About Canada's Boreal

Manitoba

Manitoba’s Boreal Forest:

• is 570,000 km2 (141 million acres) in size – larger than France.1
• comprises 10% of Canada’s Boreal Forest.
• is home to 49 aboriginal communities.2
• stores 19 billion tonnes of carbon in its soils, peat and forests – an amount equivalent to 94 years of Canada’s annual carbon emissions.3
• contains Lake Winnipeg, the 14th-largest lake in the world (approximately 24,000 km2).
• contains the Seal River basin, one of Canada’s wildest basins which supports robust populations of Arctic grayling, Northern pike and Lake trout, as well as Harbor seals and Beluga whales within its lower reaches and estuaries.4
• is the breeding grounds for 100 to 300 million birds of over 250 species, including threatened species like Yellow Rail, Canada Warbler and Olive-sided Flycatcher.
• supports approximately 2,500, or 7%, of Canada’s threatened boreal Woodland caribou population and supports over 700,000 Barren ground caribou within two herds that overlap with Northwest Territories, Alberta and Saskatchewan.5 6
• supports approximately 4,000 gray wolves.7
• features 467,000 km2 (115 million acres) of intact forest, peatland and wetland habitat free from industrial development, making up nearly 80% of the province’s boreal region.8

1. Canadian Boreal Initiative. 2003. Canada’s Boreal Region.
2. Aboriginal Canada Portal (www.aboriginalcanada.gc.ca), and Global Forest Watch
3. Tarnocai, C. and Lacelle, B. 1996. Soil Organic Carbon Digital Database of Canada. Eastern Cereal and Oilseed Research Center, Research Branch, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Canada.
4. Benke, A., and Cushing, C. Rivers of North America. 2005.
5. Environment Canada. 2008. Scientific Review for the Identification of Critical Habitat for Woodland Caribou (Rangifer tarandus caribou), Boreal Population, in Canada. August 2008.
6. The CircumArtic Rangifer Monitoring & Assessment Network. Accessed August, 2009. www.carmanetwork.com
7. International Wolf Center. Accessed August, 2009. www.wolf.org
8. Global Forest Watch Canada. 2009. Canada’s Forest Landscape Fragments: A Second Approximation.

Manitoba's projects:

Boreal focus: Pimachiowin Aki - beautiful new video

Pimachiowin Aki - a unique partnership of four First Nations and the governments of Manitoba and Ontario, working together to create a UNESCO World Heritage Site in our area of the boreal forest.

The Poplar River, Little Grand Rapids, Pauingassi and Pikangikum First Nations, with the support of the Manitoba and Ontario governments, formed the Pimachiowin Aki Corporation in 2006 to achieve international recognition for the cultural and ecological values of the Boreal forest east of Lake Winnipeg as a World Heritage Site. The UNESCO World Heritage List was established as an international effort to identify and protect sites of universally outstanding value so that they would survive for the benefit of all humanity.

Once designated, Pimachiowin Aki will be one of only a handful of sites on the World Heritage List that are recognized for both outstanding cultural and natural heritage values. The area is an important Anishinabe cultural landscape, and designation will support the maintenance of traditional ways of life as well as creating new opportunities for sustaining First Nation economies.