Thank you very much. It is a bit of an overview for the rest of them.
I know that my colleagues from DFO and Parks Canada would join me in emphasizing the importance of involvement by indigenous governments and communities that have been integral to the establishment and management of many protected areas. In the case of Environment and Climate Change Canada, we've been working with various indigenous communities through the Northwest Territories protected areas strategy to establish new protected areas such as the Edéhzhíe National Wildlife Area.
Another example of the importance of indigenous community participation is in Nunavut where, under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, Inuit impact and benefit agreements have been concluded for the conservation areas in the Nunavut settlement area. In 2008, working with NTI and the regional Inuit associations, we concluded an umbrella agreement know as the IIBA, for five national wildlife areas and eight migratory bird sanctuaries. This IIBA resulted directly in the establishment of three new national wildlife areas. In addition, the IIBA has provided funding over seven years for environmentally sustainable tourism, employment, co-management and other opportunities for Inuit in the affected communities. I am very pleased to report that we recently completed negotiations with our Inuit partners on a renewed IIBA.
Beyond Environment and Climate Change Canada's formal protected areas program, the department has, for many years, played a leading or contributing role for various programs and initiatives that are protecting lands and waters that count toward the targets. For instance, we play a national leadership role in working in partnership with government and non-government organizations through our stewardship programs to provide financial assistance or tax incentives to encourage Canadians to conserve land.
I'll just highlight a few quickly. Through our financial assistance and tax incentive initiatives, many non-government organizations make significant contributions to securing ecologically sensitive areas on private lands. Organizations such as the Nature Conservancy of Canada and Ducks Unlimited Canada are co-operating with us and other partners to conserve important habitat through initiatives like the natural areas conservation program, which has conserved nearly 400,000 hectares, and the tax incentive program, the ecological gifts program, which has protected 175,000 hectares of ecologically sensitive land.
Our work with the U.S., provinces, territories and conservation non-profits under the North American waterfowl management plan has protected eight million hectares of wetlands since 1986. This is a very active program that continues to protect those areas.
In conclusion, I hope I've been able to provide you with some useful information for your study about protected areas, the rationale for them, and how we're working collaboratively with partners to achieve Canada's 2020 conservation targets of 17% and 10%.