Biome: Boreal Forest
Main Industries In The 1900's
Most of these communities were carved out of the forest to support sawmill, pulp and paper mill, mine or railway maintenance facility. Boreal forestry activities support almost 400,000 direct and indirect jobs across Canada. The forest products sector is one of Canada’s largest export industries. Roughly one quarter of the boreal forest is managed for industrial forestry. In 2003, it was estimated that that the annual harvest in the boreal was about 7,500 square kilometers per year, equivalent to about 0.2% of the total Canadian boreal forest. The sharp downturn in the market for lumber because of the collapse of the housing market in the United States that began in 2006, coupled with import tariff and tax barriers, have knocked the bottom out of Canada’s forest industry. In Ontario, Canada’s largest province, where most forestry activity is in the boreal, government statistics suggest that the harvest declined 18% from 2005 to 2006. Given the high number of mill closings from 2005 onward, mostly in Ontario and Quebec, it is a trend that most likely persisted through 2007 and 2008. Most of Canada’s conventional onshore oil and gas production, including the rapidly expanding oil sands production in Alberta, is located in the boreal region as is Canada’s largest uranium producing zone in northern Saskatchewan and Quebec’s largest hydroelectric generating facilities in the La Grande watershed. About 80% of Canada’s aboriginal population lives in forested areas – including one million in over 500 First Nations and Métis communities in boreal zones. Of that amount, over 17,000 work in the forest products industry, mostly in silviculture and woodlands operations in the boreal and other forest regions.
