What’s out your window? One tree? 30 trees?
If you're lucky enough to be Canadian, your yard may have a beautiful, towering white spruce. Or, the local park might have elegant, shade-giving sugar maples. Perhaps your street is lined with shimmering trembling aspen.
So, where’s the problem? Canada is covered in trees, right?
Well… yes and no.
The simple fact is that Canada has less trees - way less - than we used to have.
Continuous forests once covered most of the country. But, much of Canada’s forests were slashed to make way for annual crops. We’re all part of this story - even our family farm - from our producers to foodie consumers.
And not all deforestation is historical. The World Wildlife Fund’s 34-year study, named Canada’s Living Index, found that almost 216,000 square kilometres of forests in Canada were disturbed or fragmented between 2000 and 2013. That level of disturbance has significant consequences - so much so that the WWF named habitat loss the single greatest threat to endangered species in Canada.
But does deforestation even matter?
When habitats are damaged or destroyed, wildlife is at risk. Losing a single species can set off a negative feedback loop, with the end result being ecosystem collapse.
And the last time we checked we are part of the ecosystem.
The UN Environmental Programme found that the current extinction rate rivals that which occurred during the dinosaurs’ extinction 65 million years ago. Every single day, we permanently lose another 150-200 species of plants, insects, birds, and mammals. That is almost 1,000 times the natural rate.
If losing a single species can set off a cataclysmic ecosystem collapse, what does our world (or just our backyard) look like without the hundreds of species we are losing every day?
Our sustainability partners think our future looks brighter with more trees, and we hope you’ll join them and create your forest today.
