Birds of the Boreal 
 State of the forest

The fall of the wild

One of the world’s last wild places, the sprawling boreal region is a breeding bird nursery that supports more birds than anywhere else on earth. So why is so much of it turned into catalogues and junk mail?

by Jeffrey Wells

We took off from the wilderness lodge at Miminiska Lake in northern Ontario’s Albany River watershed with all our gear stowed in a big Twin Otter float plane. I was here to document, in sound recordings, a still pristine part of Canada’s boreal forest before it is lost. That forest, which stretches from coast to coast across northern Canada, is one of only three or four forested ecosystems left on earth where vast tracts of habitat remain untouched. Its half a billion hectares represents fully a quarter of the world’s uncut forests and is home to massive numbers of birds.

Our goal was to paddle along a 32-kilometre stretch of the Albany River, which flows along the edge of the boreal wilderness, recording when breeding bird activity, including birdsong, is at its peak. The recordings would be archived forever at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s world famous Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds. North of here, there are no roads and few humans. But to the south of us, the industrial frontier lies only 50 to 60 kilometres away. It is very possible that roads and logging will transform life along the Albany within a scant 10 to 20 years.

Our float plane deposited us on Petawanga Lake. As the plane disappeared over the treetops, that calming quiet you can find only in places like the boreal forest enveloped us. The harsh squawks of Bonaparte’s gulls hung in the still air. Then, from the spruce-lined shores came the rising flutey songs of Swainson’s thrushes and the clear whistled “Oh-Sweet-Canada-Canada-Canada” songs of whitethroated sparrows.

The next morning, we were woken by a song sparrow, so close that he may have been sitting on the top of our tent. While beating our way through the thick tangle of blow downs in the forest behind our camp, we were surrounded by birdsong: northern waterthrushes, winter wrens, ruby-crowned kinglets, red-eyed vireos, Swainson’s thrushes, white-throated sparrows, northern flickers, pileated woodpeckers and warblers – bay-breasted, Tennessee, magnolia, yellow and yellow-rumped. A flock of white-winged crossbills flew overhead, their “dit-ditdit” calls tapping like an old-fashioned telegraph machine.

The boreal region supports more birds than anywhere else on earth – an estimated one to three billion breeding individuals. Nearly 50 percent or more of the global populations of about 100 bird species rely on these northern forests. This incredible reservoir of abundance is why people in southern Canada and the United States can experience the thrill of seeing trees filled with warblers, wetlands brimming with ducks and backyards stirring with sparrows and finches during the annual migration of birds to their winter habitats in the United States, Mexico and Central and South America.

On our Albany River canoe trip, behind our next campsite, the morning bird chorus became almost deafening. On the shore of Kawitos Lake, Tennessee warblers blasted their mechanical “chit-chit-chit-chu-chu-chutitititititi” and alder flycatchers their “ree-bee-o.” I pointed the microphone north across the water and imagined listening through the unbroken wilderness all the way to Hudson Bay, across forests, rivers, lakes and peatlands.

We ended our adventure on Eabamet Lake. As we flew south into the northern reaches of the Ogoki forest, lakes, streams, bogs and woods stretched for as far as the eye could see. Then, about 50 kilometres from the Albany River, we came to the edge of the forest frontier. Below us were roads and clearcuts and towering stacks of spruce poles that could well be catalogues and junk mail within a few months.

The return to “civilization” from one of the world’s last wild places was a shock. I wondered if our sound recordings would be all that was left of the Albany wilderness in a few decades. But preservation of its natural state is a real possibility now that Premier Dalton McGuinty has pledged to protect at least 50 percent of Ontario’s intact boreal region. That may make Ontario an example to the world of how to maintain a sustainable future for its people and environment. And maybe, just maybe, in a hundred years, a trip down the Albany will still echo with the songs of more birds than you can imagine.

Jeffrey Wells is director of science and policy for the Boreal Songbird Initiative and the author of the recently published Birder’s Conservation Handbook: 100 North American Birds at Risk. You can read a more detailed account of his Albany River trip and hear some of his recordings on his blog at www.borealbirds.org/blog