Thank you, Madam Chair.
As you know, my name is Peter Kendall. I am the executive director of Earth Rangers and the Schad Foundation. I really appreciate the opportunity to appear before you here today and your hard work on this important topic.
To provide some context for my remarks, I would like to start by saying a few words about our work at the Schad Foundation and Earth Rangers.
The Schad Foundation is a private family foundation. The foundation provides funding to registered charities for work on wildlife and habitat conservation projects. Our current areas of focus are large-scale boreal forest conservation, marine protected areas, and mechanisms to promote recovery of species at risk.
Most of my time is spent on my work at Earth Rangers. Earth Rangers is a kids' conservation organization. Our programs educate children and their families about the importance of protecting biodiversity, engage them in tangible activities to protect wildlife and its habitat, and encourage them to explore their local natural areas. We reach children through live animal presentations in over 800 schools annually across Canada and through almost daily television presence.
Thanks in large part to the support we received from the federal government—thank you again—our program has grown quickly over the past few years to the point where we now have the largest membership base of any conservation group in Canada, with nearly 140,000 members, all of them children, aged roughly six to twelve. They represent every province and territory.
One of the core messages we teach our members is that if we are going to make a difference for wildlife, all sectors of society must work together. This is why we are so excited to see the new spirit of co-operation and transparency from our federal government. What is even more exciting is that this spirit seems to have become infectious and is being adopted by other governments and non-governmental organizations across the country.
It is critical that we capitalize on this momentum. While many gains have been made, the sad reality is that we continue to lose biodiversity and have failed to live up to some of our key international and domestic commitments.
For example, Canada's goals under the convention on biodiversity include protecting at least 17% of terrestrial areas and 10% of marine areas by 2020. While progress has been made terrestrially, less than 1% of our oceans are currently set aside from resource development and fishing.
Even worse, a 2013 assessment of species at risk shows that population trends for most species listed by COSEWIC remain bleak. Of the 369 species that were evaluated more than once, the status of almost 90% either was unchanged or had deteriorated. Even when COSEWIC scientists have recommended that a species be listed, these recommendations often languish. Research out of the University of British Columbia has revealed that the average wait time for a species that has been recommended for listing is almost four years.
The other reality is that Canada has made a major commitment to combatting climate change, and again, we congratulate you on this. This critical effort, though, is going to consume a large amount of financial and human capital over the next several years. As a result, we feel it is important that you are selective and focused on your other conservation priorities.
While there are many conservation needs across the country, two particular areas stand out to us as deserving of a priority focus: marine conservation and species at risk.
While we recognize that completing terrestrial protected areas is also important, we feel that significant progress has been made on this in the last 30 years, with 10% of our land base now protected. It is also an area where we continue to see strong movement and leadership by the provinces. For example, the new government in Newfoundland and Labrador has mandated the environment minister to finalize a natural areas system plan. Minister Phillips recently announced the Alberta government's intention to increase protected areas from 12% to 17%. Ontario and Quebec are working on plans to protect 50% of their far north and, of course, there is the great work you guys are doing with Ontario, moving Rouge Park ahead, so congratulations on that.
With respect to oceans conservation, the government is quickly trying to play catch-up and meet its international oceans conservation commitments, and we really applaud this. This is going to require creative thinking, sustained political will, and focusing on what the science tells us.
Marine protected areas are a great tool, but we need to go beyond that. Almost 25 years ago, the collapse of the east coast cod fishery became the global poster child for oceans mismanagement.
There now is an opportunity for Canada to become a world leader in sustainable ocean stewardship by actively implementing science-backed recovery plans for the hard-hit fisheries. Like marine protected areas, this would be good for the ecosystem and ultimately good for fishery-dependent economies. From what we can see from the outside, you're moving in a very strong direction on this file. Our hope is that you just keep the pressure on here.
With respect to species at risk, it's a little more difficult. The scale of this challenge is immense, making it easy to get overwhelmed. It's going to often result in efforts being spread too thin, resulting in little progress being made.
We do understand that there are fiscal challenges, but we shouldn't use this as an excuse to maintain the status quo. We can and must do a better job with the funds that are currently available. This should start with better alignment across government and agencies, greater collaboration with industry and non-governmental organizations, and the adoption of new approaches.
The vast majority of species at risk in Canada live on private lands. Traditional command and control approaches won't work well in these landscapes. We need new mechanisms and tools to both incent stewardship and discourage further habitat destruction. This could include things like biodiversity offsets, payments for ecosystem services, and safe harbour agreements.
Species and habitats don't exist in silos, and neither do the solutions to their protection, yet this is how we often try to tackle these problems. I'm not just talking about governments here; ENGOs tend to operate in the same way.
Even here at Earth Rangers, we realized this a while ago when one of our eight-year-old members sent in the money that she had worked so hard for by doing chores and by holding a lemonade stand. The donation came with a note saying, “I am an Earth Ranger and I want to save endangered animals. Please make the best choice with this money and make it count!” It was the last part of this note that made us really ask if we were putting this money to the best use and if the investments we were making in species recovery were really making a difference.
After speaking to people in government, academia, industry, and ENGOs, we realized that many others were asking the same questions and wrestling with the same issues. It seemed to us that everybody was unhappy with the status quo. To help inform these collective discussions, we recently launched a study with the University of Ottawa's Institute of the Environment in collaboration with Environment Canada and the Forest Products Association of Canada.
The ultimate goal of this study is to develop recommendations on how we can improve our species at risk efforts in Canada. The study is focusing on both what we can do today with the tools and policies immediately at our disposal, as well as looking abroad for what new approaches and mechanisms may be worth considering here in Canada.
The first phase of this study is scheduled to be completed later this summer, and we would welcome the opportunity to meet with this committee again and to share the results and explore how we can collaborate on improving the species at risk management in Canada.
Thank you for your time.