Strengths and weaknesses (Species)

Strengths and weaknesses of current approaches (original research by Kennedy Halvorson)

Although habitat and wildlife protections have generally improved over the past 30 years, the rate of improvement is not commensurate with the scale of the problem, or within the regions with the most serious challenges. Governments have used state power to provide protections on public lands much more so than on private ones. Essentially, in the current regulatory environment, a private landowner can not legally kill a species at risk, but can often compromise its habitat without penalty (Tourangeau et al., 2020). And this has happened extensively throughout Canada, with private landowners responsible for much of the nation's biodiversity loss. Herein lies the crux of the problem as it relates to the food system; most food system land use is privately managed. Governments have largely failed to impose sufficient conditions on land managers to improve biodiversity and wildlife conservation.

Strengths of the Species at Risk Act include the use of independent experts to “assess the status of each wildlife species considered… to be at risk” using the “the best available information on the biological status of a species, including scientific knowledge, community knowledge, and aboriginal traditional knowledge” (SARA, 2003, sec. 15(1-2)). The COSEWIC reports include the “basic biology of a wildlife species, as well as information on a wildlife species' distribution in Canada, population sizes and trends, habitat availability and trends, and threats to the wildlife species” (COSEWIC Secretariat, 2021). However, many deficiencies have been identified in the Act since its enactment, largely arising from all the processes that follow the COSEWIC status report (Turcotte, 2021).

Criticisms of SARA include:

1. Taxonomic, regional, economic, and agency-related biases exist in the listing and protection of species.

• • 87.5% of SAR denied listing are known to be threatened by biological resource use, in comparison to 49% of listed species (McCune et al., 2013).
  • Species under the authority of DFO are less likely to receive listing than their ECCC and Parks Canada counterparts (McDevitt-Irwin et al., 2015).
  • Threatened and Endangered marine fish are more often delayed or denied listing than comparable species designated Special Concern, while Pacific and freshwater aquatic species are much more likely to receive listing than Atlantic and marine species (McDevitt-Irwin et al., 2015).
  • Recreation is an over-represented threat in available recovery strategies, affecting 47% of species, which is disproportionate to its frequency in the COSEWIC reports (McCune et al., 2013)
  • Species who are at risk from agriculture and development are “significantly less likely to have a finalized recovery strategy” (McCune et al., 2013).

2. Lack of enforced deadlines creates timelines that are slow and inconsistent.

• • Species receive no protections between the publishing of the COSEWIC status report and the Council’s listing decision, during which they are vulnerable. For example, aquatic species on average wait 3.33 years to be listed; some egregious examples include the endangered bocaccio and cusk who both waited over 8 years before being denied listing (McDevitt-Irwin et al., 2015).
  • A 2013 audit found that 55% of recovery strategies were > 3 years overdue and 66% of recovery strategies had failed to identify critical habitat (Officer of the Auditor General of Canada, 2013 as cited in (McDevitt-Irwin et al., 2015).
  • As of 2021, only around 40% of SAR have finalized recovery strategies (845 SAR, 359 Recovery Strategies total, 334 of which are finalized).
  • Even fewer action plans have been completed; only 7% of SAR (59 species) have their own individual action plans (28 of the SAR covered in these documents were previously identified to be threatened by food systems).

3. Current interventions and management strategies may be inadequate in protecting SAR:

• • A 2013 audit revealed that ECCC, DFO, and Parks Canada had “not met their legal requirements for establishing recovery strategies, action plans, and management plans under SARA” (Officer of the Auditor General of Canada, 2013, pg. 37).
  • Species protected under SARA have continued to decline; a 28% reduction on average was observed for species in the decade that followed their listing (WWF, 2017).
  • Recovery strategies and actions plans do not receive the same independent, expert oversight of the COSEWIC status reports (McCune et al., 2013; Turcotte et al., 2021).
  • Only lands managed federally are protected directly under SARA, leaving many species’ protection to the provinces and territories. As applicable legislation varies from province to province and the federal government is reluctant to intervene, gaps in protection exist which ultimately leave species vulnerable (Turcotte et al., 2021).

These biases and trends reveal a hesitancy to list species under SARA whose protection would have socio-economic implications, especially in relation to agriculture, development, and fishing operations (McCune et al., 2013; McDevitt-Irwin et al., 2015). While these perceived or potential threats to industry may be realized if these species did receive protection under the full extent of the law, this cannot be a reason to delay or deny action, and only underscores the necessity of working with food system actors to minimize impacts and find a sustainable way forward. Short-term economic gain cannot make up for the loss of species, biodiversity, or resilient ecosystems, who together provide invaluable and irreplaceable services essential to food systems, including pollination, air and water filtration, carbon sequestration, soil maintenance and integrity, waste decomposition, and oxygen production.

Critics of both SARA and the Fisheries Act have also highlighted the need for platforms open to all stakeholders to track progress, maintain timelines, facilitate participation, provide feedback, voice concerns, and add accountability to conservation projects (Turcotte et al., 2021; McDevitt-Irwin et al., 2015). This suggestion need not be limited to just recovery strategies, action plans, or IFMPs; agricultural and fishing developments that are suspected to affect SAR or their habitats would also benefit from the same open-access, public scrutiny to ensure these projects are undertaken in ways that reduce harm to the environment and best serve the local communities.

Recovery plans

In recent years, conservation has moved away from protecting individual species towards a more ecosystem-based approach, recognizing the interconnectivity of species resilience and value of systems thinking/multi-solving. In this respect, multi-species action plans are becoming more common, which outline the conservation actions required to protect the biodiversity of whole ecosystems and regions. In Canada, many multi-species plans are focused on the biodiversity within federal protected areas like Banff, Yoho, and Jasper National Parks. Their conservation actionables often have little impact on food systems as related industries like agriculture, ranching, hunting, and fishing have long been prohibited in the regions these plans cover. Just a few examples exist on how the federal government mediates conservation and food systems; here we discuss The South of Divide Action Plan to highlight current strengths and weaknesses.

The South of the Divide Action Plan

In the southwestern most corner of Saskatchewan encompassing the Milk River drainage basin, is a semi-arid landscape host to eleven SAR including the black-footed ferret, black-tailed prairie dog, burrowing owl, eastern yellow-bellied racer, greater sage-grouse, prairie loggerhead shrike, McCown's longspur, Mormon metalmark, mountain plover, Sprague’s pipit and swift fox, as well as two species of special concern, the long-billed curlew and northern leopard frog. A multi-species action plan was published in 2017 to outline recovery measures and management strategies to protect these species within the region (at the time of writing the black-tailed prairie dog and McCown’s longspur were designated special concern; they have since been reassessed and raised to the status of threatened), in which half of the landscape is still natural mixed-grass prairie ecosystems (ECCC, 2017). The area is shared between private owners (46%), the provincial government (50%), and the federal government (3%), with much of the government-owned land leased out. Agriculture is the main economic activity in the area, with 90% of the region used in some way for production. The landscape supports cropland, summer fallow, tame hayland, seeded and native pasture, as well as 130,000 cattle, 1000 operators, and 650 employees. Of the 13 SAR identified in the plan, 11 are explicitly threatened by agriculture activities (ECCC, 2017).

General goals for the SAR in The South of the Divide action fall into one of four categories; reintroduce the species to the region, reverse population declines, maintain species’ current abundance and distribution, or increase species’ abundance and distribution, all in an effort to achieve self-sustaining populations (ECCC, 2017). Actionables to do are organized into 7 broad strategies:

• Research as part of an adaptive management framework: This strategy seeks to better understand the impacts on SAR from climate change, habitat threats, infrastructure development, and predation, while also investigating how to evaluate and implement best management practises in livestock production and grazing in relation to SAR. Other measures mentioned under this strategy are determining how best to promote recovery actions to stakeholders in the area including land managers, resource users, Indigenous peoples, to remove barrier to their participation, and to investigate socio-economic costs and benefits of conservation actions.
• Population management and species protection: Actions under this strategy seek to increase species populations through captive breeding, releasing, and protecting individuals during high mortality life stages, while looking for other opportunities to increase population size. Other measures include developing and implementing disease management and integrated pest management plans, while reducing mortality and disturbance from farmland operation through testing, implementing, evaluating, and refining beneficial management practises. This strategy also uses restricted access to areas and roadways (seasonal/temporal) to reduce risk to SAR at times when they are especially sensitive to threats.
• Habitat assessment, management, and conservation: This approach seeks to enhance relationships with and stewardship among stakeholders to support deliberate grazing management, fire suppression, prescribed burning, invasive species control, and other best practises to provide high quality habitat for SAR. Other measures under this strategy include implementing policies and protocols to reclaim disturbed sites for native species use, incentivising cropland and tame pasture conversion to native-seeded grassland/native shrub plantings, and increasing availability of clean native seed mixes.
• Regulation and policy: Under this strategy, disturbance to SAR is reduced through developing, reviewing, consolidating, and refining relevant regulations and policies in relation to industrial activities, new developments, regional water management, and conservation agreements.
• Communication, collaboration, and engagement: Stakeholders including the agricultural community are sought out in this strategy, to raise awareness of the importance of the SAR and their habitat in the native prairie, build support for conservation programs and beneficial management practises, and educate these groups about threats to SAR and ways they can mitigate disturbance to reduce impact of those threats. Local knowledge and interests are incorporated into conservation initiatives under this strategy, and strong communication between all stakeholders is highlighted.
• Conservation planning: This strategy seeks to better cooperate with international partners, government, industry, ENGOs, local land managers, and other interested parties for collaborative delivery of the recovery actions to realize conservation goals. It also engages government to develop land use plans and zoning that reduce threats to SAR and streamline data information systems.
• Monitoring and assessment: The occurrence, population abundance, distribution, and general trends are better established for all SAR under this strategy through surveys, mapping, population counts, live-trapping, etc. Importance of repeat data collections is stressed here to understand long-term trends, on annual to 5-year intervals.

Many of the strategies within this action plan overlap, with much of the work to be done determining thresholds for disturbance and impacts of lesser clarified threats. Terms that appear often among the measures include “assess”, “determine”, “develop”, “engage”, “investigate”, and “review”, which is reflective of how much background research is still required and how few concrete actions are listed within the plan; all of the measures listed are broad and inexact. There is little mention of what is to be done after research determines the thresholds for disturbance or threats, or how to mitigate or remove them, or what constitutes best agricultural management practises. Critical habitat for SAR is identified in this document, the protection of which within national parks and federal lands was to be implemented within 90 and 180 days respectively of the document being published, but this only covers a small minority of the area in this region. On non-federal lands, ECCC must assess how much protection the area currently receives and address gaps through non-descript measures. Consent and cooperation are seemingly assumed in engaging with stakeholders, which is inconsistent with real-world applications; in the case of the black-tailed prairie dog (included in both this and its own action plan), municipal governments and ranchers denied the need to protect the species despite extensive consultation. Timelines and priority of each measure is also provided within the action plan, with many completed or set to be completed by 2022, so the follow-up may address some of these concerns.

Wildlife Compensation regimes

In a 2017 evaluation of the Wildlife Compensation Program, it was found that over five years, three-quarters of the compensation was doled out to Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan, with Saskatchewan accounting for 42 % of all wildlife compensation paid (AAFC, 2017). The majority of the payments were to cover crop damage, with livestock compensation involved in only 18 % of payments. On average, over 11,000 claims are made each year totaling $26 million in damage, with $20 million actually paid out to claimants who receive an average of $2,300 (AAFC, 2017). The evaluation notes that there is no evidence on whether the payments result in future efforts to prevent damage by wildlife, with representatives from provincial governments and producers “suggest[ing] there are no effective prevention or mitigation efforts for some wildlife losses” (AAFC, 2017).

Protected Areas

Ultimately, both sharing and sparing land will likely be necessary to achieve conservation and food production goals (Crespin and Simonetti, 2019; Fisher et al., 2014; Kremen, 2015). Kremen (2015:2) suggests a more holistic version of considering the framework; not “either-or” but “both-and”, where they imagine landscapes transformed into “large protected areas surrounded by a relatively wildlife-friendly matrix [that] promot[es] connectivity through a combination of favorable land uses and corridors”. Canada currently favours land sparing in the form of terrestrial and marine protected areas (PAs), with 12.5 % of land and 13.8 % of waters protected in some form (see Figure 2). This is short of the CBD Aichi targets adopted by Canada which included the conservation goal to protect at least 17% of terrestrial and freshwater areas by 2020. This target also falls well below what science has deemed as necessary to ensure robust and resilient ecosystems persist, which estimates around 25 – 75 % protection coverage depending on the ecosystem. It is also well supported that PAs currently on their own are not sufficient to reverse declines in biodiversity (Coristine et al., 2018).

The Canadian governance system represents a weakly integrated patchwork approach to protected spaces that reflects strongly the divided jurisdictional nature of Canada (for more details, see Benidickson, 2009). The “regulatory complexity” that ultimately hinders conservation efforts needs transformation, as the current “57 provincial and territorial tools across 21 departments” are not well-organized or equipped enough to effectively protect Canada’s marine areas (Lemieux & Gray, 2020, p. 6). There is some attempt to co-ordinate using a variety of inter-jurisdictional bodies.

The protected area category OECMs are not without criticism and may potentially misrepresent conservation progress. For example, Canada has successfully defined closed fisheries as OECMs, while these areas continue to allow “shipping traffic, subsurface oil and gas exploration and mining” and commercial fishing of species deemed unimportant (Lemieux & Gray, 2020, p. 4). They are also not permanent, meaning their protection is contingent on the whims of DFO. This tactical defining has allowed the government to report increasing protections for marine ecosystems and meet Aichi commitments, while ensuring waters and coastal areas can still be “open for business” (Lemieux & Gray, 2020, p. 7). These OECMs may undermine the achievement of 10% coastal and marine protections, and complicate future protection attempts.

Overall, Aichi Target 11 represents an area-based approach to achieving conservation targets, which works under the assumption that preserving a certain proportion of the country will protect biodiversity, ecosystem services, and species at risk, along with all the cultural, economic, recreational, spiritual, and social benefits of nature. This approach can only be viable if areas that are protected are actually biodiversity hotspots, critical habitats for SAR, or are essential to the provision of national ecosystem services; this is to say that conservation targets are not met by randomly protecting at least 17 % and 10 % of terrestrial and marine habitats respectively. Historically, PAs in Canada have largely been established in remote and “economically marginal lands”, which often do not coincide with areas important to conservation targets or areas that provide direct ecological benefits to people (Venter et al., 2018, pg. 127; Mitchell et al., 2021). Preserving land is further complicated when considering that PAs should also have sufficient connectivity and be representative of the ecological diversity in Canada. Of the 215 recognized ecoregions in Canada, 75% do not meet the Target 11 commitment; ecoregions in urban and agricultural landscapes are especially poorly represented, with the lowest proportions of protected area across the country (Figure 1; Venter et al., 2018; ECCC, 2020).

PAs can both positively and negatively impact the surrounding areas and communities. Positive impacts may include enhanced ecosystem services, new PA-related employment and development opportunities, preservation of cultural sites, and increased revenue, among other benefits. Existing, expanding, or newly established PAs can also have undesirable effects through increased human-wildlife conflicts, reduced or loss of access within the PA, high transaction/management costs, and unequal distribution of benefits in the surrounding communities, among other factors (Franks and Small, 2016). When considering food systems, human-wildlife conflicts and reduced/loss of access can be large sources ofdiscontentment with protected areas and their conservation efforts.

Riding Mountain National Park is one case-study illustrating of some of the conflicts that may arise between food systems and protected areas. Early on in the park’s history, the local Indigenous communities including the Keeseekoowenin, Tootinaowaziibeeng, Waywayseecappo, and Rolling River First Nations were barred from the PA, which had long been used “for hunting, trapping, fishing, and cultural purposes such as burial grounds” (Peckett, 1999, pg. 4). This history is common to many of the PAs established in Canada; the very first national park in Canada in Banff was initially developed not to preserve or protect wilderness, but to cater to sport hunters and wealthy tourists, and did so by excluding Indigenous peoples and prohibiting their traditional land-uses (Binnema and Niemi 2006; Mason 2014; Finkelstein et al. 2015). This sentiment has only reversed in the last couple decades – Riding Mountain National Park has since sought to begin reconciliation through the establishment of the Riding Mountain Forum in 2006 to “discuss issues of joint concern in the wider park ecosystem” (Sandlos, 2008). The right to harvest traditional medicines has been reinstated through the forum for Indigenous peoples within the PA, but hunting and trapping rights have yet to be been restored (Sandlos, 2008, pg. 220). Today, the park is bordered on all sides by agriculture, and has long been a refuge for elk populations, who throughout the history of the park have been known to damage standing crops, stored hay, and farm fences along the porous PA boundaries (Brook, 2009). As a reservoir for bovine tuberculosis, elk also pose a threat through disease transmission to livestock (Brook, 2009; Lees, 2003). The park was also once a popular site for hunters and cattle ranchers, who have since been banned from the PA in an effort to protect the remaining forests and wildlife (Brook, 2009).

Conservation activities within a PA can also be a source of conflict for surrounding communities. The black-tailed prairie dog is a threatened species in Canada; disconnected from the American populations and isolated largely to the boundaries of Grasslands National Park. To be removed from the COSEWIC list and be considered a staple population, the black-tailed prairie dog would need to expand its habitat and distribution outside of the PA (COSEWIC, 2011). There is limited ability to recover however, because of the historical and ongoing conflict between the prairie dogs and the local communities; although the recovery strategy for black-tailed prairie dogs was developed with extensive consultation with stakeholders, a consensus was not achieved for the appropriate goals and management of the species (Parks Canada, 2021b). The municipal governments and local ranchers are not supportive of expanding the prairie dogs’ active range as it is a considered a pest and food competitor to livestock species, which could threaten livelihoods and have economic impacts (Parks Canada, 2021b). Balancing these competing interests represents a major and ongoing challenge in PA management and biodiversity conservation.