Dear all,

We hope that you doing as well as can be during these strange times. We imagine conservation work is continuing quietly behind many closed doors across the country, and the KBA initiative is moving forward much in this way. Regional KBA work is continuing in a number of provinces and territories, despite the necessary pause of in-person workshops. We are continuing to develop and use online tools to share data and maps with taxonomic experts to identify and delineate Key Biodiversity Areas. Some of these tools will also be useful in the review process for each proposed KBA and to inform people more broadly of areas that are being identified as making significant contributions to the persistence of biodiversity.

A few additional updates:

• We have hired a regional coordinator to lead the identification process of KBAs in British Columbia! Riley Pollom is working with WCS Canada, the B.C. government, and experts across the province. The first stages of KBA work involve a lot of planning, outreach, data gathering and analysis, eventually leading to a collaborative effort to identify and delineate sites that meet quantitative criteria. If you are interested in participating in the work in B.C., please get in touch.
• At the global scale, a revised set of Guidelines to accompany the KBA Standard is in development, already building on the experience of Canada and other countries heavily engaged in KBA identification.
• We’ve been busy with outreach activities to share information about the KBA process with rights-holders across Canada. We’ve also made some updates to our website, including adding some key documents and an archive of past newsletters.
• In case you missed it, we prepared a one-page PDF with background information and the work plan to identify KBAs in Canada – please feel free to share this with anyone you think may be interested!

As always, please get in touch if you have questions or if you are interested in identifying Key Biodiversity Areas in your region.

Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne

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