportunities so that the industrial footprint is
rapidly increasing, sometimes without careful land-use planning decisions. Indigenous,
federal, state, provincial and territorial governments and conservation organizations
have strived over recent decades to recognize the conservation opportunity inherent
in such a still-intact landscape, resulting in implementation of some of the world’s
largest land conservation set-asides. Indigenous governments, in particular, have been
at the forefront in developing and implementing world-leading, modern land-use plans
that achieve land conservation at massive scales. Supporting efforts to ensure that
a high proportion of North America’s Boreal Forest biome is protected and remains
as intact habitat with unimpeded ecosystem processes should be a priority of the
global conservation community. Federal, state, and provincial/territorial governments
should support Indigenous protected area proposals, vastly increase financial support
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Wells et al. Boreal Forest Conservation Issues and Opportunities
for Indigenous government land conservation and stewardship activities, and should
develop new protected area co-management models with Indigenous governments.
Governments should also be strongly advocating for raising the global Convention on
Biological Diversity protected area goal to at least 30% by 2030.
Keywords: boreal forest, forest conservation, intact forest, indigenous guardians, indigenous-led conservation,
indigenous protected and conserved areas, primary forest, protected areas
INTRODUCTION
With the advent of GIS capabilities and the availability of
complete global coverage of remote sensing products over the
last two decades, identification of the biomes of the world
with the least large-scale human impacts has become possible.
Notwithstanding the various methodological and definitional
questions around how to define and map such areas (Potapov
et al., 2017;Venier et al., 2018;Watson et al., 2018) there has
been broad consensus that there are five regions of the world
that encompass the largest areal extent of forest habitat that has
not been subject to large-scale industrial logging, roadbuilding,
mining, or other modern industrial land-use impacts. First
identified in 1997 (Bryant et al., 1997) and termed “frontier
forests” these forest areas have subsequently been mapped under
different criteria and terms including “wilderness,” “intact forest”
and “primary forest” in a number of other publications and
analyses (Sanderson et al., 2002;Mittermeir et al., 2003;Potapov
et al., 2008, 2017;Hansen et al., 2013;Mackey et al., 2014;
Watson et al., 2016, 2018;Dinerstein et al., 2017). These five
regions–the forests of New Guinea and Borneo, the Congo
Basin, the Amazon Basin, the Russian Boreal Forest, and the
North American Boreal Forest (Figure 1) – have all seen major
losses in forest area since their original identification in 1997
(Hansen et al., 2013;Haddad et al., 2015;Venter et al., 2016;
Watson et al., 2016).
Increasingly, terrestrial protected areas work in these and
other regions around the world has focused on increasing
protected areas coverage (Dinerstein et al., 2017, 2018;
Watson et al., 2018). The first goal that many governments
and non-governmental organizations have focused on is
reaching the Convention on Biodiversity Target 11 goal of
17% of each nation protected as outlined in the so-called
Aichi treaty (Environment and Climate Change Canada, 2016;
Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, 2018;Indigenous
Circle of Experts, 2018). Academics and conservation
practitioners have also increased awareness for the need
to increase protected areas goals to much higher levels in
order to achieve the goal of maintaining biodiversity and
ecosystem services (Noss et al., 2012;International Boreal
Conservation Science Panel, 2013;Wilson, 2016). These
higher-level goals are being achieved in certain landscapes
as a result of the leadership of Indigenous peoples and
often through reconciliation processes that result in strong
Indigenous self-government (Indigenous Circle of Experts, 2018;
Zurba et al., 2019).
CONSERVATION VALUES OF THE
NORTH AMERICAN BOREAL FOREST
BIOME THAT MAKE IT A GLOBAL
PRIORITY FOR CONSERVATION
North America’s Boreal Forest biome (Figure 2) is one of the
most intact of these global forested ecosystems (Lee et al., 2003,
2006;Andrew et al., 2012, 2014;Dinerstein et al., 2017;Venier
et al., 2018). The biome is estimated to harbor 25% of the world’s
remaining intact forests (Aksenov et al., 2002;Lee et al., 2003,
2006). Spanning from Newfoundland and Labrador in the east
and across Canada to interior Alaska, it encompasses 6.27 million
km2. Within its boundaries are some of the largest peatlands,
lakes, and rivers in the world (Schindler and Lee, 2010;Wells
et al., 2010) and a significant amount of the world’s terrestrial
carbon (Carlson et al., 2009, 2010;Tarnocai et al., 2009).
North American Boreal Forest biome peatlands include a
wetland that is considered one of the largest in the world, the
Hudson Bay-James Bay Lowlands that extend over 370,000 km2
(Abraham and Keddy, 2005;Webster et al., 2015). Along with
being enormous storehouses of carbon, these wetlands store and
filter massive amounts of freshwater (Schindler and Lee, 2010;
Wells et al., 2010). Canada’s portion of the Boreal Forest biome
is thought to hold a minimum of 208 billion tons of carbon
in its trees and other plants, soils, peatlands, as well as under
permafrost (Carlson et al., 2009). The biome’s natural capital is
worth an estimated $703 billion annually (Anielski and Wilson,
2009). Ecosystem goods and services are relatively unimpaired
across the region due to its large degree of intactness.
The highest densities of trees on earth occur in the global
boreal forest biomes and are estimated to support 24% of the
world’s individual trees (Crowther et al., 2015). Using Crowther
et al.’s (2015) boreal tree density average applied to the North
American Boreal Forest biome suggests that the biome holds
as many as 500 billion individual trees representing 16% of the
world’s total number of individual trees. Many plants species are
largely confined to the North American Boreal Forest biome or
at least reach their greatest abundance and distributional extent
within the biome. This includes many coniferous tree species
which are considered characteristic of the North American
Boreal Forest biome including Picea glauca,Picea mariana,Larix
laricina,Abies balsamea,Pinus banksiana,Pinus contorta var.
latifolia, and Abies lasiocarpa but also characteristic deciduous
tree species like Populus tremuloides,Populus balsamifera, and
Betula papyrifera (Brandt, 2009).
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FIGURE 1 | The largest intact forest regions on earth are primarily confined to five regions: the forests of New Guinea and Borneo, the Congo Basin, the Amazon
Basin, the Russian Boreal Forest, and the North American Boreal Forest. Map courtesy of Canadian Geographic.
The North American Boreal Forest biome encompasses
millions of lakes and ponds (Wells et al., 2010) and Canada’s
Boreal Forest holds more available freshwater than any other
single country on earth (Minns et al., 2008). Freshwater outflows
from the North American Boreal Forest biome to marine
systems play an important role in driving large-scale ocean
currents, moving nutrients, impacting weather patterns and the
productivity of marine fisheries across the globe (Aagaard and
Carmack, 1989;Woo et al., 2008;Wells et al., 2010). Within
the biome are four of the world’s ten largest lakes. This includes
Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories, one of the world’s
most pristine (Figure 3). Many large lakes here support healthy,
age-structured fish populations that includes a significant
proportion of larger and older fish that often become scarce
under heavy fishing pressure. The largest known individuals of
species like lake trout, brook trout, and Arctic grayling have been
documented from these lakes (Wells et al., 2010). North America’s
Boreal Forest biome is rich also in free-flowing, undammed rivers
(Figure 4) – more than now occur in the remainder of North
America (Dynesius and Nilsson, 1994;Webster et al., 2015).
Dams, pollution and water over-subscription have imperiled
river biodiversity across much of the world, but rivers in
North America’s Boreal Forest biome are among the remaining
strongholds for populations of many anadromous fish species
(Wells et al., 2010). Pacific salmon continue to migrate up the
Stikine, Nass, and Skeena rivers into the Sacred Headwaters of
northern B.C. and the Yukon River through Alaska to the Yukon.
Anadromous fish ascend the Mackenzie River southward from
the Arctic over 1,000 km, some reaching to tributaries in B.C. and
Alberta. Atlantic salmon runs along the Atlantic Coast of North
America have been lost or are endangered in the United States
and southern Canada (Limburg and Waldman, 2009). Yet healthy
populations still ascend rivers in the boreal regions of Quebec and
Newfoundland and Labrador.
North America’s Boreal Forest biome is also home to both
Old and New World evolutionary lineages of caribou (Polfus
et al., 2017) and migratory and non-migratory lineages of
wolves (Musiani et al., 2007) that persist together in the biome.
Unfortunately, all populations and forms of caribou that occur
in Canada (woodland, mountain, barren-ground) are now listed
as Endangered, Threatened, or of Special Concern by the
Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada
(COSEWIC, 2019) with major harvest restrictions now in place
on caribou throughout Canada.
Within the biome are some of Earth’s only remaining
unfettered large mammal migrations – those particularly of herds
of migratory tundra caribou (Rangifer tarandus) that can traverse
500–1500 km in an annual migration between boreal forest
wintering ranges and tundra summer calving grounds (Hummel
and Ray, 2008;Wilcove, 2008;Joly et al., 2019). The Porcupine
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FIGURE 2 | The North American Boreal Forest biome as defined in Brandt (2009). The biome is estimated to harbor 25% of the world’s remaining intact forests.
Caribou Herd in western Canada and Alaska travels over 1300 km
each year as do the Bathurst and Beverly herds of western Canada
and the Leaf River Herd of Quebec (Gurarie et al., 2019;Joly
et al., 2019). The Western Arctic Caribou Herd of Alaska and
the Qamanirjuaq Herd of Canada travel at least 1200 km each
year (Joly et al., 2019). Loss of migration corridors threatens
many herbivore species across the globe as habitat modification
reduces the ability of animals to move across large tracts of intact
landscape (Wilcove, 2008;Ripple et al., 2015).
The North American Boreal Forest biome supports significant
populations of large carnivores that have been lost from much
of their southern range including wolves, grizzly bears, and
wolverine (Laliberte and Ripple, 2004;Cardillo et al., 2006;
Bradshaw et al., 2009). One of the southernmost populations
of polar bears in the world occurs in the Boreal Forest biome
in the Hudson Bay and James Bay region where the bears
have the unusual habit of maternity denning in the ground
(rather than in snow) sometimes hundreds of kilometers inland
(Peacock et al., 2010).
Within the North American Boreal Forest biome are a
variety of range-restricted mammal species including the Ungava
collared lemming (found only in northern Ungava peninsula),
Richardson’s collared lemming, singing vole (found only in parts
of Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories), Dall’s sheep,
collared pika, and the American wood bison (Bowers et al., 2004).
A subspecies of freshwater harbor seal is separated from the sea
and found only in Quebec’s Tursujuq National Park (Smith, 1996,
1997;COSEWIC, 2007).
A great abundance of invertebrates, especially insects, occur
only or primarily in peatlands and other wetlands and lakes,
rivers and streams of North America’s Boreal Forest biome. This
includes species of chironomid flies, lepidopterans, dragonflies,
and beetles (Spitzer and Danks, 2006). Species of dragonfly
whose range is primarily within the biome include the Boreal
Snaketail, Quebec Emerald, Hudsonian Emerald, Kennedy’s
Emerald, Boreal Whiteface, Lake Darner, and Zigzag Darner
(Cannings and Cannings, 1994;Dunkle, 2000).
Butterflies that are wetland-dependent and that have most of
their range confined to the North American Boreal Forest biome
include the Bog Fritillary, Titania Fritillary, Disa Alpine, Jutta
Arctic, and Cranberry Blue (Opler and Malikul, 1992). Peatlands
of the biome support unusual species, like the sphagnum
bog cricket (Neonemobius palustris), bog katydid (Metrioptera
sphagnorum), the pitcher plant mosquito (Wyeomyia smithii),
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FIGURE 3 | North America’s Boreal Forest biome contains millions of lakes, including Lake Superior, Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake, which rank amongst the
world’s largest in both surface area and overall volume.
and the pitcher plant midge (Metriocnemus knabi) (Capinera
et al., 2004;Spitzer and Danks, 2006).
The North American Boreal Forest biome supports billions
of songbirds, millions of waterfowl and shorebirds, and is
the last stronghold for globally endangered species like the
Whooping Crane (Wells and Blancher, 2011). The intactness
of the North American Boreal Forest biome is a critical reason
it has remained one of the world’s most important breeding
reservoirs for migratory birds, supporting an estimated 1–3
billion nesting birds each summer including billions of songbirds
and millions of waterfowl and shorebirds (Wells, 2011;Wells and
Blancher, 2011). The biome is the last stronghold for the globally
endangered Whooping Crane which nests in or near Wood
Buffalo National Park straddling the border between Alberta and
the Northwest Territories (Wells and Blancher, 2011). Each fall,
the biome annually “exports” some 3–5 billion birds once the
young have hatched and migrated to populate their wintering
ranges, from southern Canada and the United States south
through Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America and South
America (Robertson et al., 2011;Wells and Blancher, 2011;Wells
et al., 2014). At least 96 species are estimated to have at least half
of their North American breeding distribution within the biome
and 151 to have at least 25% of their breeding distribution in
the biome (Wells and Blancher, 2011). Wetlands within Alaska’s
portion of the Boreal Forest biome have long been known as
an important stronghold for the original wild populations of
Trumpeter Swan and these same wetlands are hosting increased
densities of nesting waterfowl in recent decades, perhaps three
times as many as in the 1950’s (Petrie and Reid, 2009).
Sadly, there are a growing number of Boreal bird
species in steep decline with six species considered globally
threatened under IUCN Red List and eight Near Threatened.
Boreal-dependent birds like the Rusty Blackbird, the Olive-sided
Flycatcher, and Canada Warbler have shown declines in
abundance of more than 50% over the last half-century. All
three are now on Canada’s list of Threatened or Special Concern
species and Olive-sided Flycatcher appears on Audubon Alaska’s
Redlist (Warnock, 2017). Boreal-breeding waterbirds are
also featured on that list, including the eastern populations
of Barrow’s Goldeneye and Harlequin Duck, the western
populations of Horned Grebe, and Yellow Rail, Hudsonian
Godwit and Red-necked Phalarope (Wells et al., 2014). The
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FIGURE 4 | The North American Boreal Forest biome encompasses most of the continent’s remaining, large undammed rivers, which maintain globally significant
water, nutrient, and migratory fish movements between terrestrial and ocean ecosystems.
candidate species for future inclusion on that list include a
number of shorebirds that are dependent on Boreal wetlands for
breeding, including Lesser Yellowlegs, Semipalmated Sandpiper,
Short-billed Dowitcher, Stilt Sandpiper, and Pectoral Sandpiper
(COSEWIC, 2019). Many other Boreal-breeding species have
seen steep declines in the last 50 years, including Black Scoter
(listed at Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List), Surf, and
White-winged Scoters, Lesser Scaup, Long-tailed Duck (listed as
Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List), Blackpoll Warbler, and even
well-loved backyard feeder birds like White-throated Sparrow
and Dark-eyed Junco (Wells, 2007;Slattery et al., 2011;Sauer
et al., 2015;Wells et al., 2016, 2018). Many of the species in steep
decline on Alaska’s Watchlist are found seasonally within Alaska’s
Boreal Forest biome (Warnock, 2017).
GOVERNANCE AND POLICY CONTEXT
OF THE CANADIAN BOREAL FOREST
Virtually all of North America’s Boreal Forest biome is considered
(at least by non-Indigenous governments) to be under the
dominion of federal, provincial and territorial governments as
so-called “crown land” in Canada (Bone, 2000). Decisions about
the management of that land have historically largely been under
the control of provincial and territorial governments (Frideres
and Rowe, 2010) in Canada. Indigenous governments, on the
other hand, consider their traditional territories within the region
to be sovereign lands for which they should have complete
authority or co-authority with federal, provincial, and territorial
governments. In some regions, these lands were never under a
historic treaty and some areas of Canada remain without even
a modern-day treaty (Bone, 2000). In other regions, there are
historic treaties that are sometimes invoked by federal, provincial
or territorial governments to suggest that all Indigenous land
management rights were extinguished (Long, 2010). Recent legal
cases have challenged the latter view and have been supported, at
least in part, by court rulings including at the Canadian Supreme
Court (Ariss and Cutfeet, 2012).
Provincial and territorial governments as opposed to the
federal government, in the Canadian confederation system,
hold the rights to make decisions about the use of crown
lands. One of the types of land uses granted by provinces and
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territories that encompasses much of the southern half of the
Boreal Forest biome is for industrial scale logging (International
Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2013). Often long-term
land tenures to single logging companies cover vast areas,
larger than some United States states. These tenures give those
companies the rights to harvest logs and build roads, bridges
and other infrastructure in order to do so. Mining companies
and oil and gas companies can similarly license claims for
areas of the boreal forest for exploration (Wells et al., 2010).
If exploration has indicated a substantial mineral deposit, then
those companies can apply for the right to develop mines or
oil extraction facilities. Hydropower corporations in Canada
are largely all public-private corporations. These entities must
also be granted rights to develop dams, roads, transmission
line corridors and other infrastructure within Boreal Forest
lands. Historically, Indigenous peoples were rarely consulted
on the management of their lands including the granting of
rights to resource extraction companies to operate on their
traditional territories (Ariss and Cutfeet, 2012;Indigenous
Circle of Experts, 2018) or the designation of protected areas
(Indigenous Circle of Experts, 2018). In the last two decades,
more engagement and consultation of Indigenous governments
and communities has begun taking place. But the degree of
authority in land use decisions that any particular Indigenous
government or community has over the use of its traditional
territory varies greatly across Canada depending especially on the
views of the provincial or territorial government and bureaucratic
leadership and the level of pressure exerted by resource extraction
industries in that region.
GOVERNANCE AND POLICY CONTEXT
OF THE ALASKA BOREAL FOREST
The Alaska portion of the Boreal Forest biome is managed
by the federal government (51%), Native Corporations (24%),
state and local governments (25%), and private landowners
(0.4%). Federal lands in the Alaska Boreal Forest biome are
primarily managed by the Bureau of Land Management. The
Bureau of Land Management is governed by a multiple-use
mandate, seeking to balance a host of resources. This is
outlined in federal statute 43 U.S.C. §1732(a) which states:
“Multiple use means the management of the public lands and
their various resource values so that they are utilized in the
combination that will best meet the present and future needs
of the American people,” and includes “the use of some land
for less than all of the resources.” The resources to be managed
specifically include, but are not limited to “recreation, range,
timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic,
scientific and historical values.” In addition, the Bureau of Land
Management is required to “give priority to the designation
and protection of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern,”
which are areas that receive special management “to protect and
prevent irreparable damage to important historic, cultural, or
scenic values, fish and wildlife resources or other natural systems
or processes. . .” (Federal Land Policy and Management Act,
43 U.S.C. § § 1712[b][3], 1702[a]).
Management for the Bureau of Land Management Boreal
Forest lands in Alaska is defined in Resource Management
Plans that govern land use for decades at a time. These
Resource Management Plans are based on ongoing inventories
of existing resources and identify which lands will be managed
as Areas of Critical Environmental Concern or for other special
purposes, as well as which lands will be available for oil and gas
leasing and which lands will be recommended for withdrawal
from mining (Federal Land Policy and Management Act, 43
U.S.C. §§1711, 1712). Based on its perception of the multiple
use mandate, the Bureau of Land Management is generally
reluctant to set aside lands for protection or to close them
to leasing or other forms or development. For example, the
Kobuk-Seward Record of Decision and Approved Resource
Management Plans did not close any of the 11.9 million
acres under consideration to oil and gas leasing (Bureau of
Land Management, 2016). Nonetheless, many existing Resource
Management Plans in Alaska do contain some Areas of Critical
Environmental Concern that protect cultural and subsistence
values for Tribes (e.g., Bureau of Land Management, 2008a;
Bureau of Land Management, 2008b). In addition, much of the
Boreal Forest lands, close to 50 million acres, were withdrawn
from mining and leasing pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims
Settlement Act, subject to later actions by the Bureau of Land
Management and the Department of the Interior to revoke those
withdrawals (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, 43 U.S.C.
§ 1616[d][1]).
INDIGENOUS LEADERSHIP IN BOREAL
FOREST LAND-USE PLANNING AND
LAND CONSERVATION
In recent years in Canada, Indigenous governments have
increasingly been asserting more decision-making authority over
their lands (Ariss and Cutfeet, 2012). One of the ways that this has
been accomplished has been by Indigenous nations developing
leading edge comprehensive land-use plans for their traditional
lands (International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2013).
These plans consolidate the Indigenous government’s vision for
the future of their lands and include protected lands as well as
lands that may be available for resource development under the
oversight of Indigenous governments through their laws, policies
and regulations.
In some areas, these plans have led Indigenous governments
to declare certain areas as off limits to resource development
activities sometimes through a declaration of an Indigenous
protected or conserved area (Ariss and Cutfeet, 2012;Indigenous
Circle of Experts, 2018). Conflicts have arisen when a provincial
or territorial government ignores the declaration and grants
permits for private industry to operate within the area designated
by the Indigenous government as off-limits to such activity.
Those conflicts can result in actual on-the-ground standoffs with
Indigenous blockades of access roads and/or may begin a string
of protracted legal battles that can be financially debilitating for
the Indigenous government (Ariss and Cutfeet, 2012).
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THE CHALLENGE FOR
NON-GOVERNMENTAL CONSERVATION
ORGANIZATIONS
For non-governmental conservation organizations (NGCO),
the political landscape is a complicated one within which
to operate. In essence, both Indigenous and provincial or
territorial governments control or strongly influence land use
decisions across the Boreal Forest biome. NGCOs must develop
and maintain supportive partnerships with many distinct and
independent Indigenous governments and with provincial or
territorial government officials to understand the intricacies of
reinforcing Indigenous-led conservation actions and not overstep
the Indigenous government’s leadership.
CURRENT CONSERVATION STATUS OF
THE NORTH AMERICAN BOREAL
FOREST BIOME
Large tracts of North American Boreal Forest ecosystems
remain intact not by design, but rather as the outcome of the
inaccessibility of access (Andrew et al., 2012). The historical
and current difficulty in accessing these lands has also made it
one of the last industrial development frontiers on earth. The
area protected is estimated to be only between 8 (Andrew et al.,
2014) and 12.7% (Lee and Cheng, 2010;Carlson et al., 2015) and
development and land-use management decisions are underway
at an increased rate. Yet estimates do not yet reflect gains made
in the last 2 years in creating new, large-scale protected areas in
Canada’s Boreal Forest region.
The overall areal extent of the North American Boreal
Forest biome considered intact or relatively free of industrial
anthropogenic impacts (including forestry, mining, oil and
gas, hydropower, and infrastructure but not including climate
change) has been estimated at 80–83% (Lee and Cheng, 2010;
Lee et al., 2010;Andrew et al., 2012;Powers et al., 2013;Smith
and Cheng, 2016). An area of contention in global analyses
of areal extent of intact forest is whether areas impacted by
forest fires should be considered as part of the anthropogenic
footprint (Venier et al., 2018). Most forest fires in the North
American Boreal Forest biome have historically been considered
to be lightning-caused (Veraverbeke et al., 2017) and part of
the long-term ecological history of the biome (Brandt et al.,
2013;Venier et al., 2018). Very large forest fires have historically
occurred across much of the North American Boreal Forest
biome. In recent decades, the size and frequency of fires has
increased, especially in the Alaskan and western Canada portions
of the biome, perhaps to a level that has not occurred in the last
10,000 years (Kelly et al., 2013).
In contrast, in the Russian Boreal Forest biome most forest
fires are generally considered to be human caused. Most experts
now agree that the area burned in forest fires in the North
American Boreal Forest should not be considered part of the
anthropogenic footprint since most large fires are in remote areas
lacking industrial infrastructure and these burned over areas will
regrow and remain intact. However, because of the inclusion of
areas burned by forest fires, several global analyses have suggested
that the North American Boreal Forest biome has lost forest cover
in recent decades at exceptionally high rates (e.g., Hansen et al.,
2013;Haddad et al., 2015). An estimated 399,000 km2of the
Canadian portion of the North American Boreal Forest biome
was impacted by forest fires between 1985 and 2010 (White et al.,
2017), amounting to 9% of the Canadian portion of the biome. If
this were considered part of the anthropogenic footprint, the area
considered intact would be lowered to approximately 74%.
A 1987 study reported that, of the “frontier forests” of North
American (most in the Boreal Forest biome), 26% were under
moderate or high threat (Bryant et al., 1997). An expert review
of the state of all of North America’s ecoregions categorized two
southern Boreal Forest ecoregions as in Critically Endangered
condition, one as Endangered, and an additional seven Boreal
Forest ecoregions as Vulnerable (Ricketts et al., 1999).
As these studies reflect, the loss and fragmentation of
intact ecosystems of the North American Boreal Forest biome
is increasing as industrial access infrastructure is established
from south to north. This is clear from the fact that while
northern portions of the biome like the Taiga Plains ecozone
are substantially intact (78% of the ecozone consists of intact
landscapes of 10,000 ha or larger), substantial disturbance has
occurred in southern portions like the Boreal Plains ecozone
which is only 36% intact (Lee et al., 2006). In the southern portion
of the North American Boreal Forest biome, estimates of the
amount of no-longer-intact habitat range up to 66% (Ricketts
et al., 1999) encompassing 1.77 million km2.Lee et al. (2006)
demonstrated that less than fifteen percent of the 710,000 km2
Boreal Plains ecozone (the portion of the southern Boreal
ranging from the eastern foothills of the Canadian Rockies to
south-central Manitoba) was in forested landscapes that were
still large and intact. More than 4,000 km2of the southern
Boreal Forest biome within Saskatchewan and Manitoba and
over 24,000 km2of the Boreal Forest biome within Quebec was
impacted between 1900 and 2000 by forestry, road-building, and
other infrastructure development (Stanojevic et al., 2006a,b).
FOREST INDUSTRY IMPACTS IN THE
NORTH AMERICAN BOREAL FOREST
BIOME
Forestry practices differ across international boundaries within
the North American Boreal Forest Biome but forestry clearly
has impacted more area of the Boreal Forest biome than any
other industrial activity. A third of the North American Boreal
Forest biome is tenured (leased) for forestry in Canada (Carlson
et al., 2015). As of 2003, an estimated 61% of the 1.6 million
km2Canadian commercially managed portion of the North
American Boreal Forest biome had been logged at least once – an
area of over 1 million km2(Venier et al., 2014) or 16% of
the entire biome (note that this does not include any portion
of Alaskan boreal that was logged). Using Landsat time series,
White et al. (2017) estimated that 104,000 km2were disturbed
by harvest in boreal ecozones of Canada between 1985 and
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2010 while 399,000 km2were impacted by wildfire during the
same period. A remote sensing analysis in 2013 estimated that
240,000 km2of Canada’s portion of the Boreal Forest biome
showed visible forest cutblocks (Pasher et al., 2013;Webster
et al., 2015). A number of declining and Canadian federally
listed Boreal Forest dependent birds species show major overlap
with the most heavily impacted southern portion of the Boreal
Forest biome (Wells, 2011) as does the Canadian federally
threatened Woodland Caribou (Environment Canada, 2008,
2011;International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2011).
In the eastern Canadian part of the North American Boreal
Forest biome, the pace and scale of forest harvest has increased
in recent decades. Combined with increased size and frequency
of forest fires, this is diminishing the amount of older age forest
on the landscape to critically low levels (Cyr et al., 2009;Venier
et al., 2014;Gauthier et al., 2015;Bergeron et al., 2017). Similarly,
only 16.5% of old growth was estimated to be remaining in the
managed portion of the Boreal Forest biome in Ontario and only
10% in Alberta (Venier et al., 2014).
The Alaska portion of the Boreal Forest biome has experienced
limited timber harvest that has been concentrated near
communities with infrastructure. Less than 5% of the total timber
harvested in Alaska comes from Boreal Forests (Wurtz et al.,
2006). Forested boreal lands make up 47 million hectares of
land (roughly the size of California) in interior Alaska. Most
timber extraction occurs in mature stands of white spruce where
volumes are highest, with much of this harvest being devoted
to local wood product needs. During the late 1980’s and early
1990’s, many high-quality white spruce logs were exported to
Pacific Rim countries from state and private lands in the Boreal
Forest. However, changing global markets largely ended these
exports and the likelihood of future log exports from Alaska’s
interior forests appears small. Timber harvest in Alaska’s Boreal
Forest remains low due to distance from markets, low population
densities, and lack of accessible timber lands for harvest.
MINING AND OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY
IMPACTS IN THE NORTH AMERICAN
BOREAL FOREST BIOME
A variety of other types of industrial disturbances occur within
the North American Boreal Forest biome. In the western Canada
portion of the biome, oil and gas extraction and exploration are
rapidly increasing. As many as 22,800 oil and gas wells were
drilled in 2004 and there were 222,000 active and abandoned
well sites as of 2011 (Brandt et al., 2013). There are now at
least 441,000 km of pipelines and 1.7 million km of seismic
lines (1.75–10 m wide cleared corridors for deploying equipment
to search for oil and gas deposits) set primarily in the Alberta
portion of the North American Boreal Forest biome (Lee and
Boutin, 2006;Brandt et al., 2013;Dabros et al., 2018). The
industrial footprint from the oil and gas industry in Canada’s
portion of the Boreal Forest biome as of 2003 was estimated
at 460,000 km2or approximately 8% of Canada’s portion of
the biome (Anielski and Wilson, 2009). Habitat that would
have supported an estimated 58,000–402,000 breeding birds has
already been lost within Alberta’s oil sands region (Timoney and
Lee, 2009) and future accumulated losses have been estimated
into the tens of millions (Wells et al., 2008).
Mining may be one of the most damaging of the natural
resource extraction industries to both the environment and local
communities. Effects include cumulative impacts, disruption of
ecological and social systems, and lasting contamination. Because
many of these impacts occur over decades or centuries, the ways
that mining activities impact the broad ecological landscape and
environment is often not widely acknowledged. Eighty percent
of Canada’s mines occur within the Boreal Forest biome (Wells
et al., 2010). There were 108 mineral, metal, and coal mines in the
Canadian portion of the North American Boreal Forest biome as
of 2009 and 1300 or more abandoned mines (Brandt et al., 2013).
Although there is no existing estimate of the impact to waterways
of abandoned and active mines in Canada’s portion of the Boreal
Forest biome, at least 3,000 such sites are known to occur within
1 km of a stream, river, or lake into which they have the potential
to leach contaminants (Wells et al., 2010).
The biggest anthropogenic challenges, other than climate
change, for Alaska’s Boreal Forest biome, come from proposed
development projects that include infrastructure for large-scale
mining operations and access to currently roadless landscapes.
Some of these projects will threaten the ecological integrity of
existing protected areas (Wilson et al., 2014). The proposed
Ambler road would develop a 400 km route through western
Alaska Boreal Forests, cross three major salmon-producing rivers
(including two Wild and Scenic designated rivers), and bisect
the southern portion of Gates of the Arctic National Park. The
proposed road would allow access and spur development for
at least twelve individual mines that would create the largest
mining district in Alaska and one of the largest mining districts
in the world’s Boreal Forest biome (Guettabi et al., 2016). Global
development scenarios suggest oil, gas, mining, and renewable
energy development in Alaska will concentrate across regions
of the Boreal Forest biome (Oakleaf et al., 2019). Four of
Alaska’s six largest operating mines and six of the seven largest,
proposed mining projects occur within the Boreal Forest biome
(Spengler, 2013).
HYDROPOWER PROJECT IMPACTS IN
THE NORTH AMERICAN BOREAL
FOREST BIOME
Large hydropower projects in Canada, many developed in the
1970s and 1980s, have inundated millions of hectares (Wells
et al., 2010;Cheskey et al., 2011), especially in parts of the
eastern Boreal Forest biome. For example, 1.1 million hectares
of terrestrial habitat were lost to five reservoirs established in the
La Grande River region of central Quebec (Gauthier and Aubry,
1996). According to Brandt et al. (2013) there were 713 large
dams (>5 m in height) and another 290 smaller dams in Canada’s
portion of the Boreal Forest biome as of 2011. The total surface
area of hydropower impoundments was estimated at 50,724 km2.
Most of this surface area was formerly terrestrial habitat (Wells
et al., 2010;Lee et al., 2011).
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Large, proposed hydropower projects in Alaska would
bring significant changes to Alaska’s Boreal Forest biome. The
Susitna-Watana Hydroelectric project would destroy over 20 km
of spawning habitat for Arctic grayling and impact 100 km
of salmon spawning habitat. The dam created by the project
would be the fifth largest concrete dam in the world. Proposed
dams and both claimed and surveyed mining claims encompass
a significant portion of Alaska’s Boreal Forest, indicating the
potential for large-scale industrial development in a currently
intact ecological region larger than the size of California.
ROAD NETWORK AND AGRICULTURE
IMPACTS IN THE NORTH AMERICAN
BOREAL FOREST BIOME
Roads and associated infrastructure threaten the ecological
integrity of large portions of North America’s Boreal Forest
biome. Between 1959 and 1970, over 6,000 km of new permanent
roads were built in Canada, largely in the Boreal Forest biome
(Bone, 1992). A vast network of hundreds of thousands of
kilometers of logging roads still span Canada’s southern Boreal
Forest biome – at least 51,000 km (ten times the driving
distance between Montreal and Vancouver) in Quebec alone.
In addition, there are over 1,200 km of new or upgraded roads
under consideration in Quebec’s northern regions (Government
of Quebec, 2011). In British Columbia, there are now over
600,000 km of resource roads with an estimated 10,000 km of new
roads added every year (Forest Practices Board, 2015).
In Alaska’s portion of the Boreal Forest biome, the 577 km
Dalton Highway was built in 1974 to serve the oilfields on
Alaska’s Arctic coastline. It bisects Boreal Forest and has
accelerated the degradation of permafrost in the region and
shifted plant community composition due to the accumulation
of road dust. The extent of the degradation footprint from
the road extends 115 km2along the road corridor (Farmer,
1993;Connor and Harper, 2013). The Red Dog Mine haul
road in northwestern Alaska has impacted birds, mammals
and vegetation communities in the region through heavy metal
contamination and road dust pollutants (Hasselbach et al., 2005;
Neitlich et al., 2017). Even the Denali Park Road, which extends
through Denali National Park and allows limited vehicle traffic,
has shown degradation of wilderness characteristics within the
national park along the road corridor (Burrows et al., 2016).
Land use conversion for agriculture is significant in some parts
of the Boreal Forest biome. In the western Canadian Province
of Saskatchewan, deforestation rates for agriculture can reach
1% per year (Hobson and Bayne, 2000). Parts of the biome in
Alberta, Manitoba, and northeastern British Columbia have also
experienced significant conversion to agriculture.
POLICY CHANGE IMPACTS IN ALASKA’S
BOREAL FOREST
In Alaska, current government actions by the Department of
Interior and the Bureau of Land Management are putting the
ecological and subsistence functions of Alaska’s Boreal Forest
lands at even further risk. The Bureau of Land Management
is preparing revised Resource Management Plans that govern
millions of acres and proposes to remove all protections for
Areas of Critical Environmental Concern while declining to
designate any new Areas of Critical Environmental Concern,
despite its statutory obligation. For instance, in the Bering
Sea Western Interior Resource Management Plan, the Bureau
of Land Management has proposed to remove Areas of
Critical Environmental Concern protection from approximately
1.9 million acres (769,000 ha) and refused to give protection to
an additional 4.2 million acres (1.7 million ha) that the agency
found merited such protection (Bureau of Land Management,
2019). Further, the United States Department of the Interior
has issued Public Land Orders revoking withdrawals on nearly
2 million acres (809,000 ha) of Boreal Forest lands (Rait, 2019;
Rowland-Shea et al., 2019).
CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS IN NORTH
AMERICA’S BOREAL FOREST BIOME
While large areas of the North American Boreal Forest biome are
being rapidly transformed by industrial activities, the biome is
also undergoing major impacts from climate change (Price et al.,
2013;Gauthier et al., 2015;Wells et al., 2018). Books, reviews and
thousands of pages of government reports are published annually
on the changes underway and expected from climate change in
the Boreal Forest biome. While these are important (and we
summarize some of the major impacts below), we focus in this
review on impacts from land-use change activities and policies
and actions related to large landscape conservation.
Mean annual temperatures across the biome are projected
to be higher by 4–5◦C by 2100 with an increase in droughts
significant enough to cause tree mortality in the western portion
of the biome coupled with increased size and frequency of forest
fires and the severity of tree-killing insect outbreaks (Price et al.,
2013). Climate warming may initially increase boreal tree growth
but after an average 2◦C temperature increase is reached, tree
growth is expected to decrease as a result of warming and
drying (D’Orangeville et al., 2018). The areal extent of the North
American Boreal Forest biome is predicted to shrink by 25% by
the end of the century (Rehfeldt et al., 2012). More than half
of birds dependent on forested habitats within the biome are
projected to decline by 2100 as a result of less favorable climate
conditions (Wells et al., 2018).
Climate change is also accelerating ecological changes across
the Boreal Forest biome. In Alaska, over 50% of these forests
have low biomass production due to underlying discontinuous
permafrost that leads to stunted timber growth. White spruce
is vulnerable to permafrost degradation and may be replaced
by grasslands and deciduous trees. Black spruce recruitment is
declining due to shortened fire-free periods of time. Drought
stress, insects, and displacement of conifers by deciduous species
are driving ecological regime shift through much of the Boreal
Forest biome. Boreal Forests in Alaska are expected to resemble
the mixed deciduous-conifer forests of southern Canada as early
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as 2040 (Mann et al., 2012) and in Canada there is evidence
that deciduous species are already becoming more prominent
in the southern extent of the Boreal Forest and that shift may
be exacerbated by modern forestry practices (Cyr et al., 2009;
Cadieux et al., 2020).
Several recent publications have outlined the regions within
the Boreal Forest biome that are predicted to be important future
climate change refugia for a variety of wildlife and plants and the
factors that are important in determining what areas will show
rapid change and what areas will show slower changes (Stralberg
et al., 2018, 2020a,b).
A VISION FOR THE FUTURE OF THE
NORTH AMERICAN BOREAL FOREST
BIOME
The recognition of the increasing pressure for industrial
resource development led a Canadian senate subcommittee
in 1999 to describe the Canadian portion of the North
American Boreal Forest biome as “under siege” (Sub-Committee
on Boreal Forest of the Standing Senate Committee on
Agriculture and Forestry, 1999). The senate subcommittee
suggested that management of these lands was not living
up to government commitments to sustainable management
and ecosystem protection (e.g., Canada’s Forest Accord and
National Forest Strategies). A forward-thinking recommendation
of the subcommittee was for the establishment of industrial
footprint thresholds – an idea that has been proposed and
debated in the context of protecting the remaining herds of
Threatened Woodland Caribou in Canada’s portion of the Boreal
Forest biome (Environment Canada, 2008, 2011;Festa-Blanchet
et al., 2011;International Boreal Conservation Science Panel,
2011). Significantly, the senate subcommittee pointed out that
recognition and protection of Indigenous rights and participatory
land-use planning were critical to the region’s future.
A coalition of Indigenous governments, conservation
non-governmental organizations, and forward-thinking industry
soon came together after this to form the Boreal Leadership
Council (BLC). The BLC has promoted a vision for maintaining
the special ecological and cultural values of the Boreal Forest
biome within Canada (Carlson et al., 2015). They published this
collaborative vision in 2003, describing the idea of an approach
to land-use within the biome that would balance conservation
and industrial activities with a suggestion that half or more of
the biome should be considered for some form of protected
area status (Boreal Leadership Council, 2003;Carlson et al.,
2015). The need to significantly raise targets for protected areas
goals in order to represent all native ecosystems, maintain
populations of native species in natural patterns of abundance,
maintain ecological processes, and maintain resilience to
climate change (Noss and Cooperrider, 1994:International
Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2013;Carlson et al., 2015)
is now widely acknowledged and discussed by both scientists
and policymakers (Schmiegelow et al., 2006;Noss et al., 2012;
International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2013;Locke,
2013;Wilson, 2016;Dinerstein et al., 2017).
CONSERVATION SUCCESSES AND
OPPORTUNITIES IN CANADA
Fortunately, large conservation gains have been and continue
to be made in North America’s Boreal Forest biome through
innovative, collaborative efforts of Indigenous, provincial,
territorial, and federal governments and NGCO. Over
450,000 km2of protected areas have been formalized in
Canada’s portion of the Boreal Forest biome since 2000 and
400,000 km2of forest tenures had been certified through the
Forest Stewardship Council (Carlson et al., 2015). In partnership
with provinces and territories, the Canadian federal government
has embarked on an ambitious effort to reach its Convention
on Biodiversity-Aichi obligation of protecting at least 17% of
its terrestrial landscape by 2020 (Wulder et al., 2018) through,
among other things, establishing a $500 million Nature Fund,
including a $175 million Target 1 Challenge Fund. A significant
proportion of Challenge Fund support has been used to assist
Indigenous and provincial/territorial governments in developing
protected areas proposals. Because of its relative intactness,
lands in the Boreal Forest biome of Canada make up the vast
proportion of these proposals.
CONSERVATION OPPORTUNITIES IN
ALASKA
In Alaska, National Wildlife Refuges, and National Parks and
Preserves make up the current protected areas of the Boreal
Forest biome. Over 12 million hectares within the Boreal Forest
biome were protected under the Alaska National Interest Lands
Conservation Act in 1980. These land protections included
subsistence rights for Indigenous Peoples within Alaska, but
did not convey management or ownership to Indigenous
Peoples. In fact, Alaska’s 229 Federally recognized Tribes do
not have equal land rights to those of Native Corporations,
or state and federal government. Even with the current
political structure, Indigenous Peoples have engaged in land
use management planning efforts to establish Areas of Critical
Environmental Concern and other types of protected areas within
management plans. In Alaska, species-based co-management
groups govern specific wildlife populations, but they do not
have authority over land management decisions. For example,
the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group makes
management recommendations for the Western Arctic Caribou
Herd and the Alaska Migratory Bird Co-Management Council
makes recommendations to inform state and federal wildlife
guidelines for migratory birds. However, the conservation of
species must include the conservation of species’ habitats,
and thus, the co-management models that have been built
by species-specific co-management boards should be expanded
to include land units for conservation. Although these efforts
have not resulted in permanent protection for specific places,
the opportunity exists to build new collaborations and secure
protections for Alaska’s Boreal Forest biome that are consistent
with the requests of Indigenous governments and communities
across the region.
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INDIGENOUS-LED CONSERVATION
Indigenous governments across the Boreal Forest biome of
Canada are leading in many of the most modern, cutting
edge land and wildlife management plans and models in
the world (International Boreal Conservation Science Panel,
2013;Wells et al., 2013;Carlson et al., 2015). Land-use
plans developed by Indigenous governments cover vast regions
involving hundreds of thousands of hectares of habitat (Wells
et al., 2014). The recommendations for protected areas and
sustainable development zones in these landscape plans are
some of the most significant conservation efforts ongoing in
North America and the world. In 2018, the Canadian federal
government announced $175 million in new funds (Target 1
Challenge Funds as mentioned above) to support new protected
areas proposals, including those led by Indigenous governments.
New Indigenous land-use plans and protected areas proposals
(often termed Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas)
for areas within the Boreal Forest biome continue to be
announced and developed.
EXAMPLE INDIGENOUS LARGE-SCALE
LAND-USE PLANS AND PROTECTED
AND CONSERVED AREAS PROPOSALS
The Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation in the Northwest Territories is
implementing a conservation plan for their traditional territory.
On August 21st 2019, the Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation signed an
agreement with the Parks Canada Agency and the Government
of the Northwest Territories to permanently protect 26,376 km2
of boreal lands. The entire area, called Thaidene Nëné, is
an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area. Parts of it are
also designated as a national park, territorial park and wildlife
conservation area (S. Nitah, personal communication).
The Dehcho First Nation in the southwestern part of
the Northwest Territories finalized a sophisticated land-use
plan in 2006 for their more than 200,000 km2traditional
territory (Dehcho Land Use Planning Committee, 2006). While
negotiations with the Government of the Northwest Territories
and the Canadian federal government are still ongoing, the
original Dehcho plan called for more than 100,000 km2of
protected lands (International Boreal Conservation Science
Panel, 2013;Wells et al., 2013). In October 2018, Dehcho
leaders and federal government representatives held a signing
ceremony to designate the Edéhzhíe Dehcho Protected Area and
National Wildlife Area. Spanning 14,249 km2of Boreal Forest,
Edéhzhíe marked the first Indigenous protected and conserved
area established since Canada laid out its pathway process to
protect at least 17% of lands and freshwaters by 2020.
The Sahtúgot’ine Dene in the Northwest Territories proposed
and established the Tsá Tué Biosphere Reserve in 2016. The
Biosphere Reserve encompassed more than 90,000 km2of area
including Great Bear Lake (one of the world’s largest and most
pristine) and its watershed. More recently the Sahtúgot’ine Dene
have proposed creating an Indigenous protected and conserved
area in their traditional territory.
In Yukon, the Peel River Watershed Land Use Plan which
was developed through a many-year process involving a number
of First Nations as well as conservation organizations and the
Yukon Government, was approved in 2019 requiring 55,000 km2
of new protected areas be formally established in coming years
(Government of Yukon, 2019).
In Manitoba and Ontario, several First Nations that developed
and implemented land-use plans for their traditional territories,
worked with the governments of Manitoba and Ontario to be
granted World Heritage status under the name of Pimachiowin
Aki (the Land that Gives Life). They protected 29,040 km2
of intact forest within the southern portions of the Boreal
Forest biome in eastern edge of Manitoba and western Ontario
(Davidson-Hunt et al., 2012;Wells et al., 2013). In northern
Manitoba, the Sayisi Dene First Nation has proposed protection
of the entire 50,000 km2of the Seal River watershed, a 260 km
free-flowing river whose watershed is free of any large-scale
industrial development. Other Indigenous governments and
NGCOs are working toward creating a marine protected area at
the mouth of the Seal River to protect important beluga calving
habitat and other marine protected areas in western Hudson Bay
(Labun and Debicki, 2018).
In Ontario the Moose Cree First Nation has submitted a
proposal to protect an additional 5,080 km2of the North French
River watershed (of which 1,583 km2is currently protected) that
flows north into James Bay (Canadian Parks and Wilderness
Society, 2018).
In Quebec, the Cree Nation has completed a comprehensive
protected areas proposal (Cree Nation Government, 2015) with
community proposals for more than twenty large, new protected
areas together totaling about 80,000 km2in extent (Cree Nation
Government, 2019b). A new agreement was signed in 2019
between the Cree Nation and the Canadian federal government
to launch a feasibility assessment for considering a new national
marine conservation area in Eastern James Bay (Cree Nation
Government, 2019a). A marine protected area had been proposed
in 2009 off the central east coast of James Bay by the Wemindji
First Nation (Mulrennan and Scott, 2019).
The Innu Nation in Labrador developed a Forest Ecosystem
Strategy Plan that directs that more than 50% of the 71,000-km2
agreement area be protected for ecological or cultural values – an
area of 35,000 km2(Forsyth et al., 2003;Wells et al., 2014).
Although technically north of the Boreal Forest biome in
Alaska, there is an opportunity for a new United States model
of co-management or Indigenous leadership in protected area
management for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (Arctic
Refuge). The Arctic Refuge was established in 1960 and expanded
in 1980 in Alaska. Adjacent to the Arctic Refuge are Ivvavik
National Park and Vuntut National Park in Canada. The
Porcupine Caribou Management Board, which includes Alaska
Native Tribes, Canada First Nations, federal, state and provincial
governments, was established in 1987 to fulfill the international
treaty obligations to protect the Porcupine Caribou Herd within
these protected areas. These landscapes have been proposed as
an international Arctic Wilderness area with an emphasis of
continuing to protect a land base for the Gwich’in and Inupiat
cultures (Miller, 1995) and to protect the ecological integrity
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of habitats and migration corridors for the Porcupine Caribou
Herd. Adoption of such a new co-management model in Alaska
could be an important step toward establishment of other new
co-managed protected areas within Alaska’s Boreal Forest biome.
INDIGENOUS GUARDIAN PROGRAMS
Increasingly, Indigenous governments across the North
American Boreal Forest biome region are also developing
programs to train and equip Indigenous people from their
own nations to serve as on-the-ground guardians. Indigenous
guardians fulfill a wide range of duties including land and people
management, biological monitoring, safety and enforcement,
and education within their traditional territories and protected
areas using both Indigenous knowledge and western science.
Often termed “Indigenous ranger” programs in Australia, such
efforts already employ about 840 full time equivalent Indigenous
people managing protected areas in Australia (Woinnarski et al.,
2014) and the Australian government has committed another
$700 million to support rangers until 2028. One of the earliest
modern examples of this approach in Canada was initiated by
the Haida Gwaii in 1981 under the name of the Haida Watchmen
Program (M. Richardson, personal communication). Since that
time, the program has expanded to other First Nations and
is now collectively called the Guardian Watchmen Program
(Coastal First Nations–Great Bear Initiative, 2018). There
are now about 60 Indigenous Guardian programs operating
across Canada. The Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation, for instance,
established the Ni hat’ni Dene (the “Dene Watching the Land”)
program in 2008 that trains and employs young people from the
community in Indigenous knowledge, scientific monitoring and
visitor education and safety duties (Łutsël K’e Dene First Nation,
2018). In 2017, the Canadian Federal government committed
$25 million to help support existing and establish more such
guardian programs. By the end of 2020, more than 70 existing
and new programs will have received financial support for
guardian programs.
CONSERVATION RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR NORTH AMERICA’S BOREAL
FOREST BIOME
•Land-use decisions across the North American Boreal
Forest biome will determine its ecological future. Those
decisions must be led by Indigenous governments and
communities. This is consistent with Free Prior and
Informed Consent (FPIC) principles that state that
Indigenous peoples have the right to determine and develop
priorities and strategies for the development or use of
lands and waters or other resources within their traditional
territories (Boreal Leadership Council, 2012).
•Federal, provincial and territorial governments should
make large-scale, multi-year investments in providing
financial resources for Indigenous governments and
communities to train and hire Indigenous land-use
planners, managers, and on-the-land guardians. Such
programs can fill existing gaps in ecological data
particularly in remote northern regions where data
are most sparse.
•Federal, provincial and territorial governments should
make large-scale, multi-year investments in providing
financial resources for Indigenous governments and
communities for the planning, development, and
management of Indigenous protected and conserved
areas. This will be essential for Canada to meet both
its current and any future conservation commitments,
including the Government of Canada’s 2019 Speech
from the Throne commitment to protect 25% of lands
and waters by 2025.
•To maintain the full complement of all plant and animal
species and associated ecological processes, at least 50
percent of the North American Boreal Forest biome should
be within a network of protected areas free of large-scale
industrial disturbance, including from forestry, mining and
exploration activity, oil and gas extraction and exploration,
agriculture and hydropower production (International
Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2013;Wells et al., 2014).
Industrial development that does occur must be carried
out at the highest sustainability standards and only with
Indigenous government consent and oversight.
•The protected area networks must include very large
landscapes – ideally on the order of 10,000–30,000+ km2
(2.5–7+ million acres) in size – connected to allow wildlife
populations to survive and to ensure the full range of
habitat diversity and ecosystem functions that will serve
as biodiversity reservoirs in the face of climate change
(International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, 2011).
•Conservation of lands must accommodate Indigenous
traditional uses of the land and should be managed or
co-managed by Indigenous governments and guardians.
In all conservation areas, there should be protection of
traditional values and uses, including hunting, trapping,
gathering plants for food, materials, medicines and spiritual
and ceremonial practices.
•Planning must take into account the cumulative impacts
of development over meaningful time periods (i.e., decades
to a century). This is necessary to ensure that the full
consequences of land use are understood and addressed.
Given the unprecedented speed of climate change impacts
to ecological systems, especially in northern regions, the
viability of wildlife populations is dependent on managing
land use to maintain large, intact habitat areas and
landscape connectivity.
•While Alaska has examples of species-specific co-
management plans, such a co-management model must
be applied to Indigenous protected areas or ecosystem-
based plans that can be implemented through Indigenous
resource management, such as the approach originally
envisioned for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
•In Alaska, the foregoing recommendations generally
apply. However, they will also need to be implemented
in a manner that addresses the challenges of current
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Wells et al. Boreal Forest Conservation Issues and Opportunities
land ownership and management within the state. The
federal agencies, as well as the State of Alaska, can and
should use their management flexibility to enter into
co-management arrangements for landscapes and set up
Indigenous guardian programs, similar to those employed
in Canada. They should undertake an effort to identify the
best places for management with Indigenous governments
and communities immediately. The opportunity to
protect large, intact Boreal Forest landscapes in Alaska
will require coordination among diverse stakeholders,
investment in Indigenous governments and communities,
and recognition of the issues that have resulted from the
history of colonization across the United States.
CONCLUSION
The North American Boreal Forest biome is one of the last,
large intact landscapes remaining on Earth. The intactness of the
biome has allowed it to retain globally significant conservation
values and features and ecological functions. As the human
industrial footprint and climate change impacts continue to
degrade ecosystems and increase the loss of biodiversity on the
planet, the protection of the North American Boreal Forest
biome becomes even more essential. Maintaining its massive
terrestrial carbon storehouse is critical to preventing further
carbon from being released into the atmosphere (Bradshaw et al.,
2009;Carlson et al., 2009;Bradshaw and Warkentin, 2015).
The biome will also become increasingly important as a place
of refuge for species forced northward by inhospitable climate
further south (Stralberg et al., 2015,Stralberg et al., 2017).
Further, the best insurance for maintaining resilience of plant and
animal communities to climate change will be the maintenance
of intact ecosystems and robust populations (Wells et al., 2018).
Species that must shift ranges northward to survive will have
their best opportunity to so do when unimpeded by fragmented
habitat full of human-made barriers. Careful land-use planning
now that conserves very large parts of the North American
Boreal Forest biome will provide the best likelihood of survival
for countless species, including humans. The most significant
land-use planning and conservation proposals underway across
the biome are led by Indigenous governments. Governments,
non-governmental organizations, academics and indeed the
public at large, should be finding ways to support and encourage
Indigenous-led land-use planning, Indigenous guardians and
Indigenous protected and conserved areas.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
JW, ND, NC, FR, and SM contributed to the writing and editing
of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the article and
approved the submitted version.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank the organizers of several international conferences for
an opportunity to present some of the content and concepts
reflected in this manuscript including the Intact Forests in
the 20th Century conference in Oxford, United Kingdom,
in June 2018 and the International Boreal Forest Research
Association “Cool Forests at Risk” conference in Laxenburg,
Austria in September 2018. We also thank the current and
former staff and board of the Boreal Songbird Initiative for
their support over many years including Lane Nothman,
David Childs, Marilyn Heiman, Kelly Frawley, Jen Cerulli,
Meredith Trainor, and Alecia Wells. Thanks to James Guindon,
Lindsay McBlane, and Kevin Smith of Ducks Unlimited Canada
for GIS support and Valerie Courtois, Emily Cousins, and
Cathy Wilkinson and several reviewers for comments on
earlier versions of the manuscript. General program support
has come from millions of members and donors of the
National Audubon Society and Ducks Unlimited, Inc., as well
as foundations including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the
Hewlett Foundation.
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Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the
absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a
potential conflict of interest.
Copyright © 2020 Wells, Dawson, Culver, Reid and Morgan Siegers. This is an
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