Environment Committee on May 15th, 2012

[Dr. Damien Joly]

Of course. Fair enough, Mr. Chair.

WCS Canada presents three fundamental areas of focus for Canada's national conservation plan: conservation beyond protected areas, conservation in protected area establishment and management, and species conservation. In our opinion, a national conservation strategy must integrate all three elements, and each must be supported with investment in scientific and aboriginal traditional knowledge systems.

When we're talking about conservation beyond protected areas, really parks aren't enough to protect Canada's biodiversity. We need to be looking at conservation in the matrix that we see beyond protected areas.

The plan must foster a comprehensive approach with provinces and territories that addresses a wider set of environmental, social, and economic impacts than permitted by current land-use planning and environmental assessment processes. This means replacing piecemeal decision-making processes governing individual development projects with strategic land-use planning and environmental assessments performed at regional scales, and creating national standards for resource management and monitoring in landscapes and waterscapes beyond protected areas. A focus on the maintenance of ecological flows—the movements of organisms, water, and nutrients—across lands and waters will likewise be critical.

In sum, a proactive approach to addressing cumulative land-use change beyond protected areas will be fundamental to fostering both resilience and adaptation of Canada's natural heritage for future generations.

Here I'm going to shift topic a bit and talk about conservation in national parks and protected areas. Establishing and managing national parks has been a cornerstone of Canada's conservation strategy for over a century. While Canada's terrestrial protected areas network has increased since 1992, only about 10% of the land base and 1% of marine systems have been designated, well short of the CBD's 2020 Aichi biodiversity targets.

As opportunities for meaningful establishment of new areas are rapidly disappearing, a key priority under the national conservation plan must be to complete the national park system, filling important gaps in representation of freshwater, marine, and some terrestrial ecosystems. Gazetted areas must be large enough and designed with enough foresight to provide meaningful habitat quality for area-sensitive species, and be as resilient as possible to a changing climate and changing conditions beyond park boundaries.

Care must be taken to ensure that rigour in scientific monitoring of these ecological benchmarks is not undermined by economic drivers such as enhanced visitor use. In order to find solutions to these many challenges, the Government of Canada will find that working in tandem with provincial, territorial, and aboriginal governments can encourage innovative approaches to achieve land protection that address the unique environmental and social context comprising Canada's natural systems.

The third pillar I'll talk about is species conservation. Species are the most visible building blocks of biodiversity, the variety of life on earth, and the foundation of Canada's commitment under the Convention on Biological Diversity. The status and health of fish, wildlife, and plant populations serve as barometers for how our natural systems are faring. Warning signs in Canada are indeed evident, with species at risk lists increasing in size every year, while relatively few species are recovering sufficiently to be removed from such lists. Still more Canadian species are displaying concerning signs of decline in parts of their range where human impacts are at their most intense, while as yet intact areas serve for the time being as critical population and habitat strongholds.

An effective national conservation plan must place conservation of all species, particularly those of conservation concern, as a key pillar both to target its effort and as a means to monitor its success. Further, we caution that because of the strong evidence for the relationship between species diversity and ecosystem function, the value of the individual species cannot be underestimated. This means that any approach that places the highest value on those species that are of economic or even cultural importance to humans risks being dangerously short-sighted.

In conclusion, at a time when regulatory and information systems are increasingly hard pressed to keep pace with mounting threats to conservation from resource development, climate change, and growing human population, the imperative for a national conservation plan could not be more clear. We applaud the committee's efforts to develop such a plan.

WCS Canada recommends that this plan contain these three pillars: conservation beyond protected areas, protected area establishment and management, and species conservation. A serious and useful plan would show commitment by the Government of Canada to Canada's obligations under international treaties and agreements, a renewed commitment to federal investment in science, and a reversal of legislative changes that weaken our ability to conserve Canadian biodiversity for future generations.

I just want to end with a little story. My grandfather spent six years overseas during World War II. He spent the final year in Holland dismantling land mines and other unexploded ordnance. It was his job to deal with these weapons.

One of the things he learned during that year, as you might imagine, was to not make decisions you can't come back from. When you make a decision, you really want it to be a decision that, if you figure you've made an error, you can come back from. When you're working with land mines, that's an important lesson. He taught me that lesson. What I worry about right now is that we are making decisions we can't come back from. Our grandchildren will not live in a world we want them to live in because of our decisions about our environment today.

Thank you for letting me speak.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Thank you so much.

Now, before we begin questions, I would like to introduce you to the members of Parliament before you. There are a dozen members of Parliament on the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development in the House of Commons. Today you have about half of us.

Member of Parliament Hedy Fry is from the Vancouver area, with the Liberal Party. We have member of Parliament, François Pilon, and member of Parliament Choquette, both from around the Montreal area of Quebec. They are with the NDP, the official opposition. We have member of Parliament Lunney from the Nanaimo area, and member of Parliament Toet, from Manitoba. My riding is in beautiful Langley, British Columbia.

We will open up to questions. The first four questioners will have seven minutes each.

We'll begin with Mr. Toet. You have seven minutes.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for appearing today.

I want to start with Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust. Mr. Bradbeer, I find your story about what has occurred in the Delta region quite intriguing. I'd like to just ask some questions about the program, the establishment of the program, the individual programs, and the stewardship program.

Who initially writes those programs? Is that a collaborative effort between the farmers and a stewardship group? Or is it written first by a stewardship group, and then the farmers sign on to it? Can you kind of take us through the process of how that's working?

[David Bradbeer]

Yes, to answer that question, we have to go back in time to how the trust formed. But essentially, it was a group of farmers and conservationists who came together when some money was made available through the expansion of the Vancouver International Airport. Compensation money became available. The groups realized that there were benefits to both wildlife conservation and farmland soil stewardship. That's how the idea of the program was initially brought together.

Nowadays, when the stewardship agreements are written, the Delta Farmland & Wildlife Trust is represented by a volunteer board of directors. Four are from the farming community, and four are from the conservation community. We've agreed upon and have legally binding stewardship agreements that lay out all the management guidelines the farmers must undertake. The guidelines were created specifically so that we could achieve wildlife habitat values, and at the same time, soil conservation. Those agreements are formally entered into on an annual basis with the farmers.

Does that answer your question about some of the processes?

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes, absolutely, it does.

There is a financial and a productivity reward for the farmer, as you outlined in your presentation. Is that the only reward, so to speak, the farmer reaps from this, or is there a much more far-reaching reward than that?

[David Bradbeer]

I'd say that a lot of those farmers like seeing wildlife, so that's pretty rewarding for them. There is that reward.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What I'm getting at is whether there is a one-for-one return on dollars for the farmer, or is there not? Is there another reason?

[David Bradbeer]

It varies. In these areas, I think sometimes you can line up the benefits versus the costs accrued. My speculation is that indeed there is a one-for-one return. You can't overwork these soils in perpetuity. They break down too quickly, and you need to rebuild that structure. That is only possible through the reintroduction of soil, organic matter, and specifically, the action of grass roots on the soil. So in that case, yes, they are basically going to break even at the end of the day.

Sometimes I think that calculation is a lot harder to do, especially with the winter cover crop program, which has, I would say, compared to the set-aside program, a much more hard-to-realize benefit for the soil. But it's a long-term process.

I can't give you a hard and fast number on that, but the perceived benefit for the farmers, I think, is evident, because they keep coming back to the programs.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

What percentage of farmers are collaborating in the program?

I get a sense they're not doing this just for a financial gain.

[David Bradbeer]

Are you talking about a benefit to the community in terms of conservation?

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Yes.

[David Bradbeer]

In general, the community as a whole is a lot more accepting of the farming operations when they can see that these farmers are taking an active role in wildlife conservation. Not many other landowners have the capacity to enact that kind of wildlife conservation.

We can all put up bird feeders in our backyards, but conserving some of these species at risk only takes place on a large-scale working landscape, so that benefit is accrued to the farmers in that they are recognized within the community as contributing to wildlife conservation above and beyond the benefits they accrue to their own farming operations in maintaining the viability of that operation.

[Lawrence Toet, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Dr. Joly, you talked about several different things in your presentation. One of the things I think we've heard from a lot of our witnesses is that they've been able to share success stories with us because there are success stories out there. We can talk about the negatives, and they definitely do exist and nobody is denying that, but I think one of the ways we build on society as a whole is when we highlight success stories. Success breeds success, so to speak. I think that also applies very much to conservation.

I wonder if you could articulate for us some success stories and look at the core attributes and how they could also be applied to other programs in a broader perspective.

[Dr. Damien Joly]

Sure. Before I answer, within WCS Canada we all have different areas of expertise. My particular expertise is global health. I work on wildlife health projects around the world. I'm here representing WCS Canada so I can give you an answer, but I'm not necessarily going to give you the best answer that another scientist with WCS Canada would be able to provide, because my work is primarily on other things beyond conservation species in Canada. I do have more of a global reach.

A good number of the greatest successes we've seen stem from the work of WCS Canada, but a tangible example is the increasing size of Nahanni National Park in the Yukon and the work that John Weaver, one of our scientists, did in terms of determining the range of distribution of the critically important species in that landscape—understanding where bighorn sheep go, where grizzly bears go, where the mountain caribou are going and what kind of landscapes they need, what kind of ranges they need, and then developing a new boundary for Nahanni National Park based on solid science.

Our work at WCS Canada and everywhere WCS works around the world is really.... We've found our greatest successes come from taking a step back from.... We never take a step back from our conservation values, but we take a step back from the controversy and we look at things to try to derive answers from science, putting on the unbiased glasses of science and trying to understand how best we can conserve, achieve our conservation goal, through science.

[The Chair, Conservative, Mark Warawa]

Time has expired.

Monsieur Pilon, you have seven minutes.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bradbeer, your program is voluntary. Do you have statistics on the percentage of farmers who subscribe to this program?

[David Bradbeer]

We have approximately 40 farming operations involved in the program on an annual basis.

Usually, within our grasslands set-aside program, 20 farmers are enrolled in that program on an annual basis, given the limitations of the program's capacity and the wait-list we have for the programs.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

How many farmers are there around there?

[David Bradbeer]

I would say in total there are probably close to 80 farming operations of different sizes and scope.

Some of the farms that we do not cooperate very heavily with are blueberry farms, because there's a perennial crop already in the ground. We have other activities we can do on those farms, but generally some of the farms are not conducive to collaboration.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Should the plan require all farmers to subscribe to your program or to a similar program?

[David Bradbeer]

I'm sorry, I didn't get that last one. Can we get programs that apply to all farmers?

If that's what you're asking, there are different ways of doing it. Not all farm operations are compatible with this kind of conservation. The big thing to point out is that the big vegetable farms, which have almost half of the acreage of the farms in Delta, are compatible with these programs. The type of work we can do on the vegetable farms emulates habitat that was historically present on the Fraser River delta for things like grassland habitat, which is what we do through the set-aside program. Those farms are best equipped to do that.

Some of the farms already have soil organic matter management because of their rotation, such as dairy farms. We do have some cooperation with them, but not to the same extent as the vegetable farms. Though those farms don't cooperate in the programs, they are contributing to wildlife conservation.

One thing we need to do with regard to say, blueberry farms.... As you suggested, can we make programs that are compatible with their farming operations? Indeed, we can. Native trees and shrubs can be planted along the margins of these fields to increase habitat for birds, pollinators, and to accrue benefits to the farm, such as windbreaks and shelter belts.

We actually piloted a project this last year with a blueberry farmer. We installed a hedgerow on that farm.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Thank you.

Ms. Clogg, you spoke about expanding the protected areas. Do you think that some urban areas should also be protected?

[Jessica Clogg]

Yes, of course. Green space protection is required everywhere. What we need to think about in a holistic way is the maintenance of ecological integrity and functioning ecosystems.

Many of our urban areas are already heavily impacted, but our organization has worked over many years to look at ways of greening our urban areas and mechanisms that can be used, and ways that our cities should be adapting to climate change, including nature conservation.

[François Pilon, NDP, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

You also spoke about corridors that connect the protected areas. Can you tell us a little more about that and explain what you mean by "corridors"?

[Jessica Clogg]

The broader point I had hoped to make was that when we talk about landscape connectivity I'm actually speaking more broadly about the need to maintain functioning ecosystems across the landscape. As an example, in British Columbia right now there's a pilot project ongoing with the Ministry of Environment. It is attempting to establish objectives, targets, and benchmarks for key ecosystem values, and then to develop baseline information and use that information—those objectives, benchmarks, and indicators—as a mechanism for decision-makers in making choices about approving development and human activity in a way that does not negatively impact on ecosystem integrity and our ecosystem services.

There is a lot in the literature about landscape connectivity. Ultimately that is about the ability of any given species to be able to move across the landscape and go from one area of habitat to another, and that's going to depend on the species. Too often that is thought about in a relatively impoverished way. People do talk about wildlife corridors, and of course that's important, but we need to look at the landscape as a whole.

There's a concept that is sometimes called “porosity of the landscape”, the ability of species to move through barriers like roads or development. We need to be thinking in a fairly holistic way.

I want to say one more thing specifically about corridors. In an era of climate change, to the extent we are talking about movement corridors, we need to be very much thinking about connectivity of cross-climate gradients as a key element of landscape connectivity—essentially allowing species to move from warmer areas to cooler areas. While we're designing landscape connectivities, we need to be taking that into account. It's not only looking at barriers to movement and the types of human impact on the landscape, but also allowing species to move northward. That is going to become more and more critical in an era of climate change.