Canada matters on World Wetlands Day

By Dan Kraus

Canada proudly has a wetland engineer as its national animal. While other nations have picked wetland wildlife, such as Finland’s whooper swan or Pakistan’s Indus crocodile, only our Canadian beaver reshapes the land by making it hold more water.

By damming small creeks and streams, Canada’s five to 10 million plus beavers build and maintain millions of acres of shallow ponds and meadows across our country. These are not only good for beavers but for other species ranging from moose to wood ducks.

Canada is often thought of as a country of vast plains, towering mountains and sprawling coasts. But it’s also a country of wetlands, swamps, fens, marshes and bogs – all of which cover about 13 percent of Canada.
 
More importantly, the wetlands of the Great White North make up approximately one-quarter of all the wetlands left in the world. They are not just important for Canadians and our wildlife; they exert an ecological influence that has a global impact.

An abundance of ecological services

One of the significant features of wetlands is their biological productivity. Acre for acre, wetlands are some of the most productive ecosystems in the world, on par with tropical rainforests. Wetlands convert water, air and sunlight into an abundance of leaves, roots, insects and other wildlife — a richness that influences the biology of surrounding forests, grasslands and cities.

Many species of birds have come to rely on wetlands as reliable places to feed and raise their young. Many of Canada’s Important Bird Areas (IBAs) occur in wetlands, including IBAs that are significant from a global and continental perspective because they provide critical feeding and nesting habitat for birds that migrate to Canada every spring.

An important resource in the fight against climate change

Wetlands also deliver a one-two punch in our fight against climate change. Some of the observed impacts of climate change include an increase in extreme storm events and flooding. The 100-year storm event our grandparents witnessed is now the 10-year storm event for our children. Wetlands act as a giant green paper towel on the landscape that absorb flood waters that spill from rivers and creeks.

In addition to holding back these waters, wetlands also remove sediments and pollution. Many cities and towns across Canada now recognize that wetlands are an essential part of their municipal infrastructure in our new climate normal.

Wetlands, particularly peatlands (often called muskeg in Canada), are a powerhouse when it comes to carbon storage. Despite covering only three percent of the Earth’s land surface, peatlands store more carbon than all of the world’s forests combined. It’s been estimated that a Canadian muskeg holds approximately 147 gigatons of carbon; the equivalent of one-fifth of all the carbon in the atmosphere today.

If we opened this carbon vault and released it, there would be major consequences to the world’s carbon budget and it would magnify the impacts of climate change to nature and to people across the planet.

Threatened habitats

Unfortunately, we have not been good stewards of our planet’s wetlands. Although they cover only about six percent of the Earth’s surface, they are one of the most impacted habitats. The global loss of wetlands is staggering. Since 1900, more than 64 percent of the world’s wetlands have been lost, with about 50 percent of this loss occurring since 1970.
Canada’s wetlands have not been immune to extreme losses in some regions.

More than 72 percent of wetlands in southern Ontario and 50 percent of Nova Scotia’s coastal salt marshes are now gone, and in British Columbia’s South Okanagan, only 15 percent of the original wetlands remain.

The Nature Conservancy of Canada has permanently protected and restored thousands of wetlands across the country for the benefit of wildlife and people for more than 50 years. In British Columbia, these wetland projects protect internationally important valley-bottom lands in the South Okanagan, the Creston Valley and along the Columbia River. Coastal estuaries are another key wetland ecosystem in which the Nature Conservancy of Canada has made significant contributions – notably in the Campbell River Estuary and in the Great Bear Rainforest.

Now, more than ever, it is important to conserve these important resources; places of immense biological importance, wetlands also support our economy and well-being. From providing habitat for rare species, to filtering our drinking water, from producing habitats ducks and geese that stretch across the autumn sky on their journey south, to playing a major role in the global carbon cycle, wetlands matter to nature, Canadians and the planet.
We have an obligation to Canadians and to the world to ensure their protection.

(Dan Kraus is a conservation scientist with the Nature Conservancy of Canada)