"Sacrifice zone is defined as a geographic area that has been permanently impaired by environmental damage, often through locally unwanted land use. Take, for example, the boreal forest surrounding Fort McMurray near the Athabasca River in Alberta, once an expanse of wetlands, bogs, and trembling-aspen and white-spruce forest hunting grounds for First Nations people and habitat to caribou, bears, mourning doves, and wolves. All of that is gone now not just damaged, but simply missing from the face of the Earth. The forest is razed, the animals killed or driven out, the ground scraped away to expose bitumen mines in open pits, the hills bulldozed to make vast tailing ponds to hold toxins now leaking into the river, and the People poisoned and displaced." More in this excerpt from Kathleen Dean Moore's book, "Take Heart: Encouragement for Earth's Weary Lovers."
