Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today.
My expertise is in plant ecology and plant evolution, where I focus on the study of the origins and interactions of species. Through that work, I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to spend days and weeks in natural areas experiencing the wonders that so many of us rarely get to see. As a result of these experiences, my concern for the impact the human population is having on our natural world compelled me to find ways to contribute my expertise to the public dialogue on conservation issues. Therefore, I'm pleased to take the time to speak with you today.
My involvement in conservation includes serving as a member of COSEWIC, the expert committee charged, under the Species at Risk Act, with assessing wildlife species in Canada. I'm currently a member of COSEWIC, and while my opinions are informed by that experience, I should add that I'm not here as a representative of that committee.
As a result of my involvement with the Species at Risk Act, I have also worked on research projects aimed at assessing the implementation of SARA. Most recently, I've led a project analyzing recovery strategies under SARA with a group of Simon Fraser and UBC students and other researchers. We've amassed a database with the aim of assessing progress in achieving recovery under SARA. I'd like to share with you a couple of the key results from those findings and summarize how these results, among others, might inform habitat conservation policies. I want to focus today on our results related to terrestrial and freshwater systems.
Recovery strategies include a section that describes the threat to species at risk. We've summarized those threats and looked for patterns that emerge. Previous analyses by other researchers have highlighted that habitat loss and degradation, exotic invasive species, over-exploitation, and pollution are generally the top threats globally to imperilled species.
However, we took a slightly different approach to our analysis of Canadian species and used descriptions of threats that try to break down, for example, a particular factor into root causes. For example, habitat loss could be caused by all sorts of activities. It could be housing. It could be road building. It could be industrial activities, agriculture, mining, or oil and gas. The way we address these different threats are different, so it's important to break them down.
As with previous studies, our findings show that threats associated with habitat loss and degradation are most important and that invasive species and pollution impact many SARA-listed species. But most of the impacts related to habitat loss that we saw were associated with residential and commercial development, housing and commercial development, and other impacts of human activities such as recreation. We also found that most species at risk are impacted by multiple threats.
In fact, these key findings are well in line with the fact that most Canadians live, and therefore much of our impact is felt, in areas near urban centres and in the southernmost reaches of the country. These southernmost areas are not only where we live but also where many of our most threatened ecosystems occur and where many rare species in Canada eke out their existence. These threatened ecosystems include such places as the Garry oak habitats on southern Vancouver Island, the south Okanagan of B.C., the prairie grasslands, the remnant prairies of southern Ontario, and the Atlantic coastal plains of Nova Scotia.
These habitats are restricted in Canada, and they hold many rare and threatened species. They're the focus of intensive conservation activities, including assessment of species at risk, management of human impacts, and impacts of our sheer numbers—recreation, housing, roads, pollution—and the consequences of these impacts, such as the influx of invasive species. Managing our impacts is hugely challenging and will not get any easier.
In addition to these localized threats, our analysis also shows that modification of natural systems—through changing or managing water levels and activities such as fire suppression that safeguard our homes but permit changes to habitats that allow invasive species to encroach—are also important threats to many species at risk.
Resource use such as forestry and fisheries, pollution, and the impacts of oil, gas, and mining activities round out the list of key threats to species at risk. All of these activities have negative impacts on the availability of the healthy habitats needed to sustain Canada's biodiversity and underscore the role that habitat protection must play in conservation. The fact that these threats are not at the very top, the way that threats close to urban areas are, should be interpreted with caution though, as these threats are often the most important for the set of species they do impact.
A more detailed exploration of individual species and recovery strategies also shows that the details do matter for each species. It's not enough to generically preserve habitats, and it's certainly not true that land is equal to habitat, or that habitat alone promotes or preserves biodiversity. Although, of course, habitat conservation is essential for these initiatives. The habitats we preserve have to have the qualities to maintain the species they contain, and in fact, when we think of habitat, we have to imagine a living, breathing system with links among species, from soil bacteria through top predators, each playing a role in defining the habitat requirements for a species.
As a result, when we talk about ecosystem approaches to conservation, we have to mean approaches that consider the needs of individual species but focus on maintaining a balance of natural processes that help nature take its course as best it can, given the many assaults of human populations and activities.
Science-based policy decisions are critical to these efforts—science-informed strategies for choices of land to preserve, for management of invasive species, and to understand the key stages in the life history of species in communities where we can most impact their health and persistence.
At present in the species-at-risk world, science plays an essential role in the assessment of species by COSEWIC and in the development of recovery strategies. In species assessment, where we have the longest track record, our Canadian system of assessment is well viewed within Canada and internationally. One of the key strengths of this process is that it is purely evidence-based and it is available for peer-based and public scrutiny. As a result, a healthy debate can ensue, such as we have seen with certain high-profile species. This model, where science leads the process, is one means of ensuring that when compromises are made—and we understand even as scientists that compromises will be made—those compromises are clear and transparent.
When a scientist comes out and advocates for a science-based approach, there is the risk this will be seen as self-serving, in essence, lobbying for additional resources for our industry. However, I assure you that science in the public good, as underscored by my colleague Dr. Otto, is a defensible and sound investment that can and will contribute to sound policy, and ultimately must be central in informing our conservation policy.
I welcome your comments and questions. Thank you.