Damage feared to fossil forest

Ed Struzik, Edmonton Journal

Concerns that a 45-million-year-old fossil forest in Canada's High Arctic is being damaged by U.S. scientists excavating the site will be looked into today when

two federal officials arrive.

The fossil forest, targeted as a possible United Nations World Heritage site, is on uninhabited Axel Heiberg Island. The island is covered by mountainous glaciers

and huge expanses of polar desert.

Discovered in 1985, the fossil forest is now recognized as one of the largest, oldest and most exquisitely preserved sites of its kind in the world.

So far, more than 1,000 stumps and tree trunks -- some of them more than six metres long and 2.5 metres wide --have been mapped out from a time when the polar

region was warm enough to produce dawn redwood swamps and boreal forest uplands that were inhabited by rhinoceros-like creatures and alligators.

Many of the trees, walnuts, spruce and pine cones, seeds and nuts that have been retrieved thus far are almost completely non- mineralized, and appear as if they

were buried beneath the ground just a few years ago.

Recognizing the international significance of the site, a committee of federal and territorial officials was set up in 1997 to investigate the possibility of declaring the

forest a national historic site, with the ultimate aim of securing World Heritage designation.

Bill Peters, a director-general with the Canadian Heritage Department in Ottawa, said that nothing can be decided until the federal inspectors send back their report

this week.

Even then, he said the problem is further complicated by the fact that the 15-person American team, which is using chainsaws, picks, shovels and ground-penetrating

radar to find and dissect the trees, have all of the necessary permits.

Just how the Americans got the permits is still unclear. Scientists and at least one federal government agency had previously warned that the fossil forest may be too

fragile for large-scale exploration.

Art Johnson, the University of Pennsylvania scientist who is overseeing the project, said the goal of the American team is to reconstruct the climatic, atmospheric and

environmental conditions that allowed for the evolution of such a forest in the polar region.