It's not a scenic tour. Every time we pass another patch of mangled forest, Dr. Schindler angrily waves his arm. Along the way we see neither bird nor beast. An industrialized forest just isn't very wild. At the river Dr. Schindler walks briskly past an oil well and through a swathe of cut forest.
Bullet holes riddle the sign.
Dr. Schindler studies the scene and then announces we have arrived at the lifeless and grim future of Canada's largest ecosystem. If anyone has the credentials to make such a dire warning, it is Dr. Schindler. He is the world's most distinguished freshwater ecologist and one of Canada's most honoured scientists. For the past 30 years he has studied boreal lakes and landscapes with uncompromising devotion and, when possible, late-night dinners of fresh lake trout. And if there had been a Nobel Prize for ecology he would have won that, too.