The Nature Conservancy of Canada has announced that a vast stretch of Taiga Forests and Peatland project about 80 kilometres south of Kapuskasing is now protected from any future forestry and mining operations.
Director of Ontario Conservation Eric Cleland says the Conservancy has a history of sharing their land and developing partnerships with communities and indigenous groups in various regions of the lands they protect.
“To help us do the things we normally do when we acquire a property like inventory the species monitor recovery activities from industrial uses in the past and generally manage the landscape for the long term biodiversity,” he said.
Cleland says that public information meetings will likely be held in the new year to discuss various plans that might include some tree planting if needed.
“Both indigenous communities sand local residents as well. We know that natural resource use is extremely important in Northern Ontario and we want to be able to be able to accommodate that the best we can with this property.”
Cleland says one of the highlights of Taiga Forest is that it has a unique blend of harvested areas combined with parts that haven’t been touched.
The size of the protected area is 81,400 hectares or roughly the city of Toronto. The Taiga Forest project can be accessed using Swanson Road to the Chain of Lakes Road near Lisgar Lake.
