There are a couple of important factors. Yes, we have invested a lot in staffing up, in developing policies, and frankly in working our way through the legislation, in learning how to prepare cabinet for listing decisions, in learning how to do recovery strategies, and fundamentally in working with our partners. The partnerships predated the act, but now we have to engage in a different relationship based on the presence of the act. So there are lots of upfront investments. You could say on the one hand those investments were made, the foundation has been built, and now we can focus on the structure of the building.
On the other hand, the volume of work is increasing. We are now at the point where we are just tipping the scales in terms of the number of recovery strategies that we're developing or promulgating per year versus the number of new species that are being listed. It's going to take us a while to eat into that backlog that we inherited when the act was brought into force. Additional species are being listed each year. And finally, of course, in a couple of years COSEWIC will start through a mandatory re-evaluation of species that have been listed. So the annual burden continues to grow.
And then of course once you've listed a species, developed a recovery strategy, and developed an action plan, you don't just walk away from it. Notwithstanding my earlier comment that one of the things we're trying to do is encourage action on the ground by partners, the federal government can't walk away from all of those activities. We need to continue to have staff engaged. We may need to continue to fund partners. We need to monitor. You can't walk away from a species that's been listed. So the overall burden is growing even as we've enhanced our efficiencies and put in place the appropriate kinds of foundational activities.