Ducks Unlimited has worked to protect and improve waterfowl habitat on the Prairies for decades. Now this conservation organization is turning its attention to the boreal forest, one of the largest yet least understood ecosystems in the world. Ducks Unlimited (DU) has launched a Western Boreal Forest Initiative to learn more about this vast region before more development takes place in it.

The boreal forest is the world's largest land-based ecosystem. In Canada it forms a wide band of green covering two-thirds of the country, making it the dominant ecosystem in this country. It is also home to many important wetlands, and it is this waterfowl habitat that has captured DU's attention.

At least 20 percent of the boreal forest is taken up by wetlands, and some thirteen million birds breed in this vast largely unspoiled region. In some years this amounts to about forty percent of the continental duck population.

Millions of other migratory waterbirds also use the western boreal forest, and the pressures on this area are increasing. It is ranked third of the 25 most important and threatened waterfowl habitats on the continent; with the great plains and prairie pothole region and the wintering grounds of the central valley of California ranked one and two respectively.

"What triggered our interest was the increase in threats," says Gary Stewart. An Edmonton-based biologist, Stewart heads up DU's boreal forest initiative, which is initially focussed on habitat in British Columbia, Alberta, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.

In recent years there has been more forestry, oil and gas, mining, agriculture and recreational activity in the boreal forest. Duck's Unlimited is concerned that these changes will have permanent impacts on the boreal forest before anyone even knows what drives this ecosystem.

He says that south of the 60th parallel, forestry is the biggest concern. Stewart points out that when an area becomes more economically dependent on forestry, efforts to control forest fires also escalate. He says that trend is worrisome because fires are a natural part of the forest ecosystem.

He says that in Alberta they have learned that seismic lines have a greater impact than was previously expected. "These (lines) are permanent deletions of boreal forest. They are not regenerating to boreal forest. It's alder, willow and other species that are coming back," he says.

He points out that with the recent discovery near Fort Liard, NWT, of one of the largest gas finds in the world, there will probably be more of an oil and gas industry north of 60 in the future.

Stewart says DU wants to identify the most important wetlands in the boreal forest, and figure out what drives this ecosystem so that better decisions can be made for resource development.

He thinks that there are unstudied northern wetlands that could turn out to be as significant as Old Crow Flats. The Flats, located in the northern Yukon, are designated under the RAMSAR Convention as a wetland of international importance.

"We don't really know very much. We've seen enough to know that it (the boreal forest) is an important area, but we think that we are just scratching the surface," he says.

"The consequences are not understood at all. The science has not been done, so no one knows what effects the various impacts are having on boreal wetland systems," he says.

Some of the species that depend on the boreal forest have experienced dramatic declines in the last while. "Clearly the boreal forest is driving the numbers of scaup and they have been in a steady decline since the early 80s."

Stewart says that the DU's first priority is to identify and describe the major wetlands in the boreal forest. "You can't begin to manage something until you know what it is, where it is and what its values and functions are," he says.

Their plan is to carry out basic landscape mapping for selected areas using geographic information systems (GIS). Other priorities are doing university level research, taking waterbird inventories, and studying the decline of scaup populations.

DU in Alaska has already mapped more than 100 million acres of boreal and tundra habitat in that state, and this information is already used for making land use decisions. Stewart says that when plans were drawn up for a new transmission line near Healy, Alaska, the people involved were having a hard time choosing between four or five potential routes. Once they compared the options with the GIS information that Ducks Unlimited had available, it was easy to pick the best route based on habitat concerns.

"The better the information that we have, the better the decisions that will come from that information," says Stewart. "We hope to find partners in the Yukon to do this type of inventory work here."

For more information on Ducks Unlimited's Boreal Forest Initiative, contact the DU office in Whitehorse at 668-3825.