There’s no doubt that these last couple of years have been particularly tough for most people - not only of course due to the pandemic, but also because of the ever-expanding environmental crisis partly experienced via extreme weather events, and compounded by a pervasive anti-science and alternative-facts movement divorced from reality among certain segments of society (recently parodied in the Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up” featuring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence).
But in this article instead of shoveling more unhappy dung your way for the New Year, I want to focus on some recent good news and progress with nature protection in Canada and some opportunities for further progress in 2022.
Environmental Campaigning, not “Camplaining”
By the way, I get it, due to the severity of the climate and extinction crises it's easy to become negative and in some cases outright cynical about environmental progress in general – but not only is this unhelpful, it’s outright counterproductive for saving the planet (I dub such personalities as environmental “camplainers” instead of campaigners), because if all you can do is lose, why keep trying? That is, if only bad things happen because all governments are evil and therefore all of their actions can only be evil, then really nothing you do will make a difference. Might as well just party it up while the world inevitably burns down then. But clearly that’s a simpleton’s view of the world and doesn’t reflect reality.
Campaigns, movements, public awareness and engagement, and pushing for solutions matter, and progress happens via new policies, legislation, and positive shifts in the economy, land use, and human consciousness all the time – which those who are paying attention will notice. Sure there's not nearly enough progress yet, most certainly – hence the escalating environmental crisis – but we can turn this around if we are smart, wise, determined and engaged enough. And one of the most vital steps is to clearly recognize progress and steps forward at key times, and to communicate this.
This gives concerned people the motivation and confidence to keep going because what they do makes a difference and to help grow the environmental movement. Ultimately we have no choice but to succeed in our efforts for a liveable Earth where all native species and ecosystems, including humanity, can flourish. The task is to figure out the most effective ways to get there - and ignoring, downplaying or denying all progress runs contrary to this mission.
Some Notable Recent Examples of Conservation Progress in Canada
But I digress. Here a few notable examples that stand out for me of recent good news and significant steps forward for nature protection in Canada:
First and foremost, the federal government took an unprecedented leap forward earlier in the spring by allocating $3.3 billion dollars to expand protected areas across the country, including $2.3 billion to protect terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and almost one billion dollars to expand marine protected areas, including key funding for Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s). In addition they committed a significant chunk of their $4 billion dollars Natural Climate Solutions Fund to also protect nature, albeit in more indirect ways.
The federal government has also committed Canada to significant protected areas targets to protect 25% of Canada’s land and marine areas by 2025 and 30% by 2030, the latter target of which is in line with over 60 other nations that form the “High Ambition Coalition for Nature”. These are historically unprecedented commitments to expand protected areas in Canada. Currently only 12% of Canada's land area is protected and the primary hold-up are the laggard provinces, with the exception of Quebec and to a lesser extent some of the Atlantics, who have failed to adopt an agenda to really expand protected areas, nor the national/international targets and the key funding needed to make it happen.
That being said, there has been some progress scattered across the country for new protected areas in 2021.
Quebec established major protected areas across the north, including in Nunavik, helping the province lead the country in reaching its 17% protected areas target. It has also set aside $40 million to expand protected areas in the southern part of the province, the main area with endangered species and ecosystems – not enough but an important start.
The government of Nova Scotia announced 49 new or expanded protected areas this past year, and their attempt to sell-off the proposed Owl’s Head candidate provincial park has been thwarted by the developer pulling out under massive public pressure.
In southwestern Saskatchewan, the federal government conserved a major swath of truly spectacular native grasslands, 800 square kilometers (almost the size of Grasslands National Park), the Prairie Pastures Conservation Area, filled with species at risk, along the US border between the Cypress Hills and Grasslands National Park.
In PEI, Parks Canada is working with the Mi’kmaq to establish a new National Park Reserve along the 50 kilometer long Hog Islands Sandhills chain.
In BC, the South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve proposal in the grasslands and Ponderosa Pine forests of southern BC is slowly moving forward as the Syilx First Nations negotiate with the federal and provincial governments.
Also in BC, the provincial government has given the go-ahead for the Jumbo Pass or Qat’muk IPCA of the Ktunxa First Nation, funded by the federal government and environmental foundations – and one of the few protected areas the BC government has recently endorsed.
In Alberta, new open-pit coal mines in the Rocky Mountains and foothills were thwarted by a spectacularly diverse and powerful coalition of ranchers, farmers, hunters, anglers, First Nations, businesses, country music celebrities, and conservationists - special thanks to the CPAWS Southern Alberta Chapter, the Niitsitapi Water Protectors (a Siksika Blackfoot group), and the Livingstone Landowners Group. The Kenney government was forced to reinstate the 1976 Coal Policy that they removed that prohibits open-pit coal mines in large swaths of the Rockies, and to backtrack on other coal mine proposals and exploration in the region as well. They are likely biding their time, waiting for the issue to die down before trying again – but things get a lot harder for them from here on.
This open-pit coal mining victory (which thousands of Endangered Ecosystems Alliance supporters weighed-in on) followed a previous victory by the conservation movement to stop the Alberta government from closing-down and eliminating 175 provincial parks, natural areas and recreation areas – again hats off in particular to CPAWS Alberta for spearheading that battle which the EEA also heavily weighed-in on.
Regarding old-growth forests in BC – an issue that is close to my heart having spent the last 30 years continuously working to protect them – there have been huge leaps forward in progress, though we are not there yet of course to end most old-growth logging.
Under enormous, sustained pressure over years, the BC government in September of 2020 finally opened the door to a major policy and legislative overhaul, currently under development, regarding the management of old-growth forests in the province – for the first time after decades of policy stagnation. In theory they have accepted all recommendations of their appointed stakeholder input panel, the Old-Growth Strategic Review panel – which if fully implemented would largely end most old-growth logging in BC, although they have also been engaging in weasel-ways here, which we won’t get into right now.
Vitally, they appointed a key group of scientists last summer, the Technical Advisory Panel, who mapped out the most at-risk old-growth stands that should at a minimum come under logging deferral while First Nations develop land use plans over a couple years to determine potential new protected areas. The BC government for the first time in history has now prioritized conservation of the “high productivity” old-growth – the stands with the big trees – in contrast to the past 50 years where all BC governments have been working to save the “low productivity” old-growth, or small trees in bogs and subalpine landscapes, while logging the big trees, all while claiming there is no problem. For the first time in history this old-growth assessment approach has been reversed in government – a critical step forward.
The BC government has now placed over 500,000 hectares of mainly medium to high productivity old-growth forests (some of the greatest ancient forests on Earth) under logging deferrals in BC Timber Sales operating areas where the province directly manages logging for 2 years, and a previous round of deferrals resulted in key, hard-fought areas including Clayoquot Sound, the McKelvie Valley, much of the Central Walbran Valley, Fairy Creek (but not including the adjacent largely intact old-growth where the fight continues), and the Dakota Bowl ancient forest coming under moratoria. More areas can be identified for deferrals as First Nations and conservation groups identify and ground-truth other at-risk old-growth that match Indigenous criteria or the science panel criteria for deferrals, although the process has yet to be clarified by the province.
Another 2.1 million hectares of the most at-risk, unprotected old-growth forests recommended for deferral are waiting, pending First Nations consent and support. As most First Nations have an economic stake in old-growth logging, the critical step now to facilitate the implementation of the logging deferrals is to leverage the existing several hundred million dollars available in federal funding for protected areas expansion in BC, while pushing the laggard provincial government to also provide the equivalent funding, for First Nations old-growth logging deferrals and, later, protected areas. The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance has led the charge from the start with First Nations partners in the campaign to make this key financing central to enable old-growth protection, and we are now working to raise private funds directly with the Nature-Based Solutions Foundation and the Ancient Forest Alliance to help fill various protected areas funding gaps in BC, which we will elaborate more on later.
While old-growth trees continue to fall in BC – as they sadly have for the past 100 years – for the first time the key policy pieces to end the outdated practice of massive old-growth liquidation are coming into place, although we have yet another Mount Everest to climb regarding closing the funding gaps, which we’re working on, and will need your help.
In Clayoquot Sound by Tofino, there has been huge progress from the days when it was the epicenter of the old-growth War in the Woods in BC (with 1000 people arrested between 1988 to 1993 in various civil disobedience blockades – recently overtaken by the arrests at the Fairy Creek protests). Today, the Ahousaht Land Use Vision and the Tla-o-qui-aht Tribal Parks have zoned most of the region as off-limits to industrial logging, and have been recently backed up by a provincial deferral on old-growth logging there, by federal funding for protected areas and Indigenous Guardians programs, by private funding from conservation organizations, and apparently major funding from Jeff Bezos for the First Nations. Clayoquot Sound, by far, includes the largest contiguous tracts of old-growth forests in southern BC and is finally nearing comprehensive protection with significant funding to support Indigenous communities.
These are just a few of important examples of progress worth noting and celebrating as we continue the important work!
Looking Ahead to 2022 – Opportunities to Expand Protected Areas
Along with the usual challenges of greed, ignorance, selfishness, apathy and cynicism, 2022 will on the positive side present some major opportunities and momentum to greatly expand protected areas in Canada. These include:
The UN Biodiversity Conference in April and May, where all nation states except the US will negotiate a new protected areas agreement aiming to ensure that 30% of Earth’s land and marine areas are protected by 2030. We will use this momentum to push the laggard provinces across Canada to commit to the expanded targets with the needed funding. And we will be there!
First Nations initiatives to establish Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCA’s) across Canada continue to expand, as the federal government has been putting forward more funds and as Indigenous environment and culture champions work hard often with conservation groups to get this done. We will be working to support this process wherever possible, including by providing funds where possible to augment much greater federal funding, and ideally, provincial funding.
Concerns about the environment and climate change now rank as the top or near-top issue to Canadians in successive polls – driven in no small part by extreme weather events, especially in British Columbia this year where summer temperatures reached 50 degrees in the BC Interior (you could cool down by heading south to Mexico) and, later in the fall, record-breaking floods that inundated cities and farms, destroyed highways, and isolated Vancouver from the rest of the country. This environmental concern will help us make the case, backed up by the science, that protecting native forests, grasslands, and wetlands is vital to draw-down enough carbon from the atmosphere while simultaneous emissions reductions also take place in order to enable us to reach our international climate target of keeping global temperatures under a 1.5 degree Celsius rise.
In BC, as mentioned, the province under pressure has opened the door in a major way to protect old-growth forests by starting to line-up the key policy pieces needed to make this happen – and we are determined to see it through, so that the key old-growth logging deferrals and expanded protected areas will come to fruition. This will be a massive, complex undertaking and we’ll need your help.
The next UN Climate Summit, COP27, in the November of 2022, will also include a major emphasis on “natural climate solutions” including protecting nature, as did COP26 last November (which came up short on a much needed agreement, but put in place some key policy frameworks as well), and will create another focal point to rally around to save native ecosystems.
And there are more opportunities!
What will we do?
The Endangered Ecosystems Alliance will continue to expand on our work that emphasizes several key approaches to campaigns, including:
Rooting our environmental analyses in the science.
Supporting First Nations Indigenous Protected Areas initiatives, including with the key funding.
Scaling up our public awareness and engagement in a big way, via the news and social media (where we not have almost 100,000 followers in Canada), public events (hikes, slideshows, rallies), Send a Message websites, educational videos (including our “Amazing Ecosystems of Canada” mini-documentary series, soon to be followed by a “Canada’s Greatest Natural Areas” series)
Working to broaden and diversify the conservation movement by engaging and mobilizing businesses, unions, diverse faith groups, outdoor recreation groups, and other “non-traditional allies”.
...and a lot more!!
YOUR help is vital for us to carry out our ambitious mission with enough resources and staff to pull this off, to protect the diversity of native ecosystems across Canada.
Please give as generously as you can – there is hope, and existing generations of life across Earth will be grateful!
For the Wild,
Ken Wu
Endangered Ecosystems Alliance Executive Director