Get out your hiking hat - I've got really big news. And, bonus, it's covered in trees and lakes and verdant blankets of 100-year-old mosses.

An unlikely alliance of Canada's forest industry CEOs and nine of the country's most impressive and aggressive wilderness NGOs has just signed an agreement covering a 70-million hectare swath of ancient woodland running all the way from British Columbia to Newfoundland.

In that vast territory, the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement identifies close to 29 million hectares (bigger than France) of precious habitat where all road-building and logging will cease immediately and for the next three years until a detailed caribou habitat protection plan is in place.