Thank you very much and good afternoon.
First of all, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to share the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's views on your five-year review of Canada's Species At Risk Act.
My name is Éric Hébert-Daly and I am the National Executive Director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, or CPAWS. With me is Aran O'Carroll, National Manager, Legal and Regulatory Affairs and CPAWS' national lead on our Boreal Campaign.
Our presentation will focus on the challenges and opportunities of implementing the Species At Risk Act, based on our longstanding interest in conserving Canada's boreal forest, and in particular, on our work to protect the iconic boreal woodland caribou. The image of the caribou appears on your 25 cent coin. The caribou is also a barometer of the health of the boreal forest.
CPAWS is Canada's pre-eminent community-based voice for public wilderness protection. We've played a lead role in establishing over two-thirds of Canada's protected areas since 1963. That includes, of course, one of the big campaigns around the Nahanni, and the big success that we had by this particular Parliament.
With 13 chapters in nearly every province and territory, and the support of over 40,000 Canadians, CPAWS is one of the larger grassroots organizations in Canada. Our vision to keep at least half of Canada's wilderness and public wild spaces wild forever is a vision that we've been promoting for the last little while. It's certainly one that we share with our partners at Mountain Equipment Co-op, who have worked with us on the “Big Wild” campaign, people on the Boreal Leadership Council, which includes oil and gas companies as well as forestry companies, conservation organizations, and first nations.
CPAWS has played a supportive role in the establishment of SARA. It is something we've been taking very much to heart. We're members of the minister's species at risk advisory committee, and my colleague Aran co-chairs the national advisory group on the recovery strategy for the woodland caribou.
Across Canada, CPAWS staff have been instrumental in developing recovery plans and gaining habitat protection for woodland caribou in their regions.
We fully agree with the comments of our SARAC colleagues in their presentation to this committee to the effect that SARA is fundamentally well designed. If we take a closer look, we see that it is the implementation of SARA that has proven to be the biggest challenge for us. I have provided the clerk with a document that goes into more detail than I ever could in the ten minutes allotted to me.
We'd like to put three recommendations before you today. First, ensure you get SARA implementation correct, particularly around the boreal woodland caribou; second, adopt a bold new federal leadership role in wilderness conservation and look particularly at issues of collaboration; and third, take immediate action in a very urgent case that's happening right before our eyes, which is the work that's happening around new park establishment and how SARA can tie into that.
Critical habitat is defined under SARA as the habitat necessary for the survival or recovery of a species at risk. The minister is responsible under the act for approving recovery strategies for species that identify critical habitat, to the extent that it is possible to do so, based on the best available information and the measures outlined to conserve this habitat.
Woodland caribou are a perfect example of why we need a more coordinated approach to conservation in Canada. With a vast range, woodland caribou in the boreal are listed under SARA throughout the country, with the exception of the populations on the island of Newfoundland, although even those populations are on the decline.
An umbrella species that really signifies the health of the boreal forest and its wetlands, woodland caribou require large intact wilderness areas to survive. If their habitat is fragmented by roads, farming, logging, mining, and/or energy development, the predator-prey dynamics change, because it allows the predators to have better access to the caribou. It tips the balance against the caribou, which, as we've seen, can disappear within a few decades.
We've been trying for about seven years to in fact address this particular problem. We know that the problems of implementation of SARA have been at the heart of our issues. The good news is that the effort has resulted in a state-of-the-art scientific assessment of the critical habitat needs of the species. The bad news is that we still await recovery strategies under the act, and while they were originally expected in 2007, they are now expected in the fall of 2011. Meanwhile, caribou populations continue to decline.
We have learned from this experience that the Species At Risk Act has great potential as a federal tool to conserve the habitat of species at risk. However, on it own, the legislation is inadequate. Wilderness conservation on the vast scale required by wide-ranging species such as the woodland caribou calls for concerted action by many stakeholders.
As a country, we really need to apply our collective abilities to become a global conservation leader. That means we need to bring together governments’ legislative powers to protect species and establish protected areas, industry’s ability to adopt more sustainable practices, aboriginal people’s traditional knowledge of our ecosystems, scientists’ growing understanding of conservation biology, and the citizenship of conservation organizations such as our own.
We recommend that the federal government kickstart a new era of integrating nationwide and federal government-wide initiatives for conservation and work collaboratively with provincial, territorial, and aboriginal governments and major industrial and conservation groups to find a world-leading conservation vision for Canada that will protect our natural heritage.
An important part of this process would be the development and implementation of a joint strategy, one that involves all stakeholders and not just people who work in silos, with a view to conserving the critical habitats of boreal woodland caribou. Such a plan would go a long way toward securing resilient, healthy ecosystems that will provide a future for generations of Canadians.
Last year, as I mentioned earlier in my remarks, with the support of the Dehcho First Nations, the Government of the Northwest Territories, and CPAWS, Parliament unanimously approved a significant expansion of the Nahanni National Park Reserve in the southern portion of the South Nahanni River watershed.
Now Parks Canada is planning in fact to create another park, called Nááts'ihch'oh, a national park reserve in the headwaters of the South Nahanni watershed. This is in fact a park that covers a pretty important part of caribou habitat, breeding grounds, and in fact it is a place where caribou spend winters in the adjacent Nahanni National Park Reserve. With the right boundaries for Nááts'ihch'oh, virtually the entire range of the woodland caribou herd could be protected within these two parks put together. But the current proposed boundaries for the park leave out parts of the South Nahanni watershed that are in fact critical to the future of woodland caribou in the Nahanni.
By ensuring that the boundaries of this latest park protect the critical woodland caribou habitat, the federal government could, in a very real way, demonstrate what it is that we need to do in terms of a coordinated approach to conservation so that the work of Parks Canada and the work of this particular act can achieve real outcomes for wildlife on the ground.
In summary, we urge your committee to take the following action: show that SARA can be effective and can work well with a national recovery strategy for boreal woodland caribou; adopt a new federal leadership role in wilderness conservation, while working of course with the provinces; take immediate action as a new national park is established in the Northwest Territories to ensure that federal conservation tools work together, in this case, SARA and the creation of new parks.
Thank you.