The new Incomappleux conservancy will preserve 58,000 hectares of rare intact interior rainforest, featuring 1,000-year-old cedar trees, grizzly bear habitat, as well as many rare and endangered species.Supplied
It was easy to understand what was being protected when the province of British Columbia announced the creation of the Incomappleux Conservancy last month.
The new conservancy will preserve 58,000 hectares of rare intact interior rainforest, featuring 1,000-year-old cedar trees, grizzly bear habitat, as well as many rare and endangered species.
But the benefits of another conservation initiative announced earlier this month are murky, quite literally. Canada’s newest marine refuge, the Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala, is precisely defined by a set of latitude and longitude co-ordinates off the B.C. coast, but its remarkable biodiversity features are hidden in the depths.
Both Incomappleux and Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala are important steps toward the federal government’s commitment to reach “30 by 30,” shorthand for designating 30 per cent of Canadas’s land and water areas as protected by the year 2030.
In both cases, progress has been slow, with only around 15 per cent of land and marine areas protected, even though ocean conservation efforts do not have to grapple with complex land-rights issues. It took eight years to increase the proportion of marine protected areas to 15 per cent from 1 per cent; Canada now has to double its pace.
Both parts of the equation are important. As Canada sets out this year to accelerate its efforts to set aside patches of its oceans, it would do well to spell out how it will measure success for marine protections.
How will we know if protection measures are effective? And are we protecting the right places?
The Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala habitat features rare, shallow cold-water gorgonian corals, whose delicate patterns resemble lace, and ancient sponge reefs. Like the old growth forests on shore, some sponge reef communities are believed to be thousands of years old. They provide shelter for marine life, filter bacteria, and store carbon on the ocean floor. They are also fragile and slow-growing.
The planet’s oceans are under great stress from acidification, overfishing, garbage patches and warming waters. Many of Canada’s iconic marine creatures are on the edge of extinction: The narwhal, the sea otter, the leatherback sea turtle, the beluga whale, the Atlantic salmon.
But the nation’s marine protected areas have been dismissed as “paper parks” for lack of regulatory teeth. That is now starting to change.
Earlier this month, Canada hosted 125 countries at an International Marine Protected Areas Congress in Vancouver, and in that spotlight, the federal government rolled out new policy to demonstrate progress.
Canada now has new standards for its marine protected areas: Oil and gas projects, trawling, and disposal of waste including organic waste, pesticides and pharmaceuticals, are now prohibited. Ottawa also announced a moratorium on seabed mining in waters under Canada’s jurisdiction.
And Canada has laid out a roadmap to reach its interim marine conservation goal of 25 per cent by 2025.
The idea of protecting oceans and other waterways is relatively new, but today there are 14 marine protected areas and 63 other sites with varying degrees of conservation from the waters off Haida Gwaii, to the High Arctic, to the St. Lawrence estuary.
The newest addition is the Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala, in a portion of Knight Inlet, a remote fjord on the edge of the Great Bear Rainforest. The main protection authority comes via a closure of all fisheries – commercial, Indigenous and recreational.
In 2014, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was asked to take steps to protect Gwaxdlala/Nalaxdlala, in the traditional territories of the Mamalilikulla First Nation. While DFO was documenting evidence of ongoing damage from multiple fishing gear types, the Mamalilikulla pushed ahead in 2021, declaring an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area for the entire watershed – land and water together.
The Mamalilikulla used to harvest hundreds of thousands of eulachon fish in their watershed. Logging and commercial fishing have damaged the ecosystem. The year that they declared their intent to protect the area, just 26 fish came back to the three rivers that feed into it.
This month, Canada took steps to impress upon the world its commitment to ocean conservation. It needs to keep up the progress – and to pick up the pace.