Home / Achieving a Balance: Four Challenges for Canada in the Next Decade / Achieving a Balance: Four Challenges for Canada in the Next Decade – Conserving nature

Achieving a Balance: Four Challenges for Canada in the Next Decade – Conserving nature

Previous - Content - Next Canada is home to 25 percent of the world's remaining "frontier"of intact forests, 25 percent of global wetlands, andthe biggest caribou herds on the planet. In extraordinary numbers Canadians enjoy nature, spending more than $12billion annually on such activities as bird watching, hiking, and canoeing. Nature's riches offer us clean air and water and economic opportunities. They also give us special stewardship responsibilities on behalf of all humanity. Pressure on Canadian wilderness has grown at an unprecedented rate. Wildlife habitat, for example, is increasingly fragmented by industrial development, roads, agriculture, and urban development, making it difficult to maintain viable populations of grizzly bears and wolves. Mostly because of habitat loss, 340 species are at risk of extinction in Canada, and that number is growing. Our  protected areas such as parks and wildlife reserves are not isolated from these pressures. For example, the ecological integrity of our national parks is increasingly threatened by resource extraction outside park boundaries. Activities such as forestry and mining that take place on adjacent lands have a direct impact on protected areas. Furthermore, conservation biologists tell us that isolated parks are not enough. In addition to small protected areas, new integrated systems of land management are needed. An example of this approach is the Yellowstone to Yukon initiative to establish an interconnected network of protected areas and wilderness corridors throughout the Rocky Mountains, which are home to the largest populations of grizzly bears in the world. We need to designate core protected areas, adjacent buffer zones, and outlying multi-use zones in ways that balance the need for resources, livelihoods of inhabitants, and the integrity of ecosystems. The long-term prosperity of the Canadian economy can only be built upon the sustained integrity of our lands, waters, and the communities of plants and animals they support. Integrated management of large landscapes is needed, and it must include governments, private landowners, resource industries, non-government organizations, rural communities, and Aboriginal peoples. Although Monte World Wildlife Fund Canada, in his presentation  governments in Canada have been working for the past decade to establish a network of protected areas across the country, with protection of at least 12 percent of Canada's land base as the primary goal, success has been limited. Only British Columbia met this target by the year 2000. "What may begin on the surface as a concern for endangered species, leads inevitably to understanding the importance of saving spaces or habitats, which leads to maintaining the health of ecological processes underlying spaces and habitats, which leads to peering into the lifestyles, economic systems and souls of people alive on Earth today." Hummel, to the NRTEE February 2000 It  is clear now that the protection of nature cannot be delivered exclusively through government-owned lands. An integrated approach is called for, recognizing that important ecosystems often exist on private land, sometimes in close proximity to urban areas. Private transfers of land to conservation trusts and conservation easements are highly effective examples of voluntary measures that can be pursued. Integrated approaches must include partnerships with resource industries, Aboriginal peoples, and rural communities, creating new opportunities for them to work towards habitat conservation while sustaining their livelihoods. « Previous — Contents — Next »