Fixing the Canadian Species at Risk Act: identifying major issues and recommendations for increasing accountability and efficiency

Abstract

Since the implementation of the Canadian Species at Risk Act (SARA) in 2003, deficiencies in SARA and its application have become clear. Legislative and policy inconsistencies among responsible federal agencies and the use of a subjective approach for prioritizing species protection lead to taxonomic biases in protection. Variations in legislation among provinces/territories and the reluctance of the federal government to take actions make SARA’s application often inefficient on nonfederally managed lands. Ambiguous key terms (e.g., critical habitat) and disregard for legislated deadlines in many steps impede the efficacy of SARA. Additionally, the failure to fully recognize Indigenous knowledge and to seek Indigenous cooperation in the species protection process leads to weaker government accountability, promotes inequity, and leads to missed opportunities for partnerships. New legislative amendments with well-defined and standardized steps, including an automatic listing process, a systematic prioritization program, and clearer demands (e.g., mandatory threshold to trigger safety net/emergency order) would improve the success of species at risk protection. Moreover, a more inclusive approach that brings Indigenous representatives and independent scientists together is necessary for improving SARA’s effectiveness. These changes have the potential to transform SARA into a more powerful act towards protecting Canada’s at-risk wildlife. (The graphical abstract follows.)

Mismatches in salmon social–ecological systems: Challenges and opportunities for (re)alignment in the Skeena River watershed

“…The status of salmon was instead based on two sources of informationexisting status designations under the Canadian Species at Risk Act (SARA) 2002 and field studies undertaken by the proponent. As no salmon species within the Skeena River watershed have been formerly assessed or listed under SARA (in fact, no commercially exploited species such as Pacific salmon have ever been listed under SARA; Schultz et al 2013;Turcotte et al 2021), the only information the EA drew upon to characterize the status of salmon was a 15-month field study conducted by the proponent to determine the presence of salmon in the study area. While this field study confirmed the presence of all species of salmon in the EA area, it did not consider any information on the status of the populations these salmon came from, despite the fact that information on salmon status and trends was readily available (Connors et al 2013).…”

Prioritization of public and private land to protect species at risk habitat

“…We first recorded habitat requirements from assessment reports and recovery documents (Table A1 in Appendix A). We used habitat requirements rather than "critical habitat" (SARA, 2002), due to ambiguity and biases in identifying critical habitat with limited data (Lemieux Lefebvre et al, 2018;Turcotte et al, 2021). We then paired the habitat requirements to land-cover classes from the Ontario Land Cover Compilation V.2.…”

Macrofungal conservation in Canada and target species for assessment: a starting point

“…A second major advance in our knowledge was the recent release of over 200,000 digitized fungal specimens from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Canadian National Mycological Herbarium, Canada's largest collection of nonlichenized fungi, now searchable in Mycoportal.org. In the light of these major advances, as well as updates in the Canadian Species at Risk Act (Mooers et al 2010), the meaningful integration of Indigenous knowledge (Turner 2020;Turcotte et al 2021), and the recent interest in global fungal conservation, we present an update of the state of fungal conservation in Canada.…”