That's a good question, and you're absolutely right. We have a number of conservation partnerships with the United States for particular species. I think of the porcupine caribou herd between Alaska and the Yukon, which has been successfully jointly managed for many years now under an international agreement. The same is true for polar bears.
With respect to waterfowl, which is the basis of the longest standing conservation partnership we have with the United States, since 1916, the first half of the 1900s was really about managing for the sustainable harvest and use of waterfowl. I think our two countries working together were successful in that. We had species going extinct soon after 1900—we know only too well that the passenger pigeon went extinct in 1914—but that was the impetus to put the convention in place and to manage the harvest. By 1947 when the Canadian Wildlife Service started, the harvest was being sustainably managed. We continued to improve management of the harvest of the species, and by the mid-1980s it really became obvious that in addition to managing the harvest we needed to manage the habitat on which waterfowl depend. That's the origin of the North American waterfowl management plan. I have the opportunity to work globally on biodiversity conservation, and I know that plan is considered unique globally.
What has it meant for Canada? Since the mid-1980s, we've mobilized a $2 billion investment in wetland conservation and restoration in Canada. About $996 million of that is from the United States, about $512 million from the U.S. government, and the rest from the Canadian partnership. The federal investment in that plan over that time period is about $335 million, but it's very significant to mobilize a continental partnership around shared objectives and to have people put money on the table to the tune of $2 billion for wetland conservation.