Evidence of meeting #29 for Science and Research in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was data.
A recording is available from Parliament.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Birds Canada
That's good timing, because...
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
I'm sorry. We're out of time on that; we're over by 20 seconds already. If you want to make a written submission, you can.
Moving on to the final spot, we have Mr. Cannings.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
Thank you.
I'll let Monsieur Nadeau continue, but what I want to focus on is that process. You know, we have the monitoring inventory process that a lot of this citizen science gathers big data for where we get the trends. Then in “The State of Canada's Birds”, for instance, we look at those trends and parse out what kinds of birds are declining, what kinds are increasing—you mentioned that raptors are increasing, for instance, and I know that grassland birds are decreasing and that birds that migrate to South America are decreasing—and how that informs the next step and who does that next step.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Birds Canada
I can maybe start with one example really quickly. You mentioned grassland birds. They are among the birds that are declining the fastest, so once we know that, and we know that again largely because of citizen science, we know that grassland birds are declining so we focus our conservation efforts there.
One example recently is that we've been working closely with partners at the Canadian Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. We're working directly with the cattle industry and players in that industry who are using the data from citizen science and from this thing we call the Bird-Friendliness Index to actually inform their practices, so they are now on the ground as part of their sustainability framework, using data that comes from citizen science.
To answer your question, from my perspective it helps us to prioritize and direct our efforts and which stakeholders we're going to be engaging with.
NDP
Richard Cannings NDP South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC
I would just follow on that. The bulk of citizen science, in your organization at least, is informing that initial stage, the trends setting off the alarms and then other groups can take that, whether it be the federal government or provincial governments or municipal governments, and use that to inform whether its their conservation actions or to change other things they are doing.
Is that how it works?
Director, Community Engagement, Birds Canada
Yes, that's essentially how it works. Birds and birding are for everyone. Obviously, from my perspective—I've been a birder since I was a kid—birds are really important to me, but they're also extremely important indicators of environmental change on our planet. These types of programs are invaluable for understanding not only how birds are doing but how we're impacting our planet, and as John might attest, unfortunately a lot of the other taxa, as fascinating as they are, don't get that same kind of representation.
We have a lot of people who are interested in birds and birding and they want to give back, and citizen science and Birds Canada programs are a way to try to do that in Canada, to connect people with nature, collect data and do what we can to get that data out there so that we can actually conserve a lot of these birds.
We have some big challenges. Patrick mentioned birds of prey. We've done well at getting them back, dealing with the DDT crisis. We have about two, three or four DDT crisis-type events happening right now with climate change, with habitat loss, with pesticide use. There's a lot of work that we need to do.
Our role is to get that information out there so that work can be done.
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Thank you so much to our witnesses today.
Our next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, February 14. The chair will have the clerk publish the notice soon.
Colleagues, with that, is there agreement to adjourn this meeting?
Conservative
The Vice-Chair Conservative Corey Tochor
Seeing agreement, we stand adjourned until Tuesday, February 14.