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TOPIC: 25 million acres of boreal forest protected
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/41b6919e432cc212?hl=en
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== 1 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Nov 30 2007 6:51 am
From: "Lee E. Frelich"


ENTS:

25 million acres of boreal forest wilderness has been set aside in northern
Canada on the east shore of Great Slave Lake, thus thwarting plans for gold
mines, diamond mines, and other development. See this week's Community
Forestry Resource Center news article:
http://www.forestrycenter.org/headlines.cfm?refID=100952 

Great Slave is the deepest lake in North America at 2015 feet (bottom is
1503 feet below sea level!), and at 11,000 square miles (maximum dimensions
300 miles long by 68 miles wide), is the ninth largest lake in the world,
and has an impressive 500 cubic miles of water, about 1/4 that of Lake
Superior.

The forest surrounding the lake is northern boreal forest on shallow rocky
soils, much like northern Minnesota, and it is far enough north that the
boreal forests there will likely persist through future episodes of global
warming. Sigurd Olson writes about his canoe trip to the area in his book
Runes of the North and also the area just to the south around Lake
Athabasca in The Lonely Land. Black and white spruce, paper birch and
balsam poplar are the main tree species. There are rumors of 2000 year old
spruces and other forest mysteries to be investigated.

Lee

== 2 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Nov 30 2007 6:54 am
From: "Will Blozan"


Great news! When is the ENTS field trip?

== 3 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Nov 30 2007 6:56 am
From: "Gary A. Beluzo"


Lee:
WOW! Thank you for the post. Great Slave Lake interests me from a
limnological AND limb..nological perspective. Gotta get some travel money.

Gary

== 4 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Nov 30 2007 7:41 am
From: "Lee E. Frelich"


Will:

The field trip can be anytime the temperatures are above -40, which as all
Minnesotans know, is the design threshold for tires (if its colder than
that rubber gets brittle). You can actually drive to Yellowknife, the
closest town to the new wilderness area, by car during the summer.

If you want to do a wilderness trip, it takes 2.5 months by dogsled or 5
months by canoe to reach Great Slave from MN, and you pass some interesting
outposts of civilization like Norway House and Uranium City, and you can
portage across the famous Methye portage over the continental divide in
northern Saskatchewan (12 miles long, 800 foot cliff). Methye is the Cree
word for Cod, which live in local lakes, and it was on the route Alexander
MacKenzie took on his way to the Arctic and Pacific Oceans (he reached the
Pacific several years prior to Lewis and Clark, but in the U.S. we ignore
that).

Bob and Monica--if you want to do the canoe trip we'll drop you off in Ely,
MN in May and pick you up at Yellowknife in October. Now that you are
retired, there is no reason to worry about how long the trip will take. You
will have 5 months to learn about the 400 species of moss that live in the
boreal forest.

Lee

== 5 of 6 ==
Date: Fri, Nov 30 2007 7:44 am
From: "Monica Jakuc Leverett"


Lee:

Sign me up for the trip. But that 12 mile portage is a worry.....

Monica

Monica Jakuc Leverett
Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor of Music
Sage Hall 204