Taiga+Conservation

Welcome to the Taiga Conservation page!!! Here you will learn about the human impact on the taiga, as well as some problems by humans and solutions to these problems.

There are both positive and negative human impacts in the taiga. One positive impact is that people are working hard to get animals off the endangered list, like the gray wolf. Throughout 13 years, people helped bring the gray wolf off of the endangered species list. On February 21 there were over 1,500 wolves in just Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming alone! Although there was a positive side to these wolves coming off the endangered list, there was also a negative side. The government approved of letting people slaughter these animals by trapping them, chasing them on snowmobiles, and poisoning them right after they got off of the endangered list! If you think about it it's really quite sickening. When the government released these animals from the endangered species list, they allowed people to shoot them. People overreacted and basically took it as "See how many wolves you can kill." The gray wolves were put back on the endangered species list after about 10% of the wolf population was killed in the Northern Rockies. The wolves were put on the endangered species list September 28, just over 7 months of when they were taken off the endangered species list. These are some positive and negative impacts on the taiga.

One big problem that people in the taiga face is water pollution. Canada has over 2,000 bodies of water, which makes it easy for people to just throw garbage in a river or lake rather than in a trash can. Canada flushes about 200 billion liters of raw sewage each year into natural waterways, like the St.Lawrence River. This is terrible for the environment, and this sewage is enough to fill 40,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools!!! More people are building factories on Canada's rivers, and this is also why polluting the waterways is easier to do. Another issue in the taiga is over-logging. When people cut down a large amount of trees at a time, they release a ton of carbon, creating a "carbon bomb", which will speed up the process of global warming. In 1993, people wanted to log the old growth forest of Clayoquot, which had many biological features, but the citizens of Canada did not agree. There were many protests and arrests during that time, because the environmental activists would block the access to the logging site. There was also a peace camp and petitions. People would cut down a ton of trees for the logging industry, which is very bad for our environment.

But there are solutions to these problems. A way to help keep the waters of Canada clean is to help prevent runoff into streams and rivers that contains fertilizers and pesticides. These may be helpful chemicals, but they get washed or blown away by rain or wind into a nearby water source. There are other solutions to a healthy lawn rather than using pesticides and chemicals. You can check out organic lawn care fertilizers and lawn care tips. A way to help the over-logging problem is by increasing awareness of deforestation, and its effects on the Earth. This way, the government and logging industries can better understand this issue and log fewer trees. These were some ways to help the environmental problems in Canada.

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