Hello all,

We’re offering a set of free webinars this fall to provide updates on the Canada KBA initiative, as well as deeper dives into a suite of projects related to or contributing to KBAs in Canada. Our first webinar is coming up on Wednesday October 14, 2020 at 12pm EST and will be of broad interest to the Canadian conservation community. Dan Kraus from Nature Conservancy of Canada and James Snider of WWF-Canada will join me to present recent reports from their organizations and discuss how these reports (focused on Canadian endemics and Species at Risk) relate to Key Biodiversity Areas. We’ll follow up the panel presentations with a Q&A session exploring the applications of KBAs to a variety of conservation approaches. A week before the webinar we will send you an invitation and link to join. These webinars don’t require registration ahead of time, so feel free to share the invitation within your networks. In the meantime, please save the date.

[Note: We had intended for our first webinar to be given by Dr. Jeffrey Wall who is exploring compatibilities between Indigenous Peoples’ valuing of, and role in environmental health and the KBA ecological values. This presentation will be rescheduled for later this fall.]

Additional updates:

• Birds Canada has been working on assessing existing Important Bird and Biodiversity Areas (IBAs) against KBA criteria, and are nearing completion of this work. Most IBAs were designated around 20 years ago with a focus on bird aggregations and Species at Risk. The KBA Standard was developed from IBA (and other) criteria in order to bring all taxa and ecosystems into one standardized tool. Stewardship efforts are ongoing at many IBA sites and they form a strong base from which to grow the complete set of Canadian KBAs. So far, results show that 482 of almost 600 IBAs in Canada will qualify as National or Global KBAs. Part of reassessing IBAs as KBAs involves review by provincial IBA coordinators, which will happen soon. The purpose of the review is to confirm, and potentially augment, existing bird data to validate the KBA assessment, and to propose any new KBAs triggered by bird species.
• Birds Canada is also developing an exciting visual Story Map that will highlight two KBAs in the works – stay tuned!
• Key Biodiversity Areas were highlighted as a tool to address the biodiversity crisis in a new report by WWF-Canada. The Living Planet Report Canada (2020) shows that current efforts to protect and recover wildlife aren’t enough to reverse biodiversity loss. The report recommends focusing efforts on solutions that address multiple threats simultaneously – including using Key Biodiversity Areas to guide the planning of protected areas.
• The BC KBA Coordinator, Riley Pollom, recently held a first training session for taxonomic experts in the province. The objectives of the training session included (1) building understanding of the KBA Standard and capacity to apply it; (2) building capacity for expert review of KBA proposals; and (3) gathering information and expert input on potential KBAs and information gaps. If you are a taxonomic expert in BC and would like to participate in the KBA process there, please get in touch.

As always, please get in touch if you have questions or if you want to learn more.

Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne

Canada Key Biodiversity Areas Coordinator / Coordonnatrice Zones Clés pour la Biodiversité