The wins in our sails: WWF-Canada looks back at 2024
We have reached the end of another hot one — in fact, 2024 is on track to be the hottest year ever, narrowly beating last year’s record and further cementing the past decade as the warmest yet. The impacts are everywhere: Canada saw 5.3 million hectares lost to wildfire this year, record-breaking rainfalls in Toronto and Vancouver, deadly heat waves in Montreal, summer hailstorms in Calgary, 30-degree highs in Nunavut, and storm surges and flooding across Atlantic Canada.
Despite this startling backdrop, the global community failed to make significant progress on funding for climate action at the UN climate change summit (COP29) last month. The organization’s COP16 biodiversity summit achieved marginally better results, with an important advancement for Indigenous rights, but similar inaction on funding. This came in the wake of WWF’s Living Planet Report, which revealed a “catastrophic” 73 per cent decline in average wildlife population sizes over the past 50 years.
Those are the challenges, and they are growing, but so is our progress. This is a year where reconciliation advanced protection, restoration recovered habitat, advocacy influenced policy, research informed regulation, traditional knowledge expanded science and communities exchanged knowledge. And it’s about how your support helped us help wildlife and people.
Thank you. We can’t wait to keep making a difference for nature, together, in 2025.
You got loud for quiet oceans — and the government listened!
We started 2024 by sounding the alarm on dangerous delays to Canada’s long-promised ocean noise strategy. In response, more than 11,000 of you sent emails calling on the federal government to not let another year go by without moving to protect whales and other marine species from underwater noise pollution.
When the draft strategy was finally released this summer, you spoke up on behalf of wildlife once again during the public consultation period. Together, we will keep the pressure up until we see a strong plan to keep the volume down.
Everything Arctic, all at once
Our Arctic conservation team made an impact this year by supporting community-led initiatives across Nunavut, funding crucial research, amplifying local voices and advocating at home and abroad.
Alongside supporting Taloyoak Umaruliririgut Association’s (TUA) continuing efforts to establish the nearly 90,000-square-kilometre Aqviqtuuq Inuit Protected and Conserved Area, we facilitated in-person knowledge exchanges with the neighbouring Kitikmeot communities of Gjoa Haven and Kugaaruk.
We also hosted a meeting in Iqaluit with representatives from the Sanirajak, Igloolik and Naujaat hunter and trapper organizations. At the top of the agenda was a discussion of mining company Baffinland’s plan to build Nunavut’s first railway and a deep-water port in Steensby Inlet. If built, the company would ship as much as 22 million tonnes of iron ore, threatening caribou, ice whales, walrus and polar bears.
Our Arctic Species Conservation Fund supported research and stewardship efforts around walrus and bowhead whales in the shipping corridor of Foxe Basin, alongside caribou and polar bear projects ranging from surveying and monitoring to conflict reduction, land-use planning and culturally appropriate education.
And while our shipping team worked to reduce underwater noise in all three oceans, they also convinced the International Maritime Organization to approve an emission control area for Canadian Arctic waters that will reduce ocean acidification and black carbon, a soot-like particulate which harms human health and accelerates sea-ice loss.
We had our biggest Climb for Nature ever!
WWF’s famous Climb for Nature, which took its first steps in 1991 at the CN Tower, reached even higher this year with an event at BC Place Stadium in Vancouver and a self-directed Anywhere in Canada climb.
Across the climbs, nearly 6,000 people took a collective 11,407,479 steps and raised more than $1.5 million for wildlife conservation.
Want to step up for nature in the new year? Registration is now open for 2025. Click here for more.
re:grow keeps growing
Wildlife habitat continued to take root in communities across Canada as part of our re:grow program. After launching just last year, re:grow continued its growth with 1,241 participants putting 25,938 plants and trees in the ground in 2024.
To build “buzz” over native plants, we made native plants accessible at 133 Loblaws garden centres in Ontario and Quebec, some of which featured an eye-catching art installation that inspired purchases and sign-ups wherever it appeared.
Work that measures up (and down)
Whether using drones for forest mapping and calculating tree biomass or sampling soil and peat with coring tools, our national carbon measurement training program took flight and dug deep this field season.
We travelled across the country to train community members and started a free online learning library so that communities can measure carbon in forests, vegetation and soils in their lands and territories to help inform their land-use decisions.
Revealing research on ship speed and waste
The Great Bear Sea, a 100,000-square-kilometre area off the north and central coasts of B.C., is home to at-risk species like fin whales and orcas, as well as rapidly increasing shipping traffic to serve a nearly complete liquid natural gas terminal in Kitimat.
So we published research mapping ship speeds and pollution — and calling for calmer waters — to show where marine mammals are most vulnerable to often fatal ship strikes and harmful pollutants.
Alongside our advocacy work, this research will help inform and support protection efforts, including a network of Marine Protected Areas in this region covering 30,000-square-kilometres to be co-governed with Coastal First Nations and the federal and provincial governments.
Restoration Nation
Our restoration efforts stretched from coast to coast this year. In New Brunswick, our partners restructured a 230-metre eroded channel in flood-prone Edmundston, N.B., and planted more than 17,000 trees in the Wolastoq (Saint John River) watershed to mitigate flood risk and impacts, reduce erosion and provide critical habitats.
In Quebec, we worked to bring biodiversity back to maple forests and hydro corridors, while in Ontario, we mobilized youth, farmers and volunteers to plant a wide variety of native plants to revitalize wetlands, farmlands, forests and wildflower meadows.
And in B.C., the Secwepemcúl’ecw Restoration and Stewardship Society planted an impressive 500,000 trees, restoring 250 hectares of fire-impacted Secwépemc territory in the central interior. Meanwhile, down in the Lower Fraser Watershed, Katzie First Nation brought additional freshwater flows into Boise Channel, allowing sockeye salmon to complete their spawning cycle and help their numbers recover.
Helping businesses join the battle against biodiversity loss
We launched our Action Plan for Business and Biodiversity, a free tool co-developed with Aviva Canada that offers a roadmap for how businesses can contribute to a more sustainable economy.
From completing WWF’s Biodiversity risk filter and joining the Science-Based Targets Network Corporate Engagement Program, to learning how to respectfully engage with Indigenous communities and creating corporate accountability measures, this practical step-by-step guide can help businesses assess, minimize and transform their impacts on nature — right now and into the future.
This fence makes scents
We supported home-grown — in some cases, literally grown — solutions to human-wildlife conflict in Nepal’s Terai Arc Landscape. Rinjan Shrestha, our Asian species expert, worked with partners and community members on programs that help tiger, rhino, elephant and leopard populations recover while also keeping people safe.
One of those solutions, known as biofencing, involves strategically planting crops like lemon trees, mentha and turmeric that emit odours that safely deter wandering wildlife from venturing too close to human settlements, while also providing alternative income sources to local farmers — an aromatic win-win.
New funds for Indigenous-led conservation
After carefully reviewing more than 35 expressions of interest — and with guidance from an Indigenous advisory committee — our IPCA Support Fund had its inaugural season, disbursing $500,000 this year to seven Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area initiatives at various stages.
This fund was launched to support First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments or organizations considering whether mechanisms like IPCAs, which are defined and managed by Indigenous communities and stewarded through Indigenous laws and knowledge systems, could help realize their visions for their lands and waters.
Living Campus certification goes live
This fall, we celebrated the first-ever cohort to earn our Living Campus certification, which recognizes the efforts of postsecondary institutions that foster sustainability and environmental stewardship.
Nine campuses were able to meet the rigorous certification criteria by carrying out a range of activities throughout the 2023 – 2024 academic year. These activities included Brock University’s seed library, Concordia University’s no-mow zones, and Niagara College’s removal of invasive Phragmites reeds from a campus waterway.
On a mission at COP16
While in Colombia for the UN biodiversity summit COP16, we publicly launched Mission Restoration, an initiative to help Canada restore 30 per cent of the country’s degraded ecosystems by 2030 — an international commitment that was made at COP15 in Montreal.
Restoration, which can range from reforesting fire-damaged landscapes to rebuilding salmon spawning channels and repairing flood-ravaged riverbanks, is essential to reversing biodiversity loss and reducing climate impacts.
Mission Restoration will unite large rightsholders and landholders — Indigenous communities, non-profits, governments and businesses — in tracking their progress, sharing insights and building momentum to bring nature back across Canada.
