Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
My name is Andrea Barnett, and I am the national policy analyst for Ducks Unlimited Canada, located here in Ottawa. l'd like to introduce you to my colleague, Karla Guyn, our director of conservation planning, who is based out of Winnipeg.
On behalf of Ducks Unlimited Canada and the 144,000 Canadians who support our work, it's our pleasure to present you with our vision for Canada's national conservation plan.
Before we get into that vision, l'd like to familiarize you with Ducks Unlimited, or DU. After almost 75 years on our mission, DU is the leader in wetland conservation. And why do we feel so passionately about our work? Because wetlands are incredibly valuable forms of natural capital that are being lost at an alarming rate. Up to 70% of wetlands have been lost in many settled areas of Canada, and we continue to lose an average of 80 acres, or 32 hectares, every day. To give you a sense of the magnitude of this loss, if you were to lump together all of the wetlands lost on a daily basis, it would be equal to 45 football fields. If you consider doubling the next day, and tripling the next, you get a sense the urgency of what drives us.
DU is committed to stopping wetland loss, retaining the wetlands that have not been lost, restoring those that have been lost, and managing those that require it. As a registered not-for-profit charity and a science-based organization, DU delivers on-the-ground habitat conservation projects, and conducts research, education programs, and public policy work to conserve wetlands.
This work not only benefits waterfowl and other wildlife, it also provides Canadians with valuable goods and services because wetlands purify our drinking water, moderate the effects of climate change, reduce risks of flooding and drought, and generally support our well-being.
DU works in all provinces and territories, and we have many conservation partners including other conservation groups, such as our sister organizations in the U.S. and Mexico, all levels of government in Canada, federal and state governments in the U.S., hundreds of individual landowners, universities, First Nations, and industry partners from a variety of sectors.
In all of our conservation efforts, we have proven to be results-driven, science-based, targeted, collaborative, innovative, and adaptive. In our last fiscal year alone, DU realized many significant achievements.
We celebrated the successful conclusion of wetlands for tomorrow, a six-year campaign that raised and invested $600 million in wetland conservation throughout Canada. We held over 500 fundraising events in communities across Canada, hosting over 68,000 people. We reached over 100,000 students, teachers, and others through our education programs. Finally, through partnerships, we secured almost 160,000 acres of habitat, and positively influenced over 34 million through extension, land-use planning, and stewardship. This brings our cumulative totals, since our inception in 1938, to roughly 6.2 million acres secured, and an additional 95 million influenced.
As a principal delivery agency for a successful continental conservation plan, the North American waterfowl management plan—or NAWMP, as it is commonly referred to—DU would like to offer a number of suggestions regarding the national conservation plan.
We strongly support the development of this plan, and we applaud the environment committee for undertaking this study. A countrywide plan will help position Canada as a world leader in habitat conservation, and pave the way for Canada to demonstrate international leadership on environmental issues. By taking a landscape- and habitat-based approach to conservation, this plan would ensure that future generations of Canadians continue to benefit from healthy ecosystems.
Canada's most important habitat should be conserved using a variety of tools, including land designations like protected areas, as well as conservation easements where private landowners still retain title of the land. In addition, restoration measures should be used to rehabilitate ecosystems that have already been lost or degraded, with emphasis placed on the most threatened and valuable, such as wetlands.
The plan should also connect people and habitat through a mosaic of working lands. This means we must engage all Canadians, particularly landowners, the agriculture community, and industry with a plan that makes it easier to conserve and steward Canadian landscapes, in addition to rewarding conservation actions that many of these sectors already undertake.
I'd like to pass it on to Karla.