Watering down wetland conservation policy, one internal memo at a time

As I previously reported, according to the CBC, a “routine clarification” was issued by the Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Climate Change to its staff about how to apply the province’s Wetland Conservation Policy. The wording of the “clarification” omitted any mention of salt marshes, which according to the provincial policy should automatically be considered Wetlands of Special Significance (WSS). I contacted the department to find out why there was no mention of salt marshes, and why it felt the need to provide clarity to staff on how the policy should be implemented.  

According to the department’s Director of Communications, Elizabeth MacDonald, salt marshes are still considered Wetlands of Special Significance (WSS).¹ MacDonald says that the government “did not change” the policy and that salt marshes did not appear in the internal communication because they “were not the subject of this internal communication and were not mentioned. Salt marshes are wetlands of special significance; the policy language has not changed.”

“Government policies are one of many tools used to guide the work of staff in departments, and it is important that everyone understands the policies they work with,” she explains.

However, MacDonald also pointed out that the department did not provide the internal communication to the CBC and could not verify its authenticity.

But according to an email exchange I had with CBC reporter Michael Gorman, the document was leaked by a government staffer and the bullet points he provided in his piece were “almost verbatim” what was in the document he received.

Riparian fen, a type of wetland. Photo: Wetland Conservation Policy

Here again, as a refresher, is the directive that was provided to department of Environment staff:  

“Effective immediately, the designation of wetlands of special significance would be limited to:

·       Wetlands known to support threatened and endangered species only, and exclude vulnerable/special concern species (for which there are no prohibitions to harm).

·       Only a portion of a wetland directly supporting species at risk, as determined by a qualified expert.

·       The portion of wetlands that overlap with a designated Ramsar site (sites of international importance), provincial wildlife management area, provincial park, nature reserve, wilderness area or lands owned or legally protected by non-government charitable conservation land trusts.

·       Wetlands where a proponent at the time of their application, through their own fieldwork, has included an observation of a species at risk in the wetland and the wetland meets the habitat requirements of that species. Databases of historic occurrences of species at risk will no longer be considered.”

The question is, does this represent a notable shift in how the wetland conservation policy is to be implemented? Does it represent a weakening of the policy?

I turned to MacDonald for some answers. I pointed out that the language used in the clarification certainly does indicate a weakening of the existing policy, since it now limits wetland protection to those areas that “directly” support species at risk. I asked, “Can you tell me what that actually means? What would be the difference between direct and indirect support of species at risk?”

I also asked why historical occurrence was deemed to no longer be an important factor when determining existence of a species at risk? And, finally, what motivated the changes.

MacDonald replied with the following:

Contrary to some reports, there have been no changes to the Wetlands Conservation Policy. Government recognizes the importance of wetlands and the ecological services they provide, including for species-at-risk. That is why we use legislation and regulations to protect species-at-risk and their habitats. In Nova Scotia we have the Nova Scotia Endangered Species Act and the Nova Scotia Biodiversity Act which, along with several federal pieces of legislation (Species at Risk Act, Canada Wildlife Act) provides a strong legal framework for protection. The Province will continue to ensure that species-at-risk and the wetlands where they live are protected and respect the other vital roles they play in supporting biodiversity and in in our action on climate change.²

Wildlife biologist Bob Bancroft. Screen grab taken from “Protector of the Park.”

‘Concocted in a board room, not the real world’

Bob Bancroft is a wildlife biologist, woodlot owner, and the president of Nature Nova Scotia. He also spent 18 years as a forest biologist with the province’s Department of Natural Resources and Renewables (DNRR).

“This is another terrible turn of government policy to favour developers, to the detriment of nature,” says Bancroft.

Referring to the second bullet point, Bancroft says, “The idea of allocating a section of a wetland for a Species at Risk is preposterous, concocted in a board room, not the real world.”

“This policy flies in the face of what nature needs: more, not less habitat consideration.”

Bancroft points to a case he is currently involved in that is taking Stephen Guilbeault, the federal Minister of the Environment and Climate Change to court for weakening habitat protections for the endangered piping plover—a move that doesn’t bode well for other species at risk.

According to the court case, being brought by Ecojustice on behalf of East Coast Environmental Law (ECELAW) and Nature Nova Scotia, in 2022 the federal government amended its original recovery strategy for piping plover and adopted what’s called a “bounding box” approach to habitat identification.

“This weakened approach means that instead of protecting the whole beach for piping plover habitat, only small areas that meet a vague set of criteria will be protected,” says the Ecojustice press release. The group says that this change will “leave unprotected parts of the beach open for development and construction.”

According to Ecojustice, the feds have so far used this “bounding box” approach to identify endangered species’ habitat for Eastern Meadowlark, American badger, and the Bobolink.

The “bounding box” approach has also been embraced by Fisheries and Oceans Canada as a way to designate critical habitat for aquatic species at risk. Critics of this completely new concept seem not only perplexed about where it emerged from in 2019—when it was first used define critical habitat for cutthroat trout—but they also argue it makes no ecological sense and lacks any peer reviewed scientific evidence to support it.  

“The … approach seems to be informed by administrative convenience rather than scientific rigour and is ill-equipped to provide the protection that a [Species at Risk Act] SARA listing requires.”

And yet, could this approach be what’s behind bullet #2 above: “Only a portion of a wetland directly supporting species at risk, [would be designated WSS] as determined by a qualified expert”?  

I asked MacDonald if the Department of Environment is using the “bounding box” approach for species at risk (SAR) protection, and she reminded me that it’s the DNRR that are the lead on SAR protection.

It’s a subject that I’ll return to at a later date.*

The endangered thread-leaved sundew is an Atlantic Coastal Plain plant species found in Canada in only five wetland bogs in southwestern Nova Scotia. Threats to this species include the draining, alteration and development of bog habitats.

Insider weighs in

To find out more about whether the “routine clarification” of the policy might reflect that it’s been weakened, I turned to someone close to the wetland conservation policy and the endangered species files in Nova Scotia, who asked not to be identified.

I asked specifically about the directive limiting the size of what can be protected to only that portion that “directly supports” a species at risk. The term that kept coming up in our conversation was “functionality,” which refers to the functional components of wetlands in terms of the stability of linear waterways like rivers, for instance.

“We have to think about the bogs, marshes, fens, swamps, and vernal pools as just reservoirs for the bigger arterial system of our streams, brooks, and rivers that feed the oceans and we have to recognize that function is instrumental. So, you cannot maintain a bog and mine it [for peat], leaving a postage stamp on the edge. You alter the whole drainage, the flowages, everything, you ultimately alter completely the physical environment in which endangered plants live, like the sundew for example. So, the commitment to a hundred meters or something surrounding a postage stamp of bog habitat is irrelevant." 

The individual also points to how the current situation demands a policy requirement to “address the actual maintenance of functional process in wetland retention. And that includes actually things like how close you cut to them, and the code of practice surrounding them.” But that this kind of approach is no where to be seen.

He recounts the story about how folks who had lived in the St. Mary’s River area their whole lives had noticed changes in the watershed, with the water level dropping dramatically after the spate of clearcutting that took place after the war.

These kinds of big picture analyses are never done by government.

The insider argues that “With global water shortages and high temperatures, all projected to only increase in years to come, freshwater is going to become a premium resource not just for wild species, but for humans that, like them, depend on it.” There is currently no metric for maintaining the functionality of wetlands and “we need to build uncertainty into our conservation models and apply the highest level of precaution.”  

With regards to the government's directive that databases of historic occurrences of SAR will no longer be considered when determining Wetlands of Special Significance:

"We need to have now more than ever before, prevention built in as a primary tool of the future if we are to preserve, effectively maintain and protect all of the pieces of the biodiversity puzzle, which all add up to functionality … We presume in the absence of data, that those tools, as they were written or revised, will maintain functionality, and I beg to differ. They will not.”

*After this article was published I heard back from the Department of Resources and Renewables who said, “the Province does not have a policy that requires the use of a bounding box to identify core habitat.” I asked further if the concept, while not required, was being used in any way. I have yet to receive a reply.

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1. According to the Wetland Conservation Policy, Wetlands of Special Significance are areas of bog, fen, marsh, swamp, etc. that play particularly important roles in providing ecosystem services or functions (e.g., supporting rare or migratory species, protecting drinking water supplies, maintaining watershed health). These areas exist on local, watershed, regional, provincial, national and international scales.

2. In her email, MacDonald refers to ecosystem services provided by wetlands. The Wetland Conservation Policy makes a reference to ecosystem services and cites the Water Quality Accounts of Genuine Progress Index (GPI) Atlantic – where I worked for ten years as a senior researcher. The province’s wetland policy notes that “remaining salt marshes in Nova Scotia provide over $400 million worth of ecosystem services to Nova Scotia communities each year, including flood and erosion control and infrastructure protection from storm surges. Wetlands are among the most productive and diverse of all the ecosystems on earth, losing them means reduced biodiversity through the loss of local populations of fish, wildlife and plants that depend on wetlands for their habitat or food. Nova Scotia’s wetlands provide an estimated $7.9 billion worth of benefits in ecosystem services to Nova Scotians annually.”