People rely on nature in many ways, including providing freshwater, clean air, a stable climate, flood prevention, and mental and physical wellbeing. As Canada works to protect 30% of land and water by 2030, we must ensure that biodiversity and benefits from nature are safeguarded. But new research shows that some of the most critical areas in Canada where people benefit from nature do not occur within protected areas, and often overlap with current or planned resource extraction activities such as logging, mining, or oil and gas.
Join this webinar to learn about first-of-its-kind research that maps Canada’s most important places for freshwater, carbon storage, and nature-based outdoor recreation. Researchers modelled and mapped these three benefits, and results show that existing protected areas tend to cover places with the potential to provide benefits rather than the spots that actually deliver benefits to people.
Cohosted by Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and Wildsight, we will zoom in on B.C.’s Inland Temperate Rainforest, the Columbia Basin, and southern mountain caribou habitat, and explore how this tool can inform decisions about land and water management, planning, and conservation at national, provincial, and regional scales.
Presenters:
Dr. Aerin Jacob is a conservation scientist at the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y). She conducts, convenes, and communicates interdisciplinary research to inform Y2Y and partners across the region on key issues and to ensure that science is integrated into ‘large landscape’ conservation-related policy and practice. Her research interests include species at risk, biodiversity and ecosystem services, conservation and land use planning, and the science-policy interface.
Dr. Matthew Mitchell is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia. His work focuses on understanding how to manage natural, working, and urban landscapes at broad scales for both people and nature. An interdisciplinary landscape ecologist, his research interests include socio ecological systems, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and landscape multifunctionality.