• Warming conditions are causing more droughts, forest fires, and insect outbreaks in parts of the Boreal Forest, and are reducing the growth and survival of some Boreal trees.
• The area of North American Boreal burned by forest fires doubled between 1970 and 1990. When forest fires become larger, more frequent, and more intense, correspondingly larger amounts of carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere.
• Intact areas of the Boreal Forest resist and recover from fires, insect outbreaks, and other impacts better than fragmented areas. These areas also give trees, plants, and wildlife the best changes of migrating, adapting, and ultimately surviving in a changing climate.
• Logging removes roughly 36 million tonnes of aboveground carbon from Canada's Boreal Forest each year-more carbon than is emitted each year by all the passenger vehicles in Canada combined.
• Logged areas continue to emit carbon dioxide long after the trees are gone-often for 10 years or more.
• Logging accelerates permafrost melt. When permafrost melts carbon dioxide and methane-a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide-are released into the atmosphere. Intact forest cover may delay this melt for decades or even centuries.
• Logging reduces the diversity of a forest, making it more vulnerable to forest fires, insect outbreaks, and other disturbances, and therefore increasing the likelihood and extent of future emissions.
• If current trends continue, a widespread outbreak of forest or peat fires in the Boreal could cause a rapid release of carbon into the atmosphere. Because Canada's Boreal Forest contains 186 billion tonnes of carbon-27 times the world's annual fossil fuel emissions-this could cause a disastrous spike in emissions.
• Preserving what remains of the biologically rich southern areas of the Boreal Forest is essential to protecting the viability of its vast northern expanses.

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