Many people in Ontario still believe that northern Ontario is largely untouched wilderness. Images persist of vast mosaics of forest, lakes, rivers and rock where pre-settlement ecosystems and traditional land uses dominate. But as anyone can tell who has flown over it, driven off the highways, or canoed there in the past decade, these images do not match the reality.

Thousands of kilometres of forest roads reach almost everywhere on the forested landscape of northern Ontario. Most of the present roads were built by the province to provide access for the forestry industry, and now the forestry companies themselves continue to build roads to access the remaining sections of the Great Lakes and boreal forests that haven't yet been cut.

Wilderness values are not road values. Wilderness areas are characterized by their lack or difficulty of access. Most definitions of wilderness consider that non-motorized, unroaded access is central, and that there is no permanent evidence of human activities. The main reason forest roads are built is to permit logging and other industrial developments. Thus, the construction of a road usually marks the end of its wilderness condition.

In the far north, beyond the furthest roads, many of the forests give way to landscapes of open rocklands and peatlands, often with sparse tree cover. These areas remain as roadless wilderness. However, south of the 50th parallel in the north east and the 51st parallel in the northwest, there are very few remaining wilderness areas of any size that are not accessible by current roads or where future roads aren't already approved. This line, crossing Ontario north of Hearst, Armstrong and Red Lake, is generally the northern limit of current forestry operations and of the legal approvals that govern forestry operations under Ontario's Timber Environmental Assessment.

Roads are everywhere. The Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) prepared maps in 1991 that include all the forestry roads already in place or approved in current forest management plans. These maps include only the primary and secondary access roads. A tertiary road system radiates beyond that network, and a distance of about five kilometres has been used in this mapping to approximate the extent of tertiary roads and their impacts. On this basis, we have mapped and measured the areas greater than 10,000 hectares left between these road systems.

In this half of Ontario, there are only seven roadless wilderness areas left larger than 100,000 hectares (100,000 hectares is about 1/8th the size of Algonquin Park). There are less than a dozen parks in Ontario greater than 100,000 hectares. The seven largest roadless areas already include parks such as Quetico, Pukaskwa and Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater, and areas such as Lake of the Woods. Using the same approach, there are only about 40 roadless wilderness areas larger than 20,000 hectares.

All the roadless areas left that are larger than 10,000 hectares add up to about 3,280,000 hectares, about 7 percent of the mapped area. If these areas all became parks or other protected areas, the total area protected would still be less than 12 percent of the mapped area.

The remaining wilderness areas are under increasing pressure to produce timber. Demand for forest products is increasing. The price of pulp and paper fluctuates but the trend is always upwards. Since 1994, over 2.5 million m3 of new timber have been allocated to just four new or upgraded strandboard mills. All this despite the accepted wisdom that the timber harvest will have to be reduced in coming decades. Short-term economic needs are being satisfied by compromising the long-term opportunities and values that roadless wilderness areas offer.

Additional timber has been committed and access approved since 1991. These estimates of the size of roadless wilderness areas are already out of date and may be too optimistic. Some forest management units, such as Sioux Lookout, had relatively little industrial demand for wood in 1991, but are now supplying wood for both lumber and pulp and paper companies.

It is particularly unsettling that new timber commitments are being made before any implementation of new policies to protect on roadless wilderness areas and old-growth ecosystems.