It also involves making land-use and resource management decisions that incorporate biodiversity needs, such as limiting the conversion of forests to agricultural and urban lands, creating protected areas, managing the harvest of forest plants and animals, preventing the invasion of foreign insects and diseases, and protecting wildlife habitat through careful timber harvesting. Viewed at the national level, Canada has highly diverse forest ecosystems. Even boreal ecosystems are diverse, with their complex mixtures of bogs, lakes and sparsely vegetated rocks, and their coniferous stands at varying stages of development following fires and insect infestations. Approximately two-thirds of these species are found in forests or dependent on a forest habitat. Roughly 180 species of trees grow in Canada's forest.
Genetic diversity is the ultimate basis for the variety of species and ecosystems.
It enables organisms to respond to environmental change and shape the ecosystems in which they live. Distributions of genes are ever changing as individuals and populations respond to such factors as weather, food availability and predators. Despite this complexity, practical measures to conserve forest ecosystem types and tree species populations also help conserve the genetic diversity of other organisms. With appropriate management, monitoring and research strategies, it should be possible to conserve this forest biodiversity for future generations.