WWF - Canada Annual Report 2018

For 25 years, volunteers across the country have been keeping garbage out of Canada’s rivers, lakes and oceans through the Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup — a partnership between WWF-Canada and Ocean Wise.

Since the first cleanup in 1994, more than 700,000 volunteers have collected more than 1.2 million kilograms of garbage. In 2017 alone, nearly 60,000 participants took part in the initiative, cleaning 2,990 kilometres of shoreline from Newfoundland, to Nunavut, to B.C. Those efforts filled more than 10,000 trash bags and kept hundreds of thousands of tiny bits of plastic, cigarette butts and other waste out of sensitive habitats.

A big thank you to the generous support of our presenting sponsor Loblaw Companies Limited, as well as our regional sponsors OLG, YVR and the Port of Vancouver.

The Carolinian zone in southern Ontario may represent just one per cent of Canada’s land mass, but it boasts 125 rare plant and animal species — more than anywhere else in the country. These include Blanding’s turtles, southern flying squirrels, rusty-patched bumble bees and monarch butterflies. But this biodiversity hotspot is also home to a quarter of the country’s human population. As cities grow, they’re crowding out native wildlife.

Fortunately, these species are getting a helping hand from green-thumbed volunteers through WWF-Canada’s In the Zone program. A partnership with Carolinian Canada, the initiative provides resources to help southern Ontarians plant more native species. It also lets citizen scientists track their backyard biodiversity and connect to other like-minded gardeners.

In the Zone now has more than 1,800 participants — double the number from 2016. By making the pledge and adding wildflowers, milkweed, oak trees and other native plants to their backyards and balconies, these habitat heroes are helping create a flourishing corridor of food and shelter for wildlife.

In April 2018, WWF-Canada’s CN Tower Climb for Nature reached new heights thanks to the fundraising efforts of more than 8,500 participants, including more than 100 corporate teams. Together, they raised $1.44 million — a new record for the 28-year-old annual event that sees Wildlifers climb the Tower’s 1,776 steps to protect nature.

They weren’t the only ones working up a sweat for nature. In May and June, children from 20 communities across the country took part in our Kids’ Run for Nature: a series of 1 km, 3 km and 5 km fun runs and fundraising events founded by two 10-year-old girls who wanted to help protect wildlife. The events drew about 1,900 runners and raised nearly $88,000 to support WWF-Canada.

For years, eco-conscious companies have been going green with support from our Living Planet @ Work (LP@W) program. Launched in 2011 with HP as its founding partner, the initiative equips employees and managers with the resources they need to take planet-positive actions. Today, RSA Canada serves as the program’s presenting sponsor, helping businesses reduce their paper consumption, switch to energy-efficient lights, adopt sustainable procurement practices and more.

To date, 1,350 organizations have joined LP@W, reduced their environmental footprint and raised $1.55 million to support WWF-Canada. In 2018 alone, 140 new organizations got involved, while workplace champions raised more than $250,000 for conservation projects.

In 2018, we wrapped up the pilot phase of our Living Planet @ Campus program and went into high gear for its national launch.  During the pilot, campus sustainability offices and more than 1000 students helped with the development of the program. And students took action.  At Sir Sandford Fleming College in Peterborough, Ontario, students used a WWF Go Wild School Grant to establish an apiary on campus and raise awareness about the decline in bees and other pollinators. Elsewhere, students organized shoreline cleanups, tree-planting events and in March 2018, teams from 12 post-secondary institutions participated in WWF’s new Designing Change for a Living Planet — a hackathon-style event where student teams compete to conceive and pitch their best solutions to environmental problems.

With the national launch, Living Planet @ Campus will introduce the Living Planet Leader certification for students. This certification confirms that the student has knowledge and experience in sustainability, with skills they can use at work and in their community.

From coast to coast to coast, community-based organizations work hard to protect Canada’s lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands. In 2017, we launched the WWF Restoration Fund in partnership with Coca-Cola Canada to help them, contributing $210,000 to three ambitious projects.

In New Brunswick, we supported ACAP Saint John. Funding allowed the environmental not-for-profit to restore lost rivers and restore more than 27,000 square metres of floodplain habitat, helping brook trout, green frogs, yellow spotted salamander, songbirds and other species.

On the west coast, Salt Spring Island Conservancy in B.C. used funds to return a former golf course back to nature, restoring thousands of square metres of wetlands, riparian and upland habitat. With the help of dozens of volunteers, they planted 10,600 native plants, removed 9,730 square metres of invasive species and dug up 670 kilograms of subsurface drainage and irrigation pipes to help water flow more naturally.

Meanwhile, B.C.’s Central West Coast Forest Society leveraged dollars from the WWF Restoration Fund to help undo decades of logging damage. Working alongside the Toquaht First Nation, they are restoring stream and riparian forest habitats on the western most edge of Vancouver Island. In 2017, this included planting 7,740 square metres of native plants and removing debris jams so that salmon can make their way upstream to spawn.

Another way WWF-Canada supports community watershed stewardship is through the Loblaw Water Fund. Since 2014 this project has engaged more than 16,000 volunteers, who have collected almost 15,000 fish, water and benthic macroinvertebrate samples and restored more than 3,300 hectares of habitat for freshwater species.

In 2018, we invested $250,000 from the fund in 11 projects across the country. Examples of these include reclaiming fallow hay fields for wildlife in B.C., helping farmers conserve prairie wetlands in the Assiniboine watershed and sinking old Christmas trees into Ontario’s Credit River to create new spawning habitat for brook trout.