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Recommendations
for Budget 2005 National Wildlife Areas
Summary Investment
Benefits for Canadians
Strategy
Background
and Rationale Canada is one of the few countries that still has the opportunity to protect large tracts of land with healthy intact ecosystems. This opportunity will be lost within a decade as industrial development pressures increase, if it is not acted upon immediately. Yet to date Canada has set aside less than 7 per cent of its land for protection. In global terms, our country ranks an embarrassing 61st in terms of the percentage of lands we protect, lagging behind the United States, Germany, Guatemala and Zimbabwe. The federal government’s network of 51 national wildlife areas and 92 migratory bird sanctuaries focuses on protecting Canada’s most valuable wildlife habitat. This network of Environment Canada sites is, however, in a state of crisis, suffering from a series of on and off-site threats to their ecological integrity, as acknowledged by Canada’s Auditor General and the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy. Environment Canada currently lacks the capacity to manage this protected areas network, with staff, capital and operating budgets amounting to a mere $1.9 million, less than one per cent of Canada’s national parks budget. Incredible short-term opportunities exist to expand this network, particularly in the north through the NWT Protected Areas Strategy. Such a strategy would support the unique role of Canada’s Aboriginal communities (many of which have expressed a long-standing interest in protected areas establishment) providing for partnerships and employment opportunities in the planning and management of lands and waters in their traditional territories. Our proposal will result in the establishment of ten new national wildlife areas in the first two years, namely two sites in NWT (Edezhie and the Ramparts Wetlands), two sites in Yukon (McClintock Bay and Tagish River), and six coastal properties in Atlantic Canada (Wolf Island, NB, Country Island, NS, St. Paul’s Island, NS, Isle Haute, NS, and Grindstone Island, NB). It will also provide for eleven more new sites in the next three years (including four in the Great Lakes region), as well as a reduction in the number and severity of threats to existing national wildlife areas through more effective management and a stronger legislative and policy framework. Recommendations:
Alternative
and Complementary Policies While the legislative and policy framework for national parks and marine protected areas has been updated in recent years, the framework governing NWA’s is more than 30 years old. Renewed investment in the NWA system provides an opportunity to review and update the outdated policy and legislative framework for NWA’s to ensure that these areas will be properly protected for future generations. The Green Budget Coalition supports such a review over the next two years, concurrent with the establishment of 11 new NWAs and the addressing of urgent management issues in existing NWA’s. An investment in National Wildlife Areas will help significantly advance the completion and implementation of a Federal Protected Areas Strategy, and provide the federal government with the ability to effectively address their responsibilities under the Species at Risk Act by protecting the habitat of endangered wildlife. It will also help Canada meet its commitments under the Canadian Biodiversity Strategy, Kyoto Protocol, Canada’s Oceans Strategy, Migratory Birds Convention, Accord for the Protection of Species at Risk, and the North American Bird Conservation Initiative. Contacts Alison
Woodley
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