My name is Gord Miller.
I'm a Director General with the Canadian Forest Service.
The Canadian Forest Service has existed
for over a hundred years.
Most of our research efforts, and we have been largely
a science based organization over our history,
has resulted in research in the boreal.
It's an ecosystem that's been very well studied.
And better studied than most of the others on the planet.
The boreal forest came about because of the retreat
of the glaciers at the end of the last ice age
and trees moving north.
The boreal forest is circumpolar.
It occurs in Canada, Alaska, Russia, Scandinavia.
It gets into Mongolia as well.
The boreal forest is the largest forest in Canada.
It stretches from Newfoundland right through
to northeastern B.C.
Canada has about 20-30% of the world's boreal.
The reason I give you that range is there's different
definitions of what the boreal is so the number
varies a little bit.
We're actually working internationally to come up
with some common definitions, common ways of measuring things.
Countries define ecosystems differently,
have different ways of measuring things.
So we're working internationally to come up
with some standards we hope that all countries can respect.
The boreal forest is one of the largest ecosystems
on the planet.
It provides us with many environmental services
that we actually come to take for granted over the years.
It provides economic opportunities.
It provides spiritual values for many peoples.
It does provide clean air and clean water to humans,
it provides a home to many different forms of wildlife.
Many of the communities in Canada
are located in the boreal forest.
The citizens in those communities derive their
livelihoods, they recreate, there's many uses of the forest.
It is also very important to aboriginals in Canada.
80% of the aboriginals in Canada live in the forest
generally and most of those are in the boreal.
So again, it's a community that's very dependent
on deriving its livelihood, their spirituality,
many of the cultural things that both aboriginal
and non-aboriginal communities have come to expect
and desire from the forest, are derived from the boreal.
The boreal forest is the source of a lot
of the resources for the industry in Canada.
It's the major source of fibre supply to the pulp mills
and saw mills in Canada.
It's also the backdrop for a lot of the tourism type
activities, the hunting and fishing,
and hiking that many other people from
around the world come to enjoy.
I think it's important to remember that Canada
has well over 400 million hectares of forest.
And only less than half of 1% of that forest
is harvested annually.
Natural disturbances affect about five times
as much forest in Canada as does harvesting.
The regulatory system with regard to forest management
in Canada is one of the strictest in the world.
There's actually been studies that look at how policy
in Canada compares to other countries.
And they find that the regulatory system in Canada
is equal to or better than most other countries.
The Canadian Forest Service has been seen internationally
for decades as one of the global leaders
in forest research.
And certainly we have many people
that are world class scientists.
I think that Canada has a lot to be proud of given
all the work that has been done.
We are seen as a leader in many areas of forest management.
And other countries actually do come to us to find out how
we practice forestry and how we manage forest fires
and those sorts of considerations.
The science that the Canadian Forest Service conducts
has been used over the last few decades by policy makers
and by resource managers such that our forestry practices
in Canada, our forest management in Canada
is very much founded on science.