Canada is the second largest country in the world, after Russia, but large parts of its territory are so far north that only the hardiest people and wildlife can survive there. Nearly 90 percent of Canada's 30.3 million residents live within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

Respect for Canada's environment is deeply bred into the country's culture, so much so that journalists term the Rocky Mountains the "nation's church." But like other religious debates, Canadian disputes over the use of these resources can quickly turn bitter.

Environmental and resource management disputes most commonly erupt over air pollution and acid rain, tourism, fishing, logging operations (particularly in "old growth" forests) and mining.

Nuclear power remains controversial. Ontario Hydro, North America's largest electric utility and one of the few remaining major investors in nuclear energy, decided in mid-1997 to shut down a third of the company's reactors. An internal company study found years of shoddy safety practices and maintenance.

Canada is also facing the near-collapse of fishing industries in the North Atlantic as a result of over fishing. Fish populations are so low that they may take years to recover, experts say.

Canada's environmental matters are often closely tied to those of the United States. Pesticide pollution found in tissue of animals and humans above the Arctic Circle sometimes originates from as far away as Georgia and Florida, scientists say. Pesticide compounds evaporate in the summer heat, rise and drift north on high altitude air currents. There they fall to Earth and work their way through the food chain from fish, to seals, to Inuits and other Arctic-dwelling people who rely on the sea. At each step the minute quantities of the chemicals become more concentrated in fat tissues and body organs.

Canada and the U.S. have agreed to a continent-wide air-monitoring system designed to detect specific pollutants from cities, industries and even individual factories.

One result has been that Canada and the United States agreed in August 1996 to create a continent-wide system for monitoring release of pollutants into the air. Its object: holding cities, industries and even individual factories accountable for generating pollution that drifts across international borders.

Some environmentalists contend that cross-border cooperation should be extended to create a protected zone for wildlife stretching from Yellowstone Park in the south to the Yukon Territories in the north – a sanctuary that would be more than 2,500 miles long and encompass some 800,000 square miles. The provincial government of British Columbia has agreed, at least up to a point, and has set aside a 10-million-acre wildlife preserve in the northern Rockies. It has dubbed the preserve "North America's Serengeti," comparable to the famous African wildlife preserve.

Meanwhile, it is becoming clear that achieving ecological balance requires more than protecting animals.

Scientists who monitor Canada's Arctic tundra, for example, have established that a population explosion of snow geese is stripping the delicate ecosystem of marshes. The geese drive out other species and consume so much vegetation that some Manitoba marshes have become de facto deserts, the scientists contend. Their solution: Thousands of the majestic birds would be slaughtered to preserve an ecological balance, an idea that upsets many animal lovers.

— Washingtonpost.com fellow Christopher Simpson