Enhanced information and integration with practice
Enhanced community engagement in specific projects
Litigation
Restrictions on exotic introductions
Accelerate development and application of Recovery and Action Plans, especially regional multispecies plans
Improving Species at Risk Partnerships on Agricultural Lands (SARPAL)
Modify wildlife compensation legislation
Enhanced information and integration with practice (Halvorson)
Buxton et al. (2021) have set out broadly the agenda to improve information and analysis for biological conservation in Canada, including the need to integrate Western science and Indigenous ways of knowing (see also Goal 5, Sustainable Fisheries Management, Efficiency and Substitution). They highlight that while there are significant information gaps on some indicators in some regions, a related problem is that the use of science and Indigenous knowledge remains relatively limited in policy making, planning and management, and practice. The important issues of conflicting interests, political expediencies, and decision-maker competency are embedded in this reality. Our limited ability to manage complex decision making is part of the challenge and speaks to the need for greater social science participation in biological conservation work. As highlighted in many parts of this site, the absence of landscape-level coordination and institutions is also an issue. Many of the Buxton et al. proposals will require some time to implement, and those processes will be above and beyond food system consideration, but will ultimately impact food system information and conservation efforts.
More specific to food systems, part of the information problem is rooted in the amount of ecological information that is privately held and not available to decision-makers. Oft times it must first be purchased, as is the case with Environmental Farm Planning because governments agreed to only examine aggregated data, which are typically less usable. In part because of this, the measures used to assess biodiversity and agriculture are largely conceptual with limited empirical data to support them (McRae et al., 2000; Lefebvre et al., 2005; Clearwater et al., 2016). The first task is to make existing data more available to reduce "reinventing the wheel" efforts. There are primarily two tasks to undertake:
- Governments will have to make data sharing arrangements with private data holders and this will likely involve purchases, unless governments are prepared to legislate access.
- As part of the negotiations for the 2028-2033 CAP (or whatever its name will be), governments will have to get access to more detailed Environmental Farm Plan data. The farm community's primary fear has been liability and a resulting reluctance to participate. The liability question was always something of a red herring as governments assured producers from the beginning that this was not their purpose. The less visible issue was always private property rights, the ability to make decisions on one's own land without public scrutiny, and fear of being identified as an environmental laggard. Voluntary program uptake has also likely reached its apex, so programs will have to become part of cross-compliance instruments, which will effectively make them mandatory (see Goal 5, Sustainable food, Substitution). The federal government and the provinces will have to sign data access agreements with the third party service providers in concert with implementation of cross-compliance.
Enhanced community engagement in specific projects (Halvorson)
Many community projects have suffered from a lack of sophisticated engagement. One of the key features of successful conservation projects is support from the local communities, the absence of which can threaten the potential efficacy and longevity of a given project. Bennet et al. (2019) identify four factors that influence community perception of conservation efforts; ecological effectiveness, social impacts, good governance, and management, with social impacts and good governance most strongly associated with community support. Conservation efforts that effectively considered their social impacts on income, livelihoods, food security, knowledge, education, community social well-being, cultural connections to nature, and fairness of impacts were best received. Good governance involves recognizing the community, communicating information, having a transparent decision-making process, allowing for community participation, consultations, and consent, being accountable, having measures for conflict management and resolution, fostering trust, and using legitimate management practices.
Related to community consideration, relevant stakeholders in agricultural and fishing operations must be included early on in the decision-making process of wildlife protection and conservation efforts, the overall efficacy contingent on having established rules, adequate resources, appropriate timelines, qualified moderators, and transparency throughout to foster a trusting and respectful process (Luyet et al., 2012). Luyet et al. propose an iterative framework for better addressing the complexity of environmental decision-making. The first step is to identify potential stakeholders, ensuring a heterogeneity of opinions, experiences, and perspectives, followed by a characterization of their relation to the project. This characterization includes stakeholder’s interests, attitudes, and general proximity to the process, and considers their power, resources, and influence as a stakeholder. Characterization also identifies potential conflicts between stakeholders. The next step is to determine the degree to which each stakeholder should be involved. The author’s involvement scale has five possible degrees: (1) Information, where the stakeholder is explained the project, (2) Consultation, where stakeholder’s suggestions are collected, and may or may not be taken into account, (3) Collaboration, where stakeholders suggestions are included in the decision-making process, (4) Co-decision, where stakeholders cooperate to determine project goals and implementation, and finally, (5) Empowerment, whereby stakeholders make the decisions over the projects development and implementation. How each stakeholder ultimately participates in the project must then be decided based on their overall involvement; participation can be anything from providing newsletters and reports to holding focus groups or citizen juries, and depends largely on the goals of the project. This framework may be hampered by a lack of funds, resources, and time.
Education and outreach programs are a necessary feature of any conservation project as they mobilize research from the academic sphere and help garner public support (Jacobsen et al., 2015). Not only should they provide the background information on the species or ecosystem in question and highlight its ecological, societal, and cultural importance, they should also equip the audience to form their own opinions and make their own decisions, and encourage “critical thinking, creative thinking, and systems thinking” (Jacobsen et al., 2015:35). It is important that different knowledge systems are well-represented in these programs including Indigenous and local ways of knowing, and that programs are holistic, interdisciplinary, and widely accessible (cost, format, education-level, etc.) (Stevenson, 2007). Conservation education and outreach can take any number of forms, including workshops, seminars, presentations, information booths, posters, art, conferences, or through social media, and can involve activities like exploring case studies, telling stories, playing games, taking fields trips or nature walks; the ultimate format is decided in the planning stage based on the organizer’s objectives, implemented, and then evaluated for improvements (Jacobsen et al., 2015). It is an iterative and adaptive process.
Decision makers must more effectively apply these core concepts to assure better community project outcomes.
Litigation
A current difficulty is that species threatened by food systems generally receive less attention from ENGO legal teams than species on wilder landscapes, certainly far less proportionately than the significance of agricultural landscapes to species protection. Salmon, for example, are more a focus than threatened plants and insects on agricultural landscapes. Aquacultural operations have also been a focus largely because of their impacts on wild aquatic species. The Greater Sage-Grouse has also been the subject of legal action but more because of oil and gas impacts than agriculture. All these interventions are obviously important but do not necessarily advance food system change.
The hope of course is to avoid litigation by implementing a a more robust system of protections (see particularly Substitution), but the threat of litigation should be present as part of advocacy strategy. The problem rests in part on the legal frameworks surround species and toxic substances, and the difficulties of identifying non-point source pollutants and management problems, which characterize agriculture. Effectively, legal arguments are more easily made when a factory, mine or distinct production facility is involved. Making the case that an entire landscape of private landowners bear significant responsibility and their private property management practices must change is more difficult to argue. Most environmental lawyers are also not well trained in agriculture and the food system, also in part because of the way jurisdictions and legislation are structured.
There is, however, growing interest in what is popularly referred to as food law. A field that emerged primarily around food safety has now expanded into other domains of the food system. However, only a few courses exist in Canada's 24 law schools, mostly focusing on food safety. Some recent PhD law graduates have focused their dissertation work on food system issues and participate in the Canadian Association for Food Law and Policy. While individual professors work in this area and may integrate food themes into some of their courses, only Laval appears to have an integrated program at the Master's level addressing sustainability and food security. Expanding such offerings is challenging because provincial / territorial law societies impose competency requirements on law degree programs. Their interest in diverse forms of law is partially determined by what is happening in the courts. Food law has yet to reach as visible a profile as environmental or Aboriginal law had when significant expansion of offerings occurred.
The Canadian Association for Food Law and Policy should advocate for a program in each of the other 3 regions (West, Ontario, Atlantic) that addresses themes comparable to the Laval program. Given it's membership and expertise, it is well placed to influence law societies and law schools. Successful advocacy, design and implementation is likely at least a 5-year trajectory.
Restrictions on exotic introductions
The Canadian environment and many native species have been seriously negatively impacted by many well-intended but ill-conceived exotic introductions for food production and fishery related purposes. Examples include numerous biological control agents (e.g., Asian carp, arthropods and diseases), plants introduced for agronomic purposes and now dominating unintended systems such as rangelands in some parts of the country (e.g., smooth brome, Kentucky bluegrass, timothy, crested wheatgrass, white clover), sportfish introductions (e.g., brown trout, brook trout, Yellowstone cutthroat trout, rainbow trout) and livestock (e.g., wild boar and exotic deer). In some cases both the introduced species and other organisms associated with it are problematic (e.g., diseases associated with cervids). Although there are many pathways that result in the establishment of alien species, the focus here is on reducing the intentional and authorized introductions of organisms that establish significant and invasive populations in the wild.
In consultation with the provinces, the federal government adopted an invasive species strategy in 2004. It has a number of elements but most pertinent for this discussion are:
"For intentional introductions, prevention focuses on the application of risk analysis and prior approval of all proposed introductions. An integrated approach will be used that integrates environmental, socio-economic and human health considerations, and is consistent nationally and internationally across sectors." (IAS strategy for Canada)
Should this fail, rapid response is required with funds for quarantine and eradication. To date, implementation of many elements of the plan, outside of border controls, have been weak and funding for eradication has been inadequate. The good news is that the number of invasive species does not appear to be rapidly increasing. The bad news is that the existing problems are mostly getting worse.
Many NGOs run volunteer and expert programs exist to reduce invasive populations, and Canadian governments appear to rely extensively on them, including the Canadian Wildlife Health Co-operative (CWHC), described as ....."a partnership linking Canada's five veterinary colleges and the British Columbia Animal Health Centre. Branching from that core is a network that stretches into the public and private sectors that allows us to access critical expertise needed to detect and assess wildlife health issues and make sure our results find their way to people who need to make decisions on wildlife management, wildlife use, public health and agriculture". It provides surveillance, reporting and response on a range of invasive species issues. It receives direct and indirect funding from multiple sources including governments, universities and foundations. While it has had many apparent successes, and a network of experts involved, the interventions are generally not commensurate with the scale of the problems.
The wild boar situation, which the CWHC and others are actively involved in, is particularly telling. First introduced in the 1980s as an agricultural diversification strategy (popular with high-end restaurants), often with incentive programs for producers, they proved adept at escaping. Once in the wild, eradication of the population is far more challenging because of their reproductive rate, hardiness, intelligence, wide range of food sources, lack of native predators, and elusive and aggressive nature. The affected provinces have taken substantially different approaches under different departments and institutional arrangements, apparently with limited success. Manitoba's collaborative arrangement with delivery through the Manitoba Pork Council and funding from governmental and non-governmental sources, may the best chance of long term successful eradication (White, 2024). Voluntary groups of hunters, sometimes with modest bounty programs, have not made a dent in the problem, and may be causing the animals to disperse more widely. Alberta has been doing some of this, plus improving fencing requirements for boar farms. In Ontario, boar farming is implementing a 2-year phased out starting in 2022 to prevent being in a situation like Saskatchewan which is now thought to be beyond eradication (Mosleh, 2021). Saskatchewan appears to finally have recognized that it has a problem, with the 2022 announcement that wild boars will be considered pests under the Pest Control Act, allowing them to be poisoned, and will also implement a ban on new boar farms and require licensing of existing ones. Such efforts must be province wide, with provincial regulatory tools, as the county by county restriction approach, used by Alberta, is failing as many counties refuse to adopt by-laws banning wild boar (Ferguson, 2023). PMRA is reviewing a poison used in Australia called Hoggone, although its effectiveness as a herd (sounder) control strategy is unclear. Funding to Sask Crop Insurance will be increased to cover damages (Briere, 2022).
Relying on multi-actor partnerships led by non-state actors is a viable strategy especially in the short to medium term, if it is properly resourced relative to the scale of the problems. Given that the threats from invasive species keep mounting, more resources and more aggressive strategies are required from all levels of government. For example, in the wild boar case, some researchers are calling for ground trapping of wild herds (sounders) rather than bounties on individual animals, aircraft surveillance and setting up trail cameras to monitor local populations (cf. McQuaig, 2022; White, 2022). Provinces at the early stages of infestation should progressively phase out farms as is doing Ontario. Supports, both technical and financial, for conversion to other enterprises should be provided by the province and can be modelled on conversion to sustainability (see Goal 5, Sustainable Food).
Accelerate development and application of Recovery and Action Plans, especially regional multispecies plans (Halvorson)
Recovery and action plans involving agriculture are relatively rare at this stage; this is particularly problematic considering half of Canada's species at risk are threatened by food system activity, including agriculture (see Current State). It is important to ramp up the development, publication, and implementation of these documents, using models that have proven successful. These plans face difficulties associated with landowner fears of prosecution under SARA and community opposition to proposed measures.
The South of the Divide Conservation Action Program (SODCAP), a multispecies and regional action plan born out of federal conservation initiatives but now a multi-actor partnership, is an example of what is possible. It has recently become more locally focused, and “is attempting to create and experiment with new forms of conservation programming that are less alienating to rural communities” (Pittman, 2019:181). There is a need to provide assistance to these communities navigating SARA, build trust and change misconceptions about both conservation and food systems. A lack of long-term resources is a barrier to success in this region, and there is also a need to move away from top-down conservation at these early stages of implementation. SODCAP created two programs in light of all this; a results-based conservation agreement (RBA) that is non-prescriptive and pays ranchers per acre where they meet specific habitat targets for conservation, and a marketing tool that allows those ranchers who have met the targets to sell their beef to specific markets and consumers. These are examples of market-based incentives that pay producers for ecosystem services.
RBAs are popular because they are non-restrictive in nature and allow a certain flexibility in regards to land management; owners can make decisions based on their own local land knowledge. They tend to exclude owners with low likelihood of providing significant environmental services but whether they capture those who are having the most negative impact is an open question. In the SODCAP case, managers are rewarded for providing critical habitat for SAR on their land, which involves measuring habitat features like forbs, grass height, and litter cover “Incentives are paid on an annual basis. Between 2015 and 2018, there were a total of 31 agreements signed, covering a total land area of about 126,000 acres” (Ayambire and Pittman, 2021: 3).
Setting the levels of support is critical. In SODCAP, back of the envelope calculations suggest they paid as little as $2.7/acre in 2017-2018 to as high as $4.9/acre in 2019-2020, the last year there was a report. Although seemingly low on a per acre basis, it makes more sense considering how much land is consolidated with very few people. In 2019-2020, 13 projects protected 52,800 acres, and were paid $263,500 for meeting the habitat requirements, which amounts to $20,269/project.
Habitat Management Agreements are another tool used, and are more specific regarding what can and cannot be done in grazing areas. For example, they bar the cultivation of native grass, the establishment of new dugouts or water development with a footprint greater than 30m² on Greater Sage Grouse habitat, excessive vehicle traffic and noise, and shooting of badgers or burrowing animals or destruction of burrows or dens. Ranchers have to practice rotational grazing, adjust stocking rates, and install appropriate infrastructure. Farmers can receive reimbursement at up to 100% for the costs of implementing the agreement. In 2019-20, payments averaged $1/acre for 12 agreements (SODCAP, 2020). As with all such payments, the ability to adapt to changing environmental circumstances is important, especially in more fragile ecosystems, so that farmers don't feel penalized and abandon the program (Ayambire and Pittman, 2021).
There are also a small number of habitat restoration agreements designed to restore native prairie and build corridors for wildlife.
Public funding comes from SARPAL, the Habitat Stewardship Program, Canadian Agricultural Partnerships, and the provincial department of agriculture extension services.
On a pilot basis they operated a Niche Market program for one beef producer. However, it probably makes more sense to link producers to existing protocols and marketing efforts. There are two types of these protocols currently in use, those that support the sustainable management of resources on productive landscapes or capture seascapes, eg. organic and Aquaculture Stewardship Council (see Goal 5 Sustainable Food) and Marine Stewardship Council (see Goal 5 Sustainable Fishery Management), and those that focus on particular species and habitats, for example Dolphin - safe tuna, the Habitat Friendly Winter Wheat Ecolabel from Ducks Unlimited, and for rangelands, predator friendly farming labels (cf. Boronyak et al., 2022). The former are more landscape / seascape oriented covering many kinds of species and habitats. The latter address more targeted problems.
In a multispecies action plan such as SODCAP with public money, landowners are receiving financial support for protecting grasslands and other critical habitat. However, comparable measures should be extended to cultivated landscapes when they comprise a significant area within an action plan region. Many landowners will be particularly opposed to changing management on cultivated lands but if the action plan specifically links to existing protocol programs, and provides financial incentives with certification, some will undertake a transition as part of their commitment to biodiversity. At this stage, such initiatives remain voluntary, but highly encouraged and in a community environment that generally leads to higher levels of adoption (see Goal 5 Sustainable food).
Improving Species at Risk Partnerships on Agricultural Lands (SARPAL)
SARPAL is a federal program that is usually delivered in partnership with the provinces, with advisory support from some farm and commodity groups. It suffers from the same problems as most other environmental programming in Canada - BMP focused, voluntary, largely individual farmer applications rather than regional collaborations, not well targeted to the most problematic operations, only voluntary and general monitoring for species at risk on participating properties, only requiring a contract maximum of 3 years (1 yr for delayed haying), and limited funding given the scale of the problems. Given that habitat fragmentation is a key cause of species decline, and that there have been some successful projects that focus on regional collaboration, the first key shift in the program is to require regional collaborations with minimum 10-year contracts, and mandatory species monitoring for funding. Given those requirements, payments to producers might need to be higher to assure participation.
Given the fragmented nature of biodiversity programming in Canada (Ray et al., 2021), the ultimate rationale for this shift is attempting to join up the disparate elements for ground level implementation.
Modify wildlife compensation legislation
Several deficiencies in compensation legislation and programs need to be corrected.
The first is to assure more equitable coverage across the country. Although provinces probably argue that their programs reflect their individual realities, this is not obvious from our comparative analysis. As highlighted in Jurisdiction and government responses, a number of things should be changed.
- Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador should shift compensation to the Wildlife Compensation Program.
- Northwest Territories should start a program, modest at first and then building as NWT agricultural activities grow.
- Ontario should provide compensation for crop damage.
- Quebec should expand coverage of crop damage beyond a few waterfowl species.
- Alberta should increase compensation beyond 80% of the value of damage.
The second initiative is to change administrative cost structures and processes. The Wildlife Compensation Program has high administrative costs because of the need for an investigator to confirm the claim – 2017 evaluation suggested increasing minimum amount of damage to qualify, but 62 % of claims are < $1000, leaving a lot of producers paying out of pocket (potentially reducing outlooks towards wildlife and resulting in economic loss).
