What is the boreal forest in Canada?

The boreal forest is the vast belt of coniferous and mixed forest covering about 270 million hectares of northern Canada, about 28 per cent of the country's land area and about 75 per cent of Canadian forest cover. The boreal stretches in a continuous belt from Newfoundland and Labrador across northern Quebec, Ontario, the Prairie provinces, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories to the Pacific. The Canadian boreal is the largest intact boreal forest in the world and contains 25 per cent of the world's remaining intact forest and a quarter of the world's wetlands.

The boreal forest is dominated by coniferous trees including white spruce, black spruce, jack pine, lodgepole pine, balsam fir, tamarack (eastern larch), and balsam poplar. Deciduous trees including trembling aspen, balsam poplar, and white birch are common in mixedwood stands. The southern boreal forest grades into temperate mixed forest, the northern boreal grades into the subarctic taiga, and the western boreal grades into the Cordillera. The boreal supports about 12 per cent of the world's forested wetlands and stores an estimated 70 to 80 billion tonnes of carbon in soil and vegetation, making it one of the most important global carbon reservoirs.

The boreal supports rich wildlife. Iconic species include the woodland caribou (a threatened ecotype), boreal moose, wolves, lynx, fisher, marten, snowshoe hare, beaver, river otter, and many migratory songbirds. About 3 billion birds (more than 300 species) breed in the Canadian boreal each year, including warblers, thrushes, sparrows, the boreal owl, the great grey owl, and ducks. Indigenous nations including the Cree, Dene, Anishinaabe, Innu, and Atikamekw have lived in the boreal for thousands of years and rely on traditional harvesting of moose, caribou, fish, beaver, and berries.

The Canadian boreal is the working landscape of Canadian forestry, mining, hydroelectric generation, and oil and gas extraction. About 90 per cent of the boreal is publicly owned, with provinces granting long-term tenures to forest and mining companies. The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement of 2010 between major forestry companies and environmental groups committed to suspending logging on 29 million hectares of caribou habitat (the agreement formally ended in 2017 but its principles influence current practice). Climate change is rapidly reshaping the boreal: warming is occurring at twice the global rate, wildfires are increasing in size and severity (the 2023 wildfire season was the worst on record at 18.5 million hectares burned), the southern tree line is shifting north, and pine beetle and other insect infestations are expanding.