We are living through some pretty head-spinning political times, making it harder than ever to focus on longer-term, bigger-picture issues like climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet these problems are not only persisting — they are escalating.

As scientists, we know we simply cannot ignore the link between human health and well-being and the health and survival of wild species, ecosystems and our planet. No amount of economic growth is going to insulate us from the continued deterioration of critical life support systems. 

The growing impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss are becoming impossible to ignore, from record-breaking wildfires and extreme weather to the northward spread of disease-carrying insects. Even rising infant mortality rates have been linked to increased pesticide use, driven in part by the loss of natural insect control from species like bats.

Our political and social systems don’t just overlook the inconvenient fact that we can’t survive without healthy natural systems — they actively accelerate the unsustainable, extractive status quo, chipping away at the very systems that are vital for our well-being.

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Research shows Canadian identity remains wrapped up in the idea that just outside our urban boundaries, landscapes stretching across endless expanses of forests teem with moose, wolves and bears. While Canada still holds some of the largest expanses of unroaded landscapes on the planet, many wildlife species have been pushed back by human settlement and displaced by resource development in Indigenous homelands. Caribou once ranged as far south as Algonquin Park and inhabited many parts of southern Canada. Now they struggle to survive in remote forests or, even more tenuously, on rugged mountain slopes. 

It’s the same story for hundreds of species — from fish to plants to our most iconic mammals. So far, where we have pursued industrial-scale extraction, efforts to mitigate impacts at the margins have largely failed. Industrial development has learned little from the original Indigenous stewards of these lands. 

And now, as we confront mounting political threats, we seem poised to double down and push even harder to leverage our natural resources, further entrenching an extractive-driven model of development.

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The scale of the challenges facing wildlife and wild places today demands a different and bolder approach — one that acknowledges that while past efforts have helped slow the pace of loss, they have not been enough to reverse it. Incremental, piecemeal responses — through a jumble of after-the-fact assessment processes, mitigation measures, patchwork resource regulations and even efforts to recreate what has been lost — have consistently failed to keep pace with accelerating threats. This system will not work any better with minor tweaks or so-called “red tape” cutting. 

We can start to make actual progress by changing the frame through which we view these challenges — shifting from seeing the health of the natural world as a fringe, distant concern to recognizing it as a central, immediate necessity embedded in decision-making from the outset. This shift will allow us to plan beyond the short term and adopt a mindset where mobilizing adequate funds and resources is not an afterthought or a discretionary expense, but an essential investment in the well-being and resilience of future generations.

Making conservation investments more effective (and productive) requires proactive approaches to addressing growing threats to nature — and ourselves. For example, this can mean planning at a regional scale before major industrial developments, such as road development and mineral extraction in Indigenous homelands. Or it could mean implementing serious forward-looking measures to control ship noise in increasingly ice-free Arctic waters. 

Proactive action is far more likely to succeed than reactive efforts — whether attempting to restore waterways contaminated by mine waste or cajoling ship operators to shift routes away from whale-calving areas only after harm has been done.

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If that sounds radical, it is — but only because it requires a fundamental shift in how we prioritize the systems that sustain us. 

Assigning proper value to wildlife and ecosystems will drive investments in their protection, benefitting society today and even more so for future generations. This is not anti-development or blind to economic realities — it is practical, forward-looking and essential for long-term prosperity and survival.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

Justina Ray is a wildlife biologist. She is president and senior scientist of Wildlife Conservation Society Canada and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and Trent University.

The past couple of months have seen individual animals grabbing headlines across Canada, from Bob the elk in the B.C. community of Youbou and an orca calf stranded in a lagoon farther north on Vancouver Island, to the first pair of bald eagles to nest in Toronto in modern memory.

Each animal has come with a compelling story: Bob’s tragic end after becoming a small-town character, the wide-ranging (and artificial-intelligence enhanced) efforts being made to reunite the orphan orca with its pod and the suspense of whether the eagles can raise chicks while surrounded by human activity. They are all fascinating stories and speak to our desire to have a connection with the natural world and see hope for its recovery.

For the bald eagles it is a conservation success story, as the pair nesting in Toronto is the latest evidence of a gradual but positive recovery trajectory for this species. But helping this species was a relatively straightforward task; banning DDT was critical — a direct threat was addressed and reversed. 

Similarly, beginning in the 19th century, everything from birds to bison to beavers at one time or another was being shot and sold, thanks to the invention of the repeating rifle. Hats in Europe — beavers for men and birds for women — drove demand skyward. But again, this was a targeted threat that could be reversed with a bit of determination through regulations.

But things changed when rapid industrialization during the 20th century brought pollution and habitat loss to the fore, and with them more insidious and diverse threats. These threats, in turn, sparked the first Earth Day protests, which led to the passing of laws intended to provide targeted protections for endangered species. The United States led this push with its groundbreaking Endangered Species Act in 1973.  

Over the following three decades, jurisdictions in Canada followed in Washington’s footsteps, adopting laws meant to specifically address protection of species at risk that had slipped through the cracks of other regulations and policies. 

Earth Day originated around endangered species but whole ecosystems need protection

A half century after the first Earth Day protests, the threats have continued to grow. Climate change, invasive species, ever greater use of insecticides and microplastics, accelerated habitat loss, roads, buildings, urban light pollution and numerous other threats now imperil species. In this new world, the tendency to pursue laws protecting one species at a time has proved both cumbersome and ineffective. 

First, there is the overly complex, drawn out and too often politicized process of deciding whether or not a species should be “listed.” Problem number two is that with 800-plus species officially considered at risk (and many more not even assessed) in Canada, the task of addressing species’ needs one by one has become simply unmanageable.

The resulting gridlock calls for a new more holistic approach that proactively addresses broader threats and the needs of many species at the same time. While a species lens will still be vital, many protective actions must shift to serving whole ecological communities, like saving wetlands in southern Canada and conserving large tracts of high-integrity mature forests in the north.

It has become all too apparent that when it comes to endangered species, our current reductionist approach of protecting nests or den sites needs to quickly shift to addressing habitat protection at broad scales. Changing our approach will also help us avoid last-ditch efforts associated with saving individuals of remnant populations through drastic and costly measures like relocating and penning caribou mothers or banking on time-consuming and costly restoration and decontamination efforts to repair large-scale damage. 

Bob the elk and Toronto’s bald eagles area a case study in a larger chapter we must address

Charismatic animals like Toronto’s eagles and the orca orphan illustrate how we often connect better with the stories of captivating individuals than with the story of the broader ongoing crisis of biodiversity loss. That’s a problem, but also an opportunity. We can take advantage of these high-profile events to engage people in understanding the need for new approaches, while at the same time using species to better understand their individual and collective needs, track the effectiveness of our protection efforts and safeguarding areas of crucial importance for their persistence — like key biodiversity areas.  

Bob, for example, has taught us about what can happen to an animal stuck in a heavily fragmented urban-wildlands interface where road traffic poses a constant threat. Toronto’s eagles have shown us the value of protecting and restoring habitat even in the heart of a large and bustling city.

But endangered species are also showing us that some big things need to change. The time for trying to address our combined biodiversity and climate crises by doing a little less harm or avoiding single specific impacts is long over. Instead, we must make protecting and restoring biodiversity a central focus of all of our decision-making.

Individual animals that capture our imaginations and become, in some cases, household names  — like Bob — can have a galvanizing effect when it comes to understanding why we need to do more to protect our natural world. But their stories will not end the decline and loss of many other species, because they so often capture headlines only at the point when action is too late. These individuals are case studies in a much bigger, more sprawling chapter about complex habitats, rapid change and our role in it all. Instead of building lists and waiting until things are truly dire, we need to make the systems behind the headlines — both human and ecological — part of the story.

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Caribou, whooping crane, Gibson’s big sand tiger beetle and dwarf western trillium are among the estimated 80,000 known species (not including viruses and bacteria) in Canada. Of these, scientists have enough information on almost 30,000 species to know that about 20 per cent are imperilled to some degree.

When Canada developed its first national Biodiversity Strategy in 1995, it did so under the assumption that a strong foundation of laws and policies was already in place. Twenty-five years later, however, prevailing biodiversity trends indicate otherwise.

For example, prairie grasslands have lost at least 70 per cent of their historical extent, and grassland birds have declined by 57 per cent since 1970. Only 24 per cent of 125 Canadian marine fish and invertebrate stocks are currently considered healthy, with 18 in critical state.

Our new research demonstrates how the management of biodiversity in Canada is undertaken through a bewildering array of laws, regulations and other tools administered by different federal, provincial and territorial departments. Collectively, these provide fragmented and inadequate protection to species and ecosystems.

More must be done immediately to overcome the inherent weaknesses of a federal system that prioritizes regional natural resource development over national goals to protect biodiversity.

Canada’s biodiversity legal protection system

With rich biodiversity across its huge landmass and coastal marine areas, Canada has a major role to play in addressing global biodiversity loss. Canada was the first industrialized country to sign the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992. The CBD seeks to compel the development of national strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. Canada has been an active player in negotiations to renew and strengthen the treaty ever since.

Yet, in our research, we identified 201 laws in Canada with some bearing on biodiversity protection, and the vast majority provide few direct safeguards for species and ecosystems.

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Many of these laws govern the extraction of natural resources, and focus on mitigating negative effects rather than avoiding them in the first place, or manage the harvest of wildlife or fish populations. A variety of other statutes, ranging from pollution control to climate change, may incidentally benefit biodiversity.

Of those laws with biodiversity protection as the paramount purpose, most are devoted to protected areas and species at risk, containing provisions that vary in strength and are unevenly distributed across the country. No Canadian jurisdiction has any statute in force specifically devoted to biodiversity conservation.

Nova Scotia did, however, pass a Biodiversity Act in early April. It’s the first legislation in Canada ostensibly devoted to the protection of biodiversity in the full meaning of the word, but it faced so much opposition that the act was stripped of its prohibitions and enforcement measures.

The act remains a purely enabling statute that merely grants the provincial environment ministry the power to take certain actions, like setting up a “biodiversity management zone.” This means the ministry has no authority to forbid or issue permits for activities that cause harm to species or ecosystems, as was originally envisioned.

Taking responsibility

A big challenge to biodiversity protection is the fragmented division of responsibilities. In Canada, provinces and territories exert control over natural resources. The laws that encourage the development of those resources operate under the assumption that public land can meet the needs of multiple users, and adverse effects from its development can be successfully minimized.

Just this week, however, the United Nations World Heritage Committee reported that Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest in Canada, “likely meets the criteria for inscription on the List of World Heritage in Danger.” This is largely due to the cumulative effects of industrial developments outside the park stemming from unco-ordinated and piecemeal decisions by Alberta and British Columbia governments.

To add to this challenge, environment ministries responsible for biodiversity protection have little financial bargaining power at the cabinet table relative to revenue-generating ministries responsible for the natural resource development. Yet the bulk of responsibility for co-ordinating action on biodiversity rests with these small and under-funded agencies.

Making biodiversity conservation a priority or guiding principle in the bones of decision making, as the CDB envisions, is nowhere in sight. Similarly, efforts recognizing the need to break out of policy silos and address the combined crisis of biodiversity loss and climate change in a synergistic way are nowhere to be found outside of occasional pieces of government rhetoric.

A call to action

Our research provides an important look at why it is urgent that Canadian jurisdictions work together to confront the striking mismatch between stated national goals and the ability or willingness to achieve them. For example, Canada’s commitments to protect 30 per cent of its land and oceans by 2030 is an important expression of federal leadership that will rely in large part on provinces and territories to implement.

The principal drivers of biodiversity loss within Canada — land conversion, overfishing, climate change, pollution and invasive alien species — mirror those around the world. Right now, the 196 countries that are parties to the CBD are working together on virtual platforms to complete the Post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework, which will set new targets to achieve by 2030, as the nature counterpart to the 2015 Paris Agreement for climate change.

Once this is in place by the end of 2021, attention should immediately turn to domestic implementation. Canada must replace the aged and incomplete Canadian Biodiversity Strategy so that jurisdictions can co-operate to actively reduce pressures on biodiversity outside of protected areas.

The development of a new Canadian strategy and associated action plan could play a key role in defining how to achieve transformative change to address biodiversity loss. It should include actions like mainstreaming biodiversity considerations into policy making across jurisdictions, proper valuation of nature as an asset while halting harmful financial subsidies, and leading co-operative implementation across Canada, with an important emphasis on Indigenous-led conservation.

Together, these steps would provide an opportunity to identify the regulatory, legislative, enforcement, financing and accountability measures required to address the ongoing loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services in this second largest country of the world.

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Caribou in B.C. are standing at a precipice.

Recovery planning for endangered caribou in the southern part of the province began 16 years ago and made little headway until very recently. But now just as governments finally (and belatedly) take steps to help herds that are, in some cases, on the brink of disappearing, a public backlash is building, driven by rumours of mill closures and closed backcountry areas.  

So we have some difficult decisions to make. Are we ready to write off caribou in the name of avoiding potential economic impacts?  

Sure, we can continue with things like predator control and penning of pregnant females, which can be effective for preventing small and quickly declining populations from disappearing completely. But we must acknowledge that these are expensive band aids that cannot be applied indefinitely, particularly when logging, road and trail building and other developments are allowed to continue in caribou habitat at the same time. Without curbing impacts on habitat, pens and predator control are unlikely to maintain — let alone restore — caribou populations in the long run.

This realization underlies the partnership agreement between the provincial government and Saulteau and West Moberly First Nations. They have developed a holistic plan that combines multiple elements, including aggressive habitat restoration and reduction of resource development and human activities within the critical habitat of caribou. The actions laid out in the plan will take time to deliver results, but they are the only solutions that can ensure a long-term future for caribou in Canada.

Yet, instead of the much-deserved acknowledgement for being leaders in caribou conservation, these First Nations are receiving a hostile response from some residents who want solutions that will have little or no impact on forestry or intensive recreation.

Implementation of plans like these will cause economic dislocation and discomfort, no doubt about it.  But we have reached this point because we have spent the last several decades looking for a free lunch. Our governments and industries have continually acted as if there was always somewhere else caribou could go to get out of the way of clearcuts, roads and snowmobiles. They have insisted on pushing resource operations into areas that they knew were important to caribou and, as a result, we have watched caribou populations shrink or disappear altogether.  

The benefits we would realize from saving caribou are simply not as concrete as the value of getting more wood to the mill or allowing another heli-skiing operator to open in another area.

If we decide that it is “uneconomic” or simply inconvenient to save caribou, we will knowingly pull one more block from the now teetering tower of biodiversity. As scientists, we are all too aware of the biodiversity crisis sweeping the world in what has come to be known as the “Anthropocene.”  

Careful tracking of species listed under the Species at Risk Act has documented a very high proportion of species that have fared no better (or even deteriorated) between assessments. The reasons behind this trend become clear when you consider not a single province has completed the range planning required under the federal recovery plan for boreal caribou, largely because such plans would have to acknowledge that we have pushed many caribou populations to the edge and there is no room for further “compromise.”

This issue, of course, is about much more than just caribou. Their need for large areas of old, intact forest makes them a representative for many other species that have struggled to survive the onslaught of human activity and habitat destruction that has now reached even the furthest corners of B.C. Saving caribou means potential gains for a whole suite of wild species. And acting to proactively protect caribou ranges in northern B.C., where populations are still relatively healthy, would help to keep entire ecosystems intact.

But the benefits we would realize from saving caribou are simply not as concrete as the value of getting more wood to the mill or allowing another heli-skiing operator to open in another area. We do a terrible job of valuing natural services and biodiversity retention because we don’t “pay” for these services — they have always just been there. We will likely only really value them when they are gone.

At the same time, putting food on the table and keeping a roof over your head is enormously challenging in boom-and-bust resource communities that have seen automation wipe out thousands of jobs. That’s why we need to better share the burden of helping species at risk.

The federal government is currently providing hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for economic diversification, job training and new infrastructure to communities affected by its coal phase out requirement. Essentially, we as Canadians have agreed to share the cost of cleaning up our air and cutting greenhouse gas emissions because, just as with protecting ecosystems, we will all share the benefits.

With scientists reporting that one million species are headed toward extinction worldwide, we need a similar shared effort to accommodate the needs of species at risk.

We all benefit from healthy ecosystems and biological diversity and it should not be up to any one community to bear the entire burden of making long overdue changes to the way we approach protecting wildlife and wild places. But we do have to acknowledge that at this point any effort to conserve caribou is going to be challenging — scientifically, ethically and economically. Their steady decline is telling us that we can no longer bury our heads in the sand on this increasingly alarming situation.

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