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Ecological Integrity Coordination Committee: decision-making tools for the public

Officials in a regional county municipality want to adopt a development plan that conserves the municipality’s richest wetlands. Another municipality has to upgrade its water treatment system. An environmental organization prepares to restore the degraded banks in its area…

Thanks to the St. Lawrence Plan for a Sustainable Development’s (SLP) Ecological Integrity Coordination Committee, organizations such as those above will have access to tools to help them make informed decisions about their projects and take action that enhances the health of the St. Lawrence. These tools include a conservation plan for a wetland species at risk, a report in accessible language on the effects of certain substances found in urban wastewater, and even a bank restoration atlas.

Photo: Brian E. Small

Some of these tools are already accessible to the public; the coordination committee will deliver others by the end of the current phase of the SLP, in 2010. The committee will also generate a large body of new knowledge to help people understand how the vast St. Lawrence River ecosystem works.

“It is a sizeable challenge,” emphasizes the federal co-chair of the committee, Environment Canada’s Patricia Houle. “Our committee comprises 22 individuals from 9 provincial, federal and private organizations responsible for 115 scientific projects related to the river’s ecological integrity. Therefore, we have to deliver a colossal amount of information.” The science that is produced, however, is not immediately presented as an easy-to-understand whole for the many organizations that have to make decisions likely to affect the river. “We have to interpret it and transform it into tools to aid decision-makers, users of the St. Lawrence River and the general public alike.”

Projects (studies, monitoring, inventories, etc.) are conducted by several departments and NGOs. They have to do with living species and their habitats, as well as the interactions among all of the elements of this biodiversity, the effects on the ecosystem of phenomena such as climate change, the introduction of exotic species and urban waste. The St. Lawrence River is a living entity whose health is influenced by many interacting variables. The ecological integrity of the river is an essential quality for the interacting elements of its biodiversity to flourish and evolve dynamically.

Photo: Jean Rodrigue, Environment Canada

The Committee, set up in 2006, has defined six major activities for promoting ecological integrity:

• identifying and assessing wildlife species potentially at risk and their priority habitat areas
• developing and implementing conservation plans
• implementing recovery actions for species at risk
• assessing, consolidating and improving the network of protected areas and lands
• acquiring, integrating and sharing new knowledge on the biodiversity of the river
• studying the effects of stress on the ecosystem.

Each of the 115 projects and their tools has been linked to one of these activities. For example, an integrated Greater Snow Goose management plan (2005–2010 Action Plan) published last winter was linked to the species at risk activities. Two projects to create marine protected areas— in the Saint Lawrence estuary and in the Manicouagan area—will be linked to the protected areas and lands activity, while the recent publication of a botanical survey of the Chaleur Bay‑Restigouche area is linked to the activity on the acquisition of new knowledge on the biodiversity of the St. Lawrence.

Going further

“The 115 projects would no doubt exist without the coordination committee,” Patricia Houle concedes. That also includes the knowledge they provide. “But they would be divided up and scattered amongst the various departments.”

Bernard Bergeron of the ministère des Ressources naturelles et de la Faune, and Quebec co-chair of the committee, is convinced that the projects would also be less complete. “Grouping several projects under the same umbrella allows the exchange of knowledge and the sharing of resources—human, physical and financial—among the various projects,” he explains.

For example, federal biologists can work on a botanical survey or monitor a population with their colleagues from Quebec departments and from non-governmental organizations such as Ducks Unlimited Canada or Nature Conservancy Canada. They can also collect data for another department’s project. A research group with a boat at Lake Saint-Pierre can make an exchange with another group with a boat at Lake Saint-François.

“Pooling our resources allows us to make progress that would be unthinkable if we were all working separately on our own particular projects,” Mr. Bergeron confirms. Working together also produces cost savings and more effective action plans (such as recovery plans) that could not be achieved otherwise.

Committee coordinator, Environment Canada’s Daniel Robitaille, provides the example of the Atlas of Bank Restoration Sites of the St. Lawrence River recently published on the Internet. The Atlas contains 3,000 pages of text, 1,500 photos and 200 sketches—all the necessary information for restoring banks degraded by human activity, starting with an exhaustive inventory of habitats along the St. Lawrence. “This Canadian Wildlife Service project was carried out in collaboration with many partners who pooled their resources to deliver a concrete product, usable by a wide variety of interested parties,” says Mr. Robitaille. “The result is ten times better than if the project had not benefited from the contributions of several coordination committee members.”

Photo: Denis Lehoux, Environment Canada

It is clear to the coordinator that this committee offers an attractive added value for several projects brought to the table for discussion. “Many people involved in St. Lawrence issues have learned to talk to each other and work together over the last few years due to the first phases of the SLP,” he says. “Our coordination committee is, incidentally, a result of that learning. Now, because of the Committee, all work is now carried out in a formal, organized manner.”

The next steps

The committee is working to make its action even more effective. “Juggling 115 projects is practically impossible,” notes Mr. Robitaille. “Also, we have agreed to approach things more comprehensively.” Rather than analyze each project individually, the committee could group projects together based on how each project contributes to attaining the major results. There could now be six mega-projects corresponding to the six defined activities, with components or sub-projects piggybacking onto the large projects. “That will give us a better overall perspective,” stresses the coordinator. Over the course of the next few meetings, the committee must examine each of the defined activities in depth in order to form a common vision of the exact targets to reach by 2010.

Projects could also be grouped by other criteria, such as geography. For example, as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada suggested to the committee, why not group all the projects conducted in the Lake Saint-Pierre watershed into one superproject? “Perhaps we are in the midst of creating a conservation plan for the entire area without even realizing it,” suggests Mr. Robitaille. That would be even more feasible because several organizations are conducting projects at Lake Saint-Pierre. 

Each partner on the committee therefore is in the process of describing its projects with an eye to creating project groupings, which should be made by the end of this year. Meanwhile, concrete results and tangible products continue to arise from their joint efforts: a new protected area, and a bank restoration, as well as the recent development of two conservation plans for plants at risk in Chaleur Bay and the upcoming publication of an atlas on the copper redhorse. More generally, the joint efforts of committee members continue to contribute to the acquisition of new knowledge on a wide variety of subjects relating to the ecological integrity of the river.

Expanded collaboration

The committee is not restricted to its members’ projects alone: it also maintains connections with other SLP coordination panels (Navigation, Agriculture, etc.). “We sit down with representatives from the other committees to understand what they are doing and to identify possible areas of cooperation,” says Daniel Robitaille. By way of example, he adds that the Navigation Cordination Committee has already used the Atlas on Bank Restoration Sites of the St. Lawrence River with regard to the speed of ships between Sorel and Montréal.   Bernard Bergeron stresses the considerable contribution of non-governmental organizations within the committee. “They work directly in the field,” he says, “and are very committed to the protection of natural environments; they take tangible measures that can even include the purchase of land. The relationship we have with them is highly productive.”

Patricia Houle reflects on the committee’s public mission. “I think of those organizations—municipalities, industries, environmental groups—that can use the science channelled through this coordination panel to help the people of Quebec. Their decisions and actions will contribute to ensuring that the St. Lawrence River ecosystem can continue in perpetuity, on its own, in all its biodiversity, despite the pressures human activities exert on it. To me, that is the ecological integrity of the St. Lawrence.”

For information:

Daniel Robitaille
Coordinator, Ecological Integrity Coordination Committee
Environment Canada
E-mail: daniel.robitaille@ec.gc.ca