Environment committee  To reiterate a point that I made earlier, I think it's really critical to engage the non-traditional people in the business of habitat conservation, or conservation in general. We need to get out there and engage our youth. We also need to be engaging new Canadians, and, obviousl

Environment committee  It's interesting because we at Nature Canada are looking at a new strategy for the coming five to ten years, but when we look across the landscape what we don't see is this coming together of the naturalist organizations involved in various aspects of environment and nature conse

Environment committee  To quickly build on what Bill and my colleague here have mentioned with respect to migratory species, as we look at the national conservation plan into the future and talk about habitat, we are part of a global network, and many of our wildlife species move between Canada and man

Environment committee  Absolutely. As I mentioned, there are about 350 local naturalist groups across Canada. They're found in every urban centre, big and small. They are active volunteers who meet on a regular basis, and they're involved in many aspects of habitat and wildlife species conservation.

Environment committee  I'm talking about habitat generally.

Environment committee  I'm talking about Canada as a whole.

Environment committee  Thank you very much. I would go back to my earlier comments. We've been talking a lot about grasslands, and prairie grasslands in particular, and for the longest time there has been a range of species on the grassland landscape that shared that habitat with humans. In recent y

Environment committee  I can answer that very quickly. We were just talking about this yesterday with respect to a number of prairie species. We were talking about sage grouse, which is a SARA-listed species, and swift fox. As you know, foxes tend to eat birds. In this case, on the landscape both speci

Environment committee  As a specific example of this, going back to my comments, there is a sage grouse partnership that is being developed in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. It brings together ranchers, private landowners, government, and scientists, who are really trying to figure out how to do th

Environment committee  I believe that conservation values would potentially change. For example, I take the case of the northern parts of Alberta where there's considerable development of oil and gas The issue here is that a lot of the boreal forest in question is potentially being rolled back and th

Environment committee  I would agree that's part of the solution. Obviously, in the way we see the world there are many different ways that habitat can be conserved. I think I spoke a little to the fact that we believe strongly that the Canadian government has a mandate to conserve some of our protecte

Environment committee  Thank you very much. My apologies to the people here. I had a small issue with my child. She's in the hospital with a high temperature. She's fine, and I'll go forward with my presentation. First of all, by way of introduction, my name is Ian Davidson. I am the executive direc

Environment committee  I'm certainly not an expert on NatureServe. It's an organization unto its own, I think. There are folks who would know more about it, but I guess from my perspective—and I'm not an expert on information management—it strikes me as an organization that is trying to work towards th

Environment committee  As an example—

Environment committee  Thank you for your question. I'm not that familiar with the legislative side. Obviously the tools are there in five or six very important environmental acts. On tools for conservation, one of the things we try to promote within the naturalist network—and we work through provinc