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March 6, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
UBC Earth Sciences Building, Ross Beaty Lecture Theatre
Dick Cannings

Bird population trends are one of the best indicators of ecosystem health. Take flight with Dick Cannings on a Canada-wide assessment of the country’s birds, the first time this had ever been done for any major group of animals.

The conservative government of Stephen Harper introduced several profound changes to Canada’s environmental legislation in its budget bill (C-38) of June 2012. Amongst these were changes to the federal Fisheries Act (FA), Canada’s longest serving and much envied¹ piece of environmental legislation. Here, I will outline the history of the Fisheries Act, how it has been changed by the passage of Bill C-38, and what it means for Canada’s freshwater fish biodiversity. I focus on freshwater fishes because the key change to the FA involves habitat protection, and habitat loss and degradation are much more series threats to freshwater fishes than for marine fishes^2,3. In addition, while there is often much focus on the diversity of marine fishes which is, undoubtedly, spectacular, consider that almost 40% of all fishes (some 33,000 species and counting) occur in freshwaters yet freshwater habitats make only 0.8% of the total surface area of the Earth! Per unit area, diversity of freshwater fishes is unmatched.