Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good day. Bonjour. Boozhoo.
As the vice-president for external relations and visitor services at Parks Canada, I am pleased to be here to address the committee today on behalf of Parks Canada.
Let me begin by acknowledging that I am on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.
The Parks Canada mandate identified in the Parks Canada Agency Act centres on two fundamental principles: to protect and to present Canada's natural and cultural heritage. Today we will summarize how citizen science contributes to achieving this mandate.
Protecting cultural and natural heritage requires a clear understanding of the condition of Parks Canada-managed places and assets, the threats and stressors, and potential mitigation approaches to ensure their resilience, durability and persistence. To this end, we work with indigenous partners, whose knowledge is crucial to a holistic understanding of Canada's heritage.
We benefit from partnerships and collaborations with academic researchers, non-governmental organizations, other levels of government and international partners. At each site we manage, specialists conduct research and gather relevant information to inform management decisions and actions.
We are also well aware of the power of citizen science. Environment and Climate Change Canada's presentation has highlighted the value of citizen science and demonstrated how it can supplement formal research to inform government programs and decisions.
Parks Canada has made use of contributions from citizen science. While we have not yet incorporated citizen science data into our formal monitoring regime, which supports reporting to Parliament and Canadians on the ecological condition of protected areas under our stewardship, we value citizen science and have put in place a number of different national programs that we can speak about later today in the question period.
It's important for us in our national reporting that standards and protocols be applied in a highly consistent manner across Canada, including the most remote parts of the Arctic seldom visited by citizen scientists. Nevertheless, our scientists and monitoring specialists stay abreast of methodological and analytical developments that may allow us to incorporate citizen science data in our reporting regime to Parliament in the future.
In recent years we've seen an increased public interest in conservation and have heard growing concern from Canadians related to the pressing and topical conservation issues of our time, including climate change, biodiversity loss, species at risk and the benefits that healthy ecosystems provide to communities. Canadians express a keen desire to get involved and to help in some way more tangibly than simply becoming more aware. This is where citizen science efforts represent a significant opportunity to involve Canadians in conservation and increase understanding and support.
Our public engagement work through citizen science is in early stages with efforts focused on a selection of initiatives including “Team Up and Clean Up the Shore”. Through this program, visitors and community members participate in Parks Canada-led shore cleanups across Canada. While picking up litter and plastic waste, visitors are also helping to collect data and contribute to marine research. This data will allow Parks Canada scientists to identify sources of marine litter and mitigate them.
“Take a coastie” is a shoreline-monitoring citizen science initiative led by the University of Windsor in partnership with Parks Canada. It's based on the existing CoastSnap program developed at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Capitalizing on the social media popularity of selfie photographs, this program encourages Canadians to take photographs of their coastlines at designated coastal monitoring spots in nine participating Parks Canada locations.
Finally, there is iNaturalist, an international biodiversity database of images and information on natural observations compiled by amateurs, citizen scientists, scientists and naturalists. iNaturalist Canada is led by the Canadian Wildlife Federation along with Parks Canada, NatureServe Canada and the Royal Ontario Museum.
Moving forward, Parks Canada plans to continue expanding this preliminary work and explore ways to foster more collaborations and increase the engagement of Canadians in citizen science initiatives in more Parks Canada places across the country.
Thank you. Meegwetch.