Aerial view of a winding river and trees, Northwest Ontario © Gordon Pusnik / Shutterstock

Aerial view of a winding river and trees in Northern Ontario

Restoring Habitats

Find out how WWF’s Regenerate Canada plan will renew and restore natural habitats that support wildlife at risk of extinction while helping keep carbon locked in nature.

Some wildlife populations in Canada have been on the decline for decades. In 2020, WWF-Canada’s Living Planet Report Canada found dramatic declines in monitored populations of at-risk species across the country. It also found that these species face an average of five distinct threats — from pollution to industrial development to climate change.

WWF-Canada’s 10-year plan to Regenerate Canada aims to turn back the clock on habitat destruction by restoring at least one million hectares of lost or degraded ecosystems by 2030.

These efforts will focus on priority areas identified to have the greatest need — and the greatest potential benefit — for recovering biodiversity and sequestering carbon in soil and vegetation.

Read on to learn more about habitat loss and its solutions. Or jump straight into what WWF-Canada is doing across the country to help nature thrive.

What happens when habitat vanishes?

Habitats are where species live, find food and raise their young. But every time a wetland is drained, a city sprawls into the countryside or an industrial project expands into a natural area, these habitats may be threatened. Climate change can exacerbate and accelerate these losses.

Take the endangered monarch butterfly, for example. Every fall, these beloved insects set out on a 4,000- to 5,000-kilometre journey from southern Canada to their wintering sites in the mountain forests of Mexico. Over the years, their numbers have decreased because of deforestation, disruptions to their migration caused by climate change and the loss of native plants that serve as their food along their migration path.

Or consider the Atlantic salmon, which is also considered as endangered by Canada’s Species at Risk Act (SARA). After years of habitat disruption, due in part to the construction of mills and dams that prevented access to spawning grounds, its numbers have plunged to historically low levels.

These negative human impacts can’t be entirely eliminated. But they can be mitigated, minimized and even reversed. That’s where restoration comes in.

How is WWF-Canada restoring habitats?

By 2030, WWF-Canada will restore at least one million hectares of natural habitat.

Here’s how:

Wolastoq/Saint John River Watershed, New Brunswick © Jessica Currie/WWF-Canada

Identifying the biggest threats and priority regions

As threats to wildlife multiply, it becomes more and more difficult to decide how to focus conservation efforts. That’s where Priority Threat Management (PTM) comes in.

An innovative conservation tool, PTM brings local experts and communities together. They collaborate to identify threats and conservation strategies, including restoration. PTM helps focus on the most cost-effective efforts to benefit the most species, stretching limited conservation dollars as far as possible.

In 2019, WWF-Canada and scientists at the University of British Columbia teamed up to launch our first PTM assessment, in the Wolastoq (Saint John River) watershed in New Brunswick. The region is home to nearly 50 species at risk of extinction. They include American eel, Atlantic salmon and the cobblestone tiger beetle, a species found only in this region.

The assessment found that most of these species will disappear without urgent action and highlighted which actions would help protect the most species at a given cost.

Partnering with Indigenous Peoples

Studies show that Indigenous-managed lands have among the richest biodiversity in Canada. That fact points both to the extraordinary stewardship of Indigenous Peoples, and the importance of learning from and supporting their conservation initiatives.

Consider the Katzie First Nation in B.C., and its work to conserve the salmon of the Upper Pitt River. For the Katzie people, these fish are more than simply food. “It’s a sacred thing,” says Katzie councillor Rick Bailey. “They’re precious to us.”

The salmon are also a critical species in the Lower Fraser River watershed — but they’re in steep decline. When a landslide clogged the river in 2019, it put even more pressure on a threatened population.

That’s why WWF-Canada and the Katzie First Nation worked together on an urgent habitat-restoration plan — led by the First Nation — to restore the spawning habitat, remove blockages in the river and restore the salmon’s natural pathways.

The project succeeded, leading to a long-term partnership between the Katzie First Nation and WWF-Canada. That partnership is now addressing long-term threats to the salmon: clear-cutting that increases the risk of future rockslides, logging roads that disrupt historical spawning routes and the ever-present effects of climate change, including warming oceans and extreme weather.

Read more about Indigenous-led conservation, or take a deeper dive into the Pitt River restoration here.

© Parallel Studios / WWF-Canada

Supporting Indigenous-led forest restoration

In the aftermath of the devastating 2017 wildfire season in B.C., the Secwepemcúl’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society (SRSS) was formed to bring back a more balanced ecosystem for people and wildlife through Indigenous-led reforestation. Since 2020, the SRSS has planted more than 1.1 million trees with the financial support of WWF-Canada and our funding partners, restoring more than 677 hectares of forest ecosystems impacted by the wildfires.

© Pete Ewins / WWF-Canada Shettleworth rooftop garden-Annex

Restoring our own backyards

Sometimes habitat restoration can start at home — literally.

WWF-Canada’s re:grow is a step-by-step guide on how to grow native plants to create, restore and steward habitat for wildlife while removing carbon from the atmosphere.

Whether you have an apartment balcony, a suburban backyard or a sprawling rural property, re:grow can help turn any patch of outdoor space into a habitat that supports local plant and animal species.

Learn more about re:grow here.

Giving tomorrow’s ecosystems a head start

All of the complex ecosystem restoration that WWF-Canada and our partners perform depends on an abundant supply of native plants. And that supply is running low. That’s why we’re supporting the creation of seed orchards, where wild seeds can be grown to produce more seeds for restoration across the country.

To date, WWF-Canada has supported 10 demonstration seed orchards and 10 large-scale production orchards, all in southern Ontario. Just one of these orchards can produce up to 10 kg of seed per year (One kilogram is about one million seeds).

And if we’re to reach our goal of one million restored hectares nationwide by 2030, we’ll need every seed we can get.

Read more about seed orchards here.

Native shrubs on the restored banks of a stream near Sussex, N.B.

Restoring ecosystems

Nature-based climate solutions use the unique powers of nature to both capture and store carbon, helping to safeguard species and make communities more resilient to climate change. WWF-Canada’s Nature and Climate Grant Program, presented in partnership with Aviva Canada, is supporting local organizations and Indigenous Peoples restore degraded lands and shorelines.

Find out more about the program here.

And from salt marshes to seagrass meadows, “blue carbon” refers to aquatic ecosystems, which not only provide habitat for marine species, but also trap and sequester planet-warming greenhouse gases. Just as with land-based ecosystems, however, their planet-cooling powers are threatened by pollution, coastal development, and invasive/introduced species.

WWF-Canada is bringing together Indigenous Peoples, community groups, scientists and others to improve our understanding of these ecosystems and develop and test new measures to restore and protect them.

Read more about blue carbon, and WWF’s efforts to restore it, here.