Good morning. I'm pleased to be here today.
I'm the assistant deputy minister of the Canadian Wildlife Service. The Canadian Wildlife Service is responsible for the department's nature agenda more broadly across the government. I'll go through our responsibilities and some of our priorities.
First of all, we have a significant mandate related to species at risk, and the Species at Risk Act provides a number of authorities and mechanisms for species protection and recovery. We have obligations for federal species like migratory birds, and then the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has that responsibility for aquatic species. Then we have provisions for a safety net for non-federal lands and non-federal species.
There are currently over 600 species at risk, and the list continues to grow. Tackling the species at risk issue is a bit of a daunting agenda. In 2018, Environment and Climate Change Canada, in collaboration with the provinces and territories, developed something called the pan-Canadian approach to transform our approach to species at risk conservation across the country, focusing on some select priority places, some select species and some sectors and threats to try to build in more multi-species, ecosystem-based planning and delivery.
Unlike some of the other species—the terrestrial species that are largely managed by the provinces—we do have exclusive responsibility for migratory birds under the Migratory Birds Convention Act. Birds are in decline, particularly shore birds, grassland birds and aerial insectivores, which are birds that eat insects in flight. In North America, we've lost three billion birds since 1970, largely due to habitat loss and degradation. Habitat loss is the greatest risk, but we also have responsibilities for managing the hunting of migratory birds, and we are pleased to indicate that we are modernizing our approach to those regulations.
The next big area that I want to talk about is our work on conserving and restoring important wildlife habitats and ecosystems. We do that through a mix of conservation tools, providing funding and incentives for others to act. Sometimes we act on our own and sometimes we use regulatory action, all supported by science.
Environment and Climate Change Canada leads on the national efforts to expand Canada's network of protected and conserved areas. Our current target is to conserve 17% of lands and inland waters by 2020. As of January of this year, 12.1% has been achieved. That's an area twice the size of Alberta. That's a really significant accomplishment.
As we work toward getting higher amounts protected, indigenous protected and conserved areas are increasingly important. We've had significant investments, particularly in the last two years, to make progress in this area, but there's much more that needs to be done to meet the target. The government has indicated that we'll bring a plan to conserve 25% of Canada's land and 25% of Canada's oceans by 2025, working toward a 30% goal by 2030. In doing that, we'll be looking at science, indigenous knowledge and local perspectives.
As I indicated, we also have some direct responsibilities in this area. In Environment and Climate Change Canada, we manage a huge network of protected areas, more than 14 million hectares. Protected areas are essentially parks for wildlife, and Environment and Climate Change Canada is the second-largest land manager because of this responsibility. We manage 55 national wildlife areas and 92 migratory bird sanctuaries. They include not only terrestrial but also some of the marine areas outside of these areas, so they are both terrestrial and marine.
Those are really the three big areas. On top of that, we have an overall responsibility for biodiversity, and we lead collaborative efforts with other federal departments, provinces, territories, indigenous people, and stakeholders to develop Canada's national biodiversity strategy, both domestically and internationally.
The work that's under way right now is to prepare for the October meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity and to develop goals for the post-2020 period.
As Hilary mentioned, we share this responsibility with provinces and territories. The responsibility for addressing biodiversity loss is shared. Land use planning, natural resource development and wildlife management are primarily a responsibility of the provinces and territories. Forty per cent of the landscape is covered by indigenous land claims, so it's really important—